This book is so interesting. From the age of 7, Suzanne Heywood was taken on a sailing voyage by her parents that was meant to last 3 years, but in fact lasted a decade. She was pulled away from her comfortable life in the UK and thrust into a world of danger, fear, and the realisation that her parents would go on to show little to no regard for her needs and feelings as a child. Her story is enlightening - it gives some much-needed perspective on extreme childhoods. It is so easy to hear stories like this and see this kind of 'adventure' as the experience of a lifetime for a child. But how often do we hear these stories from the child's perspective? Heywood suffered so much in those years from loneliness and isolation, being ignored by her mother and dominated by her father. Reading this felt like fiction -it was unbelievable, so worth a read.

What a story, what a childhood! Suzanne spent a decade sailing 47,000 nautical miles on Wavewalker! From 7 through to 17, she experienced what her parents thought was a privileged childhood, but what she yearned for was safety, a formal education, friends and ultimately, love. Instead she experienced savage storms, shipwrecks, and hostile, selfish parents. This is the story of one girl’s relentless battle to overcome insurmountable obstacles to try and claim a piece of the world for herself. Unputdownable.

I had read an extract from the memoir in the Guardian, and was both fascinated and appalled by the story, so the opportunity to receive a proof copy was too good to pass up. Many thanks to Harper Collins for sending one to me. In the 1970s, Suzanne’s parents took her and her younger brother on the adventure of a lifetime - selling up and ostensibly following the path of Captain Cook’s third voyage in Wavewalker, a newly acquired boat. This turned into a decade long sailing expedition, during which Suzanne was determined to keep up with her education and ‘break free’ to follow her own path and dreams. Suzanne’s story is so raw, providing a stark picture of parents who feel they know best, and who have put their own dreams before their children’s well-being. During one of the violent storms, the young Suzanne is thrown across the cabin, resulting in a severe head injury. Her life is one of social isolation, where she is expected to take on the roles and responsibilities of an adult. Their journey is voted on by the family, but decisions are made by her father’s “benevolent dictatorship”, and there is constant friction between Suzanne and her mother, and a marked difference in the way her brother is treated. We are given such a real sense of the claustrophobia and the tension between the different family and crew members, yet there are moments of beauty and solace in the natural world, and Suzanne is still able to have fleeting moments of friendship with the young people that she briefly meets on her way. After a lifetime of being told not to talk about the journey, and of how privileged she was to have had such an upbringing, writing this memoir seems immensely brave, guaranteed that it will have caused much tension and anger. A gripping, and at times harrowing story of sheer determination and adventure (it certainly puts my awful childhood Sunday visits to Rotherham Sailing club in perspective!)