Lily lives in the city of Undone. She was left on Gabriel’s doorstep as a baby and he has tried his best to raise her and keep her safe. This was all going well till The Others, a group of nomadic people began moving into the city and Lily’s curious nature gets the better of her. The Undone is ruled by the Master, The Others accept his rule and this causes more division between the two populations.
There are definitely scary elements to this story but this wonderful adventure story is so fast paced with many twists, all readers will enjoy it. Fantastic characters, leaves the reader wanting more.

Themes include: friends who become family, gothic elements and mystery.

This has one of those rich blends of novelty and old-hat, but done with more than enough exuberance to carry it all off. Our heroine Lily is a foundling, living with a humble tradesman after she was magically deposited in his locked shop. She's clearly one of those Girls Who Need to Learn Their Destiny, but it's a very unwanted destiny in this city – an oft-flooded slum area, whose Master, and his lion accompaniment, run it so as to be wholly against The Others. He says The Others are evil terrorists and criminals, but we're soon privy to the fact that to be trained as one of them is to undergo weeks of unarmed combat, lock-picking, and sneaking around in the sewers. So who's right? Before this training said storekeeper is snatched, during it the new gang she is trying to get into is torn apart – and Lily, despite feeling as undone as the city's name implies, must go above and beyond to save the day.

A lot of this, as I said, has been done before – especially her character type. Sewers, training montages galore, foundlings – all can be found in kids lit of this kind. But I felt the balance of magic and grot, of the old and the new, the tried and tested with the unfamiliar, really helped this along. The Others, for one, are not so commonly included in these books, coming across as some kind of magical, soothsaying travellers – Gypsies, more or less. Gypsies with a fondness for lock-picking, and riling The Master, and sometimes with a very glottal Cockney-styled vocal delivery that is not the only thing here to make us think we're in an alternative London.

This book, which seems to have reached us through a prize for newcomers to this audience, does not feel like a debut effort. It really engages with its well-created world, and even when you've seen these characters and training montages before, you get swept up by it all. I would quibble that sometimes the narrator takes us too much away from Lily, and tells us things we don't really deserve to know, whether it be what someone else is thinking, or what is happening in the world of The Master. These wouldn't be so noticeable if they weren't so rare and brief, and if we weren't so intimately invested with Lily due to all the attention she does get given.

Elsewhere, we have a nice twist, which leads to a twist we're about three pages ahead of – but the resulting Mr Evil Says It All monologue is so rich and ripe and well-judged, it would make the audiobook narrator's day to have that to read out. And, to give as little away as possible, when you're thinking the book is done and dusted but there are forty pages left… Some of this is really quite relishable. "Pig's teeth, what a display!" indeed – four and a half stars.

I absolutely loved meeting Lily Grim! This book was a brilliant adventure and I was hooked from the first page. I'm really look forward to reading what Andy Ruffell writes next.

Review from my 9 year old:

Lily Grim was a brilliant adventurous exciting book. I really liked the setting and loved the detail in the book, especially her training. I loved how Lily grows throughout the book and how her opinions change when she gets to know the others.

I really liked the ending , it made me happy. I hope the author writes more books about Lily, I want to know what happens to her and this would make a great book series. I will be telling my friends to read this one.

Thank you.
A Lily Grim fan.

The city of Undone is a place where the very air seems saturated with disquiet. Its citizens are ruled by the iron fist of a mysterious despot known only as the Master. But Undoners accept his rule unquestioningly because they believe that this brutal leader keeps them safe from the danger posed by terrorist elements among the Others.

The Others are a group of nomadic peoples who have begun moving into the seedier parts of the city, after years of floods decimated the wilderness where they had previously lived freer lives. Many of them are intuitive and have strange skills which simply makes them appear more of a threat to the Undoners. The Master feeds these fears, and keeps the divisions between the two populations alive.

Lily is young girl who lives in the city with an elderly man named Gabriel. She was left on his doorstep as a baby, and Gabriel has done his best to raise Lily with love and to keep her safe. But Lily's curiosity will prove to be the undoing of their relatively secure life.

As a result of Lily's insistence on finding out more about the Others, and what is actually going on in this city of theirs, Gabriel takes her out one day, and they end up almost witnessing a public execution. In the process, Gabriel is captured and he sacrifices himself to save Lily. Lily herself is only able to escape with the help of a young Other boy called Dekka.

Although she initially finds a relatively safe home with Dekka and the small group of misfits who are his found family, the Master soon comes after them. Lily and Dekka must then make the difficult choice about whether they will have to abandon their friends to find safety, or whether they should try to find a way to rescue them from the forbidding, impregnable prison known as The Ring...

This is a terrific adventure story for young readers, fast-paced and full of interesting twists. The world-building is very effective, and following Lily and Dekka on their journeys is something of a sensory experience. Points for imaginative storytelling as well as the creative creatures and characters that inhabit the book!

The story opens with a fast-paced, tense chapter where Lily encounters the Master. Lily's guardian runs a second hand shop and one day a lion visits their shop. The lion is owned by the Master. Later, her guardian will be captured by the Master.

The writing is done very well and the story has enough mysteries to keep readers reading.