I was frightened of him in a way, of his grief, his loneliness - for he looked like the loneliest person on earth just then, the type of boy who wondered about things, as I did, who broke his heart wondering about things. 'In 1990s-small-town Ireland, amid the sweaty school discos and first fumblings of adolescence, fifteen-year-old Lani Devine falls in love with Leon Brady, whose mother is buried in the cemetery next to Lani's house.

Lani is haunted by the stories of thirty-five orphaned girls, buried in an unmarked grave near Leon's mother. As the love story unfolds, and then unravels, it becomes clear that Leon too is haunted - by a brutal family tragedy that has left scars much more than skin-deep.