Neveah (pronounced Ner-vay) is fifteen. A school- kid. With a secret life. She’s a digital freelancer, and is having an affair with her biggest client, Giles.

Giles is married. He thinks Neveah is twenty-two. She’ll do just about anything to stop him from finding out her true age. But secrets have a way of spilling out. With devastating consequences.

But this is not just Neveah’s story. It tells of those connected to her too, including Billy whose life spins into turmoil when he makes some bad decisions. Each brilliantly executed character has their own secret, and nobody is spared in Catherine Evans’ exploration of the murkiness of contemporary sex.

All Grown Up examines the early sexualisation of young girls and toxic masculinity amongst boys, confronting the reader with important questions about consent and underage sex. Why do some young girls become sexually active sooner than is good for them? If a man has sex with a girl who lies about her age, is he still culpable? If society is at fault for teaching both girls and boys a warped view of sex, who is really to blame when it goes wrong?

All Grown Up is a brave, unflinching and gripping work from an exciting new voice in fiction.

Guest Post – Introduction to All Grown Up
“All Grown up is my second novel. It’s about a neglected fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who moonlights as a digital freelancer. She’s very bright and resourceful, and has big plans for herself. She wants to go to university, and she knows she won’t get any help from her parents, so she has come up with her own solution. She embarks on an affair with her client, Giles, who is married. He believes that she’s an independent woman of twenty-two.

“When a man has sex with an underage girl, even if she has lied about her age, is he still culpable?”

“The entire story was inspired by a strikingly poised schoolgirl I saw on a London bus. She was surrounded by her schoolmates, but her dignity and extreme self-possession marked her out, and I found myself thinking about her long after the bus journey was over. I realised that if she had been wearing an evening gown or a business suit, I would have taken her completely at face value.

“Anyone can set themselves up with a website and get a few business cards printed. It astonishes me how tech savvy even very young children are. Could it be that … and then the story took over.

“The book is about the early sexualisation of young girls and society’s collusion in this process, including by the girls themselves. Young girls like to test the boundaries of their own power, and often put themselves into dangerous situations, believing themselves to be completely in control. They are not mature enough to consider the long term consequences of what they are doing.

“The book also examines toxic masculinity amongst boys. Boys are also vulnerable and need protection, and yet there is a lot of posturing and competition amongst them, and there are very few good role models to teach them how to navigate relationships in a healthy and sensitive manner. Early sexualisation and toxic masculinity have always been societal issues, but nowadays, teens are not able to make their mistakes in private. Now, social media is a constant pressure, and they can find themselves excoriated, canceled or marked out for censure or ridicule in a horribly public way. To add to all these pressures is the easy access to pornography, which has distorted young peoples’ expectations of a normal, healthy sexual relationship. The pressure on girls to look and behave in a certain way is immense. Nor are boys exempt from this pressure. As a society, we need to come up with more imaginative ways to keep our teens safe, and I hope the book proves to be both entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure.”

Many thanks to READ Media for inviting me to share a guest post from #AllGrownUp.

About the Author

Catherine Evans was born in South Africa and grew up in Swaziland and Malawi. After a degree in English Literature and Psychology with UNISA (the University of South Africa), she worked in the City for twenty years. She is currently a Non-Executive Director for Phoenix Copper Limited, which focuses on the exploration of green metals in Idaho, USA. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and daughter. She also has three stepdaughters. She is the author of The Wrong’un. All
Grown Up is her second book.

@Inkspotpub