Cassiel Roadnight has just been discovered at a hostel for homeless teenagers in London. Cassiel is sixteen years old; he has brown hair and blue eyes and is quite tall for his age. He was last seen by his family at the Hay on Fire festival on November 5^th two years previously. Despite having been positively identified from a Missing Persons poster by two overly helpful social workers and being about to be reunited with his sister Edie, Cassiel is not really feeling himself. The reason for this, and the crux of the mystery behind Jenny Valentine’s latest novel The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight, is that Cassiel Roadnight really isn’t himself, at least not the ‘himself’ that everyone is expecting.

“I didn’t choose to be him. I didn’t pick Cassiel Roadnight out of a line-up of possible people who looked just like me. I just let it happen. I just wanted it to be true. That’s all I did wrong, at the beginning.”

Chap is also sixteen years old; he also has brown hair and blue eyes and is quite tall for his age. He doesn’t really know who he is, is happy to claim to be nobody, and last saw his granddad on November 5^th two years previously. Chap had been living on the streets of London but hunger had forced him into the homeless hostel for a few days at least. Uncommunicative and quick with his fists when provoked, Chap is locked in a storeroom for fighting with (and beating) another teenager. It is at this point that Chap makes the decision that is to change his life. One of the social workers who come to check on him recognises Chap’s face from a Missing Persons poster, the poster about Cassiel Roadnight, and Chap seizes the opportunity to claim a family and a life that doesn’t actually belong to him. It is only after taking on the identity of Cassiel Roadnight that Chap realises that everyone has secrets and all families have skeletons in their closets.

The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight is a fairly intriguing story, although the central mystery is nowhere near as complex as it could have been. It is a children’s/young adult novel that seems best suited to those in their early to middle teens, particularly those who have enjoyed Jenny Valentine’s previous book Finding Violet Park. Content-wise, if The Double Life of Cassiel Raodnight were a film its cinema listing would probably include the warning that it ‘contains scenes of mild peril and a single use of strong language.’ There’s nothing particularly controversial or taxing to be found in the story and style-wise the language is simple and straightforward and both sentences and chapters are short. The book is a quick read, with enough action and dialogue to keep readers interested while they follow the steady drip of clues and information leading to the resolution of the dual mysteries. The story is told from the first-person viewpoint of Chap, a sympathetic character who readers will warm to quickly and root for throughout. Perhaps in keeping with the fairly simplistic nature of the mystery element of the story, not all of the characters are as strong as Chap or even his sister Edie. Both Frank, Cassiel’s brother, and Floyd, an acquaintance of Cassiel’s who knows more about the boy’s disappearance than anyone else, could have been fleshed out a bit more and their actions made more intriguing. Still, people and events do come together fairly convincingly and, even if readers suspect the solution that they are going to be presented with, they should enjoy the process of getting there.

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