There is a lot to learn from this memoir by a two-time survivor of leukaemia. When Everett was just nine she was diagnosed with leukaemia, went into remission after more than two years of treatment, but was diagnosed again at 16 and had more years of treatment.

Her writing is heartbreakingly stoic about the ordeals of her treatments. She describes, for those lucky enough not to have experienced it, just how chemotherapy feels horribly cold as it courses through veins, bringing a dreadful metallic taste to the mouth, somewhat allayed by chewing on jellybeans.

Everett writes that she felt her blood crackling and fizzing like soft drink, as it coped with the poison in the chemotherapy. Then it became thick and sticky like honey, seemingly too heavy to flow smoothly around her body.

As a nine-year-old medal-winning gymnast, she had been hoping to take part in a future Olympics, but instead went through the rigours of treatment while keeping up with her schoolwork. ‘Don’t cry,’ her mother had said at the first diagnosis, so she did not. But the cruelty of some schoolmates, when her long strawberry-blonde hair fell out, was unexpected. There was a similar cruelty – or was it fear – shown by a boyfriend, during treatment in her teens, as well as kindness and unexpected revelations about her own family background.

Everett has been unflinching in her memories of those years, including many funerals of other young cancer patients. She became the pin-up girl for cancer survival at 14, speaking at cancer research fundraising events as well as to groups of young cancer patients and their parents and is still an Ambassador for Kids’ Cancer.

This book provides clear understanding … and even hope … not only for young patients, but especially their parents and families.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville