Review - Hidden by Cathy Glass

Title: Hidden
Author: Cathy Glass
Pages: 368
Release Date: March 3^rd 2008
Format: Paperback
Buy it: Amazon
Add it: Goodreads
 
Synopsis: From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author comes the poignant and shocking memoir of Cathy’s recent relationship with Tayo, a young boy she fosters whose good behaviour and polite manners hide a terrible past.
Tayo arrives at Cathy’s with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The social worker gives Cathy the forms which should contain Tayo’s history, but apart from his name and age, it is blank. Tayo has no past.
Tayo is an 'invisible' child, kidnapped from his loving father in Nigeria and brought illegally to the UK by his drink and drugs dependent prostitute mother, where he is put to work in a sweat shop in Central London. When he sustains an injury and is no longer earning, he is cast out.
When Cathy takes Tayo to school he points out a dozen different addresses where he has stayed in the last six months, often being left alone. Tayo lies, and manipulates situations to his own advantage and Cathy has to be continually on guard. Tayo’s social worker searches all computer databases but there is no record of Tayo – he has only attended school for 3 terms and has never seen a doctor. He and his mother have been evading the authorities by living ‘underground’.
With his mother recently released from prison, Tayo is desperate to live with his father in Nigeria, but no one can track him down or even prove that he exists.
 
My Review: Ten year old Tayo is placed with Cathy because his mother was abusive. She took Tayo from him happy home in Nigeria to live in the UK, Tayo’s mum used to use people just so she could leave Tayo with them for weeks at a time.
 
He insists that his dad will come and get him and take him back home and look after him but the thing is no one can trace his dad and his mum isn’t telling anyone where he is.
 
Will Tayo find his dad with the help of Cathy and the Social Services and Will he get his much deserved happily ever after?
 
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Read in 2022: 19/40