Everything you do is wrong starts with a storm and a mystery. Harmony’s Auntie Mel finds the girl by the beach. They all think she has drowned.

I read this book several weeks ago and didn’t write it up immediately. This isn’t because the plot lines aren’t tight. It read like a TV crime drama. The young, handsome policeman – not quite a detective in his own right – families broken behind closed doors, teenagers lying to the police for a little bit of attention, the exploration of stereotypes about different communities (here the travelling community).

It is a fun and page-turning read. But, and for me this is a big but, it ends with a sense of deflation. I didn’t feel provoked to continue thinking about the characters and their lives, or to ponder afresh my understanding of the world and how people move within it.

Perhaps I was asking too much of this novel that for the right reader would do all of those things. The characters are believable and their lives the heady mixture of mundane and awkward that feels so true to real life. It just didn’t do it for me.

What begins as crime moves into an elaborate drama in which everyone does the wrong thing, though sometimes for the right reasons.

This book was not for me. Whilst it might accurately reflect some of the issues/problems youngsters in their mid teens might face, "Everything you do is Wrong" did not grab my emotions. It was all rather monotone. flitting from one character to another without their ever really sharing or confronting the current matters in hand. I feel fiction needs to be slightly larger than life, challenging the reader to think more deeply. Regrettably this did not happen to me. Sorry.

A very good mystery a must read,great book I loved it

Harmony is the central character in this story which is centred around her experiences as she grows up. But there is a second story line that intersects – about a naked girl that is rescued from the sea by Harmony’s aunt and how Harmony’s family react to this action.
Harmony has had an unorthodox upbringing with a somewhat ‘hippie’ mother who does not believe in bras for young girls and has largely home schooled her. But when the story opens, Harmony’s mother is gone and she is left in the care of her mother’s boyfriend – who does not think of her as his daughter and mostly ignores her and forgets to buy food foe her etc.
Mel, the aunt who rescues the girl from the sea, tries to look after Harmony, but has her hands full with 3 boys and several part-time jobs/charitable enterprises.
Each person in the family connects to other characters, so Mel’s oldest son dates the rescued girl’s – who is mute and appears to have lost her memory – psychiatric social worker. 

The story moves slowly, full of the minutiae of Harmony’s life, and the everyday occurrences of the family, the characters are slowly painted in until they become vivid in their totality. And the girl found on the beach is the central pivot around which the rest of the characters and the story revolves.

The thing I enjoyed most about Everything You Do is Wrong was the writing style of the author. It really draws you a long with every turn of the page. I was intrigued by the story of the girl found naked on the beach but in the end it turned out to be was a flimsy way to bring together the lives of the main players because of how disappointed I was when the mystery of the girl was untangled. Had the mystery been solved earlier I might not have been too keen to continue.
That said, I did warm to the characters themselves and think that the writer's character development was well done and brought them to life for me. This helped so much because of how flat I thought the plot actually was.
It's a quick read and a nice little, down to earth drama for any reader who likes a bit of mystery to their novels..

I enjoyed this book and thought the characters were well depicted. Interesting storyline though I did think the book was over-long.

This was a real page turner from the beginning. Will definitely look for this author in future.

Not at all the book I was expecting unfortunately - the mystery of the girl on the beach turned out to be a mystery of everyone else but the girl. Why be disappointed when the body you find turns out to be still alive?

A minor quibble were the names of the characters - Storm who is found on the beach seemed strange as did Harmony and as the story developed there were more than a few opinions and view points to get on board with which did get a little confusing for me.

I do think more could have been made of the location - the bleak Yorkshire beaches and coves would have made a nice backdrop to a story of lost identity but the names used were fictionally and the descriptions vague and this made me feel a little disjointed from the plot as a whole

I really wonder where to start with this review. I really do feel that I wasted about 4 hours of my life reading, what I felt was absolute drivel. It was the most inconsequential story, with a collection of odd characters, that you could not relate to in any way. Really not my kind of book at all. I persevered, as I hoped, against hope, that it would get better. Alas the outcome was really silly.

Various characters are involved in a mystery in North Yorkshire
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A young woman is found alive and naked on a beach in North Yorkshire and the local policeman and various characters get involved in trying to find out who she is and where she is from.
This is not so much a mystery novel but one about the inter-action between Mel (who found the body), her children, her sister's family, PC Mason and a few other assorted characters. It has few male characters, concentrating on the female ones, and is a novel aimed at the female readership. Quite interesting but not really my type of book: I was disapppointed.

What can I say? I read it in one day. Just wasn't that keen on the ending, otherwise I would have given it five stars

I found this very hard going - it did not really get anwhere and the ending was not worth the wait. Very mundane and disappointing.Good cover and I expected more.

Oh dear I found this such a slog I'm afraid to say, there was just so much going on that I just failed to get to grips with it.

First there was the mystery of the unknown girl washed up on the shore and saved from death by dance teacher Mel. Then there's 15-year-old Harmony and her whole tortured youth and unrequited crush on her tutor. Harmony's mother Aurora, who is trying to claw her way back into reality following her breakdown. Mel's complicated and hectic life trying to hold everyone and everything together. In fact this list could go on for some time, but you get my drift I hope.

Granted I've had lots of other things on my mind, and have read this in small bits, but I found myself not really caring. Yes there's the teenage angst most of us can in some way identify with, but I'm not sure which plotline was supposed to anchor the book, so it sort of just meandered along going nowhere for a long time.

This couple with the overtly superfluous wordy writing style means that I'm just not a fan unfortunately.

I have mixed feelings about this book having just turned the last page (or should I say my kindle did!). I think that it is well written with relevant up to date use of references and quick wit along with clever use of sentence structure with some good hidden meanings or double meanings. However the end, for me was disappointing and a bit odd! I realise that possibly this was the intention. But for me didn't work. The portrayal of Mel's character throughout was the page turner for me and the subtlety of the story playing out against her growing older and battling feelings of regret balanced with the fact she didn't do too bad in life either. There were elements to the story I thought would end with a bang that didn't - Harmony's unrequited love for Declan and Aurora's mental health battles, that pretty much came to nothing and the final pages with the dog in the sea and major female characters in the book in the beach??? Odd?? Then the way the PCs relationship played out and the ending of that... unexpected? So .... a real mix. It kept me interested but left me disappointed.

I'm sorry to say I gave up on this novel at about 40%. I persevered as the storyline was intriguing but I didn't like any of the characters at all. There just wasn't any of the main characters for whom I felt any empathy or interest. Shame, because it had great potential and I was fully prepared to enjoy it.

a very interesting read, which kept my attention throughout .Although I expected the girl on the beach to be the central character, the book concentrates on Harmony's problems dealing with her infatuation with her private tutor, her mother's mental health problems, and her problems associated with home tutoring. There are unexpected twists to the ending which came as a complete shock to me . A very good novel.

Three stars. I had looked forward to reading this but the hype wasn't followed up . Maybe one for a younger generation than mine.

I found this book ok.

The puzzle of Harmony kept me going.

This would have been a perfect holiday read, as it plodded along without needing much thought or concentration. I wasn't keen on the twist at the end.

My thoughts on this book are mixed. I enjoyed reading it, felt I got to know the characters, and was engrossed in the story. And the story was intriguing. Who is the mysterious girl on the beach. And how did she get there? There were a lot of threads, and with the involvement of Harmony and Mel in the story it was good to see their interaction. We saw Harmony as a strange, detached young person, who has not been allowed to integrate with her peers because of her mother's beliefs. This is an area that I feel very strongly about -you can't do that to young people, so I was itching to see what had led to this. We do see that Aurora, as she has reinvented herself, does have mental health problems but that doesn't excuse how she has treated her daughter. Back to the story. I was surprised with the outcome of Storm's story, and this was a good twist. But I felt the actual book ending was very weak. No real explanations, although I suppose finding out about Dawn's family may b=have explained why she behaved as she did. I felt there was more of a story to tell here. Harmony's ending was unexpected and I didn't feel it fitted where she was at in the story, We're left imagining the final outcome, I like something a bit more concrete. It seemed rushed. But a good read, one where I felt I knew most of the characters, I empathised with Mel and her busy life that she'd fallen into, and the story moved on as we tried to find out Storm's story, Incidental characters, such as the policemen were well rounded, and some of Dan's observations were amusing.

Interesting read. Shows the complexities that lie within families and how our lives intertwine even if we don't want them to. One moment in time happens and throws life off balance with all sorts of repercussions. Found the ending a bit abrupt and left several ends dangling .....perhaps another book?