A ghost holds the key to a stolen fortune... Tina is fourteen years old. She is argumentative, surly, disobedient, and hails from a dysfunctional family. She has had various unsuccessful stays in foster care, as her behaviour always remains challenging. When she is moved to Sunrise Court, a children's home, she is soon in trouble for breaking the rules, and is horrified to discover she has to barricade herself into her bedroom every night to evade the wandering hands of a certain member of staff.

Devoid of hope for the future, she starts a diary at the beginning of January 1997 as she approaches her fifteenth birthday. Will the New Year will bring an improvement in her situation?

'Tina's Diary: 1997' reached the finals of the 2023 Page Turner Writing Award.

Review by D.G Kaye, author of Conflicted Hearts

Tina is a fifteen year old girl living in an orphanage home. She is an angry and rebellious girl, but very resourceful. She drops out of school but is quite clever and streetwise, and carries a lot of resentment toward her parents for her predicament. Tina's mother was a drug addict and alcoholic who over-dosed when Tina was ten and her philandering father had long gone, and remarried. Tina has an estranged and resentful relationship with her cheating, alcoholic father who typically visits her once a year at Christmas, and occasionally on her birthday, to leave her money and whatever stolen goods he may have acquired that she may be able to use.

Tina doesn't like rules and uses her bedroom window to escape out at nights for dates with all the wrong kinds of shady characters. She's also quite clever and learns how to make some spending money on the side, because it's a 'short stint for a decent payoff'.

This story begins as a diary of Tina's life in the home, and then all the little plot twists that come along in her life, keep us turning the pages.

The author did a marvelous job of writing Tina's story in this epistolary style of writing, and writing from the mind of a lonely, angry, and confused young teenager facing situations and decisions at an age with adult-sized problems. Tina's shenanigans with a twist of paranormal make for an interesting read.