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When I Was Invisible
When I Was Invisible
Jan 14, 2026 10:04 PM

Author:Dorothy Koomson

When I Was Invisible

‘Do you ever wonder if you’ve lived the life you were meant to?’ I ask her. She sighs, and dips her head. ‘Even if I do, what difference will it make?’

In 1988, two eight-year-old girls with almost identical names and the same love of ballet meet for the first time. They seem destined to be best friends forever and to become professional dancers.

Years later, however, they have both been dealt so many cruel blows that they walk away from each other into very different futures – one enters a convent, the other becomes a minor celebrity. Will these new, ‘invisible’ lives be the ones they were meant to live, or will they only find that kind of salvation when they are reunited twenty years later?

Reviews

A real page-turner.

—— Good Housekeeping

Powerful and haunting, the book tackles difficult topics and makes you realise how easily you can lose your whole world

—— Woman

A powerful story about friendship and forgiveness, and fans of Dorothy Koomson will enjoy the clever twists and unexpected turns, which keep the reader enthralled and eager to discover just what happened to two little girls destined for greatness.

—— Candis

Gritty and emotional, with lots of satisfying twists and turns. A compulsively readable book about empowering women. I couldn't put it down; I think this is one of her best.

—— Julie Cohen

A thought-provoking and suspense-filled tale of friendship.

—— OK!

A great read.

—— Bella

A powerful tale of friendship.

—— Prima

Koomson brilliantly captures the fraught friendship between the two girls in this gripping tale.

—— Closer

Full of heart and sympathy.

—— Dail Mail

An absolute page-turner of a novelpowerful and oh so compelling When I Was Invisible left me with a tear in my eye and touched my heart

—— www.lovereading.co.uk

A thought-provoking, emotional drama.

—— Sunday Post

I’m a massive Dorothy Koomson fan, so I’ll be taking When I Was Invisible on holiday

—— Katie Fforde , Daily Mail, Summer Reads

Cancel the excursion to the ancient ruins and get poolside for this compelling story of love and forgiveness.

—— Sainsbury’s Magazine

A hard-hitting tale

—— Sun

Great heart

—— The Herald

Raw and emotional, this packs a punch

—— Fabulous

Koomson just gets better and better

—— Woman & Home

Tense and emotional with truly empathetic characters

—— My Weekly

A powerful story about friendship and forgiveness, fans of Dorothy Koomson’s novels will enjoy the clever twists and unexpected turns, which keep the reader enthralled

—— Candis

A powerful book … it’s always good to be thinking of a book long after you put it down

—— Woman’s Way (Ireland)

A beautiful and clever novel

—— The Culture Trip

Thematically taut and compulsively paced.

—— Edmund Gordon , Sunday Times

A very good novel of anxiety, embarrassment and also, somehow, the depths of Englishness.

—— Evening Standard

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

—— Literary Review

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

—— Penguin

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

—— Rachel Kushner

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

—— Mirza Waheed

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

—— Bernardine Evaristo

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

—— Independent on Sunday

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

—— New Yorker

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

—— Cressida Connolly , The Spectator

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

—— Mark Damazer , New Statesman

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

—— Simon Heffer , Daily Telegraph

A novel offering more hope

—— Daisy Goodwin , Daily Mail

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

—— Ann Treneman , The Times

Masterly

—— Anna Murphy
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