April 2015 Debut of the Month Fifteen year old Pearl has lived all her life at Seed, a nature-worshipping cult led by a self-imposed father figure, Papa S. Pearl is happy, despite, or maybe because of, her extreme naivety. Contact with the outside world is practically forbidden, those that live at Seed know very little other than what they are told by Papa S – the young people aren’t even allowed to know who their real mothers are. The arrival of a new family with a teen boy disrupts the equilibrium, and makes Pearl realise life in the cult may not be the paradise she thought. Narrated by Pearl in the present tense, this is a convincing and disturbing portrayal of life in an oppressive, controlling society, and will prompt readers to think about self-determination, and women’s rights. Andrea Reece
Seed loves you. Seed will never let you go. Fifteen-year-old Pearl has lived her whole life protected within the small community at Seed, where they worship Nature and idolise their leader, Papa S. When some outsiders arrive, everything changes. Pearl experiences feelings that she never knew existed and begins to realise that there is darkness at the heart of Seed. A darkness from which she must escape, before it's too late.
Lisa lives in Brighton with her husband and three sons. Before becoming a mum, she was a secondary school English teacher and loved inspiring teenagers to read.
After teaching, she ran a café in Brighton for seven years. In the middle of the general chaos of her lovely children, baking for the café and stumbling through running her own business, she wrote her first novel.
