When Hex and Tommo (both white) head into the woods to play one morning, they have a tagalong: a little girl named Sascha, who wants a turn on the rope swing, too. As Sascha soars over the creek, Hex tosses a stone—he doesn’t know why he does it—that causes her to fall and break her arm. Hex feels sick about what has happened, but rationalizes it by blaming others. Sascha’s sister Maria, understandably angry, soon avenges Sascha with a punch to Hex’s face. When Hex meets an unusual woman, Missus, and her enormous, shaggy dog, he accepts her offer: She can erase the injustice that’s been done to him by removing Maria from the world. Maria won’t die; she’ll simply never have existed. No one will remember her. Over the next few days, the unexpected and unwelcome repercussions of Hex’s choice play out—and he’s not the only one who has met Missus. It will take more than just Hex, who soon blinks out of existence himself, to set the world (or rather, worlds) straight again. Eerie chiaroscuro drawings with their moody contrast of dark and light add to the foreboding sensibility of this short, unsettling British novel examining the intended and unintended consequences of choices both small and large. (Ages 9-13)

An extraordinary story about friendship and betrayal. Of revenge and retribution but also redemption. Perfect for 11+ readers who enjoy Stranger Things. Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Illustration in 2023.

Hex never meant for the girl to follow him and his friend Tommo into the woods. He never meant for her to fall off the rope swing and break her arm. When the finger of blame is pointed at him, Hex runs deep into the woods and his fierce sense of injustice leads him to a strange clearing in the woods – a clearing that has never been there before – where an old lady in a cottage offers him a deal. She'll rid the world of those who wronged him and Hex can carry on his life with them all forgotten and as if nothing ever happened. But what Hex doesn't know is someone else has been offered the same deal.

When Hex's best friend Tommo wakes up the next day, he is in a completely different world but he only has murmurs of memories of the world before. Moments of deja vu that feel like Tommo's lived this day before.
Can Tommo put the world right again? Back to how it was? Or can he find a way to make a new world that could be better for them all?