When I first started writing The Girl with Nowhere to Go, Skye was a minor character, a sixteen-year-old girl on the edges of Bec and Anna’s lives. Bec and Anna, both carrying grief from their pasts, were the focus, while Skye was simply someone they tried to help.
During editing, my editor suggested a shift: what if Skye became the heart of the story? At first, I hesitated. Her story had always felt secondary, almost an afterthought. But centring the narrative on her transformed the novel. Her struggles—homelessness, the recent loss of her mother, and running away from foster care—raised the stakes for Bec and Anna, intensifying the choices they had to make and the conflicts that arose between them.
Most of the story is still told through Bec and Anna’s eyes, but a few key scenes are from Skye’s perspective, giving readers a glimpse into her hopes and fears. Early readers have said they couldn’t put the book down, completely absorbed by Skye’s journey and how she changes everyone around her. Her presence became the thread connecting the novel’s themes of grief, loss, and the search for belonging, showing how one young girl’s story can illuminate the lives of those she touches.
Shifting the focus to Skye didn’t diminish Bec or Anna’s stories as I had feared; it made them sharper, more urgent, and more emotional. Ultimately, giving Skye the spotlight created a contemporary, heartfelt story about family, friendship, and finding hope when life feels at its most fragile.