Alexandra Small used to manage other people’s reputations. Now she is the scandal. After an intervention, six weeks in rehab and a divorce delivered by video call, Allie is sober, jobless and living in her best friend Izzy’s spare room. Her Premier League husband offers her £75,000 to disappear quietly. Allie should save every penny. Instead, she stakes almost all of it on The Beachcomber, the derelict Brighton café where she and Izzy worked as teenagers. Reopening it will take more than paint and optimism. Izzy has a family to protect. Audrey, Izzy’s wife, doesn’t trust Allie’s judgement. The bank wants figures, the building wants money, and Tomas, the irritatingly decent estate agent, seems to understand recovery more than Allie wants him to. Then a new betrayal sends Allie into a relapse that becomes tabloid entertainment. Staying sober, she discovers, is much harder than announcing a fresh start. She has lied about the settlement, put her oldest friendship at risk and built her future on foundations almost as shaky as the café’s. To save The Beachcomber, Allie must stop managing the story and tell the truth. Sharp, funny and emotionally frank, Rebuilding Alexandra Small is a British novel about addiction, female friendship, family secrets and the kind of second chance that has to be earned. For readers who enjoy Marian Keyes’s comic candour, Clare Pooley’s stories of recovery and community, and Libby Page’s warm, place-centred fiction.
