Nikki Gemmell is most famous for her erotic novel, The Bride Stripped Bare, published over 20 years ago and written in second person using the pronoun ‘you’ to address the reader, which created an intimacy with the narrator. Gemmell’s latest novel is also written in the second person, this time from the perspective of a headmistress at a private girl’s school where four girls have gone missing on a hike. The impact is different this time and takes getting used to, but by the end of the novel you realise its power in a story that seeks to sympathetically explore womanhood today.

The narrator, the unnamed principal of Koongala School for Girls, is childless but deeply attached to one of the missing girls, Cinnamon (known as Cin), who is her goddaughter. Their relationship is unbeknown to anyone else apart from Cin’s single mother, the principal’s now-estranged best friend from high school. The narrator is waiting on confirmation of a new job that she desperately wants, but the bad publicity surrounding four missing girls, and the missing teacher who was sent to find them, could scupper her career plans.

The story takes the reader through the long four days of waiting at the campground where the girls were last seen, as parents, police and media gather. As they wait, fault lines between families and friendships are excavated. Finally, the girls return, but they will not speak and are definitively changed. What happened out there? And where is the male teacher who went looking for them?

This is a fiercely feminist book, with a range of female characters navigating the complexities of middle age, alongside young women poised on the cusp of adulthood, filled with hormones and sass, as yet untarnished by the patriarchy. There are no easy answers, but the story’s conclusion makes for a deeply satisfying and thought-provoking read.