Publication Date: 6 July 2023

The Blurb

When three eleven-year-old ‘problem children’ are thrown together at summer camp, they’re challenged to build a place to live together for the next week. But after a trip to a disused tin-mine goes awry, Milo and his new friends, Oscar and Effie, soon find themselves split off from the group and trapped underground. Can they work through their individual issues and come together as a team to find their way to freedom?

The Review

Heartbreakingly beautiful storytelling about friendship, adventure and different kinds of grief.

For me, All The Way Down encapsulates the transformative power of friendship and empathy in the most difficult of situations, and serves as a reminder that first impressions often hide other’s insecurities, and how much courage it can take to let a new friend in.

Stewart’s vivid descrptions create an immersive read that captures the claustrophobic terror of the situation the children find themselves in, mirroring the depths of the emotional trauma they carry within themselves.

As the darkness engulfs them, their individual struggles, fears, and insecurities come to the fore, beautifully woven into the peril filled plot. Milo, dealing with fear of letting go; Oscar, battling with anger; and Effie, navigating her own emotional turmoil, makes for an explosion of personalities within the confined space, where they each learn how to calm and steady themselves and each other.

There were numerous times I found myself reaching for the tissues as I felt the characters’ fears and pain bubble up inside me, but there were just as many where I chuckled with them. I am left with a sense of hope, and will carry Effie’s words of wisdom about missing someone with me: “You haven’t forgotten about him. You’ve just moved him from your head to your heart.“

Great for fans of:

• Finn Jones Was Here by Simon James Green
• The Boy Who Made Monsters by Jenny Pearson
• The Lovely Dark by Matthew Fox

Huge thanks to Stewart Foster for sending me a copy along with a foreign language edition of The Perfect Parent Project for our school library – I am incredibly grateful for your generosity.