Jade Levell has written a powerful and important book on a topic that not only deserves attention but, as she says, has often been hidden in plain sight. Children's experiences of domestic abuse, where their mother is being abused by the father, and the children are abused and impacted in so many ways, began to be recognized by the feminist refuge movement in the 1970s. But it has taken a long time for society and services more generally to recognize that children are not mere ‘bystanders’ or ‘witnesses’, that their experiences have to be recognized, and that they are often in desperate need of safety and support. Even more tricky has been to acknowledge that boys are affected too, and that they also need a voice and support. Jade Levell provides boys with that voice.

Jade Levell's book confronts the realities of domestic abuse and tells it as it is. She shows how important it is not to sanitize or hide domestic violence and abuse through minimizing or not naming it for what it is, how crucial it is that we recognize and acknowledge the fears and abuse a child or young person experiences associated with violence against their mother, and highlights the threatening chaos of not knowing when it’ll happen again. In many respects the experiences of Jade and her siblings mirror the wider research evidence we have with regard to children, young people, and domestic violence, where siblings can have different experiences, impacts, and resilience, and where these may be gendered (Hester et al, 2007; Devaney, 2015). It was Jade's brother who ‘acted out and got in with the wrong crowd’, was excluded from school, and consequently expelled, while she found support and validation in a school setting that helped her move forward.

The book confronts some key issues in feminist approaches to domestic violence and with regard to key support services and approaches, especially the tricky question of ‘what about the boys and men?’. In this regard she is particularly critical of the refuge movement and the seeming lack of safe space for boys.