A book with some interesting approaches to death. How do we handle death, what is an apropriate reaction?
I'm not religious myself, but I found myself relating to one character who had the courage to say to her friend who's mother had died. (I paraphrase) "Why are you crying for her? She is with God. She is with the man she loved. If she had lived until you were able to say goodbye, she would have spent more time in pain. Is that something you would have wanted?"

That's a brave subject to tackle for a school novel.

Like most Abbey school novels, the men remain almost totally invisible. Even when character are married, the author manages to keep them out of the way.

It's a sign of the times when the book was written that pregnancy is pretty much a taboo subject. Babies appear almost by magic. The only hint that a character is pregnant (which I failed to catch) was that she was tired a lot of the time. ( )