'I was at boarding school in East Anglia, my third. I didn’t want to be there. But if there had been no school, there would be no Finn. He lived in a hut on the coast. He was like the hut, in fact – it took a while for both of them to warm up. But that is all I longed for. Finn, warming to me. A nod. Half a smile. Asking me to help on the boat. Not asking me to leave. I didn’t want it to end. Now I am waiting for the end, and looking back to the beginning.'

Haunting, intense and with a surprising twist in the tale – this is unlike anything you will have read before...

‘Shamefully I never read Meg Rosoff’s second novel Just in Case, partly because I loved her first novel, How I Live Now, too much to risk being disappointed by a second. No such danger with What I Was; for a start the protagonist isn’t named until the end (an essential device in the totally unexpected plot twist) and it’s testament to Rosoff’s mesmerizing power as a writer that you are so drawn in to the story that you don’t even notice you haven’t been introduced’
Dinah Hall, Daily Telegraph

‘Meg Rosoff is one of a handful of gifted writers to have seized adolescence as a territory worthy of respect. . . (her books) are mordantly funny and searingly well written, they read like Samuel Beckett on Ecstasy.’
Amanda Craig, The Times

‘It’s already a classic.’
Nicolette Jones, Sunday Times

‘Readers of Rosoff’s previous books, How I Live Now and Just In Case will know what a disturbing writer she is, and how disconcertingly she shifts the perspectives of time, place, reality and human relationships from those we are used to. What I Was maintains her remarkable gift for turning human life into an unfamiliar event.  . . What I Was is a highly original study of intense self-love, in all its sterility and solitude. Yet as before with Rosoff, this story of bleak and unstable existence ends on a surprising note of thanksgiving’
Books for Keeps 

‘Rosoff skillfully navigates the waters of adolescent sexuality and the blurring of gender boundaries, while her metaphorising of the sinking coast of East Anglia as emotional territory for her characters never becomes false or laboured . . . an appealing, moving and readable tale that is well worth the time of any reader, whatever their age’
The Leeds Guide

‘Carnegie winner Meg Rosoff’s What I Was will surely find a place on the shortlists for major prizes’
Publishing News

‘The novel’s power increases as the story progresses, culminating in a genuinely stunning climax . . . a brave, exquisitely written and unsettling novel’
The Gloss magazine (Ireland)

‘Time and place are brilliantly evoked. Her best yet!’
Sean Edwards, Principal Librarian Children & Youth, Wood Green Library

'What I Was is wonderful.  Meg is one of those rare authors who always surprises.  My proof copy is in tatters and all the feedback has been positive’
Susanne Bray, Senior Library Manager, Guildford  Library