Greatest Hits is Laura Barnet's follow-up to The Versions of Us

Greatest Hits, the follow-up to journalist Laura Barnett's acclaimed debut novel The Versions Of Us, is a deftly woven tale of love, life and loss. As she launches a new album after a three-decade hiatus, acclaimed singer-songwriter Cass Wheeler looks back on her career and her life. After childhood abandonment by her mother and teenage wayward years, Cass finds her voice through music - a precocious talent catapulted onto the stage like a British Joan Baez. As the older, reclusive Cass sits down to listen to the 16 songs she has selected to be her 'greatest hits', she takes a journey back through the past - a journey of introspection and reflection, as the songs she listens to - her songs, whose lyrics we read - trigger memories both sweet and painful, of sunny days and of shattering pain, of glittering success and deadening failure. As the records play, Cass' past unravels before the reader, taking in love affairs and family dynamics and revealing the tragic reason for her withdrawal from the spotlight. A moving read with a complex female protagonist, which entrances the reader from beginning to end.

9/10

(Review by Louisa McKenzie)