Grind Spark

Longlisted for the Bath Novel Award 2014, Grind Spark is a near-future dystopian novel about growing up in the years leading up to the end of the world. It’s about pretending to be the perfect family. It’s about whether you want to survive.

From the back

What do you do when the earth is dying?

You party like it’s the end of the world.

Deek never had any choice; designed and born in a lab and bought by the Prefin family, her job is to be the perfect daughter.

And in eight years she is going to die.

Along with the rest of the human race.

Bound by contract, Deek must spend the few years she has playing at happy families, while her mother treats her as an accessory, her brother hates her and her grandmother uses her to score social media points.

And as the Prefins disintegrate under the pressures to enjoy life before the scheduled apocalypse, and their selfishness and cruelty become more extreme, Deek finds support in an online friend. But can he show her what it’s like to care, what it’s like to hope?

If you see the darkest sides of the human family, would you want to survive the end of the world?