Brave and brilliant.I must have first read this book just after it was published but, honestly, I don’t remember much about it. The first in a series of five novels about UK society being flipped – to show white skinned people on the bottom, and dark skinned people in power. The tension builds steadily to an event that pushes everything over a precipice, forcing decisions on both sides.

Their rising confusion with their upbringing and caustic environments, all as their feelings for each other grow captured me and kept me reading for hours – wanting to know more. It was incredibly easy to get into, and I was taken by the characters quickly and wholeheartedly. Now that I have, I wish I’d read it years ago. But the justice system is made up of 99.9% Crosses and the Noughts know that they are up against a society that will bite back – and it does in the most vicious ways possible.įirst published in 2001, I have always wanted to read this novel. The Noughts are beginning to rebel in more organised ways, with a growing group of protesters hitting back with whatever it takes to bring equality to their lives. Sephy’s family is beginning to fall apart from her father’s aspirations and her mother’s drinking problems, and her feelings of injustice are growing along with Callum’s. The Crosses make it almost unbearable for Callum at his new school. Were they still just friends? The most confusing thoughts are about the rising rifts between the Noughts and the Crosses. Both are changing, growing, and wondering about their feelings toward each other. Using secret calling and messaging techniques, Sephy and Callum continue their friendship by meeting in secret in their special place. Especially now that her father is more and more in the public eye and the media will grab anything to shame him. Now that Sephy and Callum are older, they are told again and again that Noughts and Crosses don’t mix. Sephy and Callum have been friends from when they were small and Callum’s mum worked for Sephy’s family.īut that was then. Sephy is the daughter of a rising-through-the-ranks politician, father. The Crosses – Dark skinned, wealthy, privileged, politicians, police, judges and Sephy. Callum has a place at a school with less than a handful of other Noughts, but it’s a Crosses school. His father is supporting him, his mother and older brother wondering if all Callum’s hard work, study and perseverance will make any difference to his future at all.

Meet Callum, a teen determined to do better than other Noughts.

The Noughts – Fair skinned, manual workers, housemaids, oppressed.

Noughts and crosses book