The Secrets Club: The Truth about Tash

Chris Higgins's The Secrets Club: The Truth about Tash is a school friendship story for 9 year olds about a girl keeping a very big secret for her mum.

What happens

Tash is in Year Seven at Riverside Academy for Girls. She's clever, chatty and captain of the netball team. She has three brand-new best friends, and they've just made a solemn vow to each other. No more secrets.

Which is a problem, because Tash has one.

Her mum Comfort works three jobs. Tash drops her baby brother Keneil at nursery, keeps an eye on Marlon and Devon, and rushes home every afternoon. Her friends think she's always making excuses. She's not allowed to tell them why.

Then she comes home one Saturday to find her mum on the bed with a gash on her forehead and blood everywhere. Mum says she walked into a door. The hospital keeps her in, and Tash is left in charge of the boys. And nobody must ever know.

Tash tells it herself, as it happens, and she's lovely company. She adores words. She's quite proud of using "irony" correctly. She reckons the MPs who make the laws can't have any children, or they'd let kids look after themselves (a very Tash argument).

What makes it special is how ordinary she makes it all feel. The tins in the kitchen marked ELECTRICITY and SCHOOL. Beans on toast when the freezer runs out. Keneil wriggling into her bed at night because he misses Mum. You'll probably want to give her a hug.

Friendship drama runs right through it too. Tash lets her best friend Ali down and can't explain why, and she's secretly jealous of Lissa. There's a boy on the bus called Ajay as well.

A heads-up for sensitive readers. The scene where Tash finds her mum is quite frightening, and it's clear Mum hasn't been well for a while. Children being left on their own at night is part of the story. For most readers it'll just make them root for Tash even more.

What to read next

Tash's is the second Secrets Club book. The first belongs to Ali, the quiet best friend who's forever thinking about saving the planet. If they'd like to start at the beginning, Alice in the Spotlight is in the library too.