Sarah, 41, and her younger sister Juliette set out on a campervan road trip from Manchester to Scotland to celebrate Juliette’s 40th birthday. Juliette is married to a boring man, or at least that’s what Sarah thinks, and has two young children. Sarah is single. She has always kept people at arm’s length, but on this trip, she’s ready to confront the past and connect with her sister.

Sarah, 15, is in love with her English teacher – they’re going to run away together. She hates her little sister. Her best mate, Nessa, is cool, and they tell each other everything. They call each other slags, and it’s said with pride.

Young Sarah and adult Sarah are both a mess. Young Sarah is struggling to navigate her teenage world: friendships, all-encompassing first love, her alcoholic mother, and not inhaling while smoking. Adult Sarah is in therapy, trying to work through her childhood trauma, trying to quit drinking alcohol, trying to feel something. Both struggle with the burden of being the firstborn child.

At first, the flashbacks to Sarah’s adolescence were jarring, but as I read on, I fell into the rhythm of the story. It’s told in a stream of consciousness and Sarah is an unreliable narrator, which brought an unpredictable energy to the book and made it impossible to put down. It deals with heavy topics, including sexual assault, but elsewhere the quick wit of the characters and the humorous moments keep it from getting too dark.

This was a funny, raw, heartfelt, uncomfortably relatable and devastating (how many adjectives can I fit in?) story filled with ’90s references, teenage nostalgia and a sisterly bond that can never be broken. Although it was, at times, a challenging read, I thoroughly enjoyed Slags and I’m excited to pick up more of Emma Jane Unsworth’s books.