Love and violence. In some families they're bound up together, dysfunctional and poisonous, passed from generation to generation like eye colour or a quirk of smile. Trisha's trying to break the chain, channeling her violent impulses into Muay Thai kickboxing, an unlikely sport for a slightly built girl of Trinidadian descent.

Her father comes and goes as he pleases, his presence adding a layer of tension to the Toronto east-end townhouse that Trisha and her mom call home, every punch he lands on her mother carving itself indelibly into Trisha's mind. Until the night he wanders out drunk in front of the car Trisha is driving, practicing on her learner's permit, her mother in the passenger seat. Her father is killed, and her mother seems strangely at peace.

Lighter, somehow. Trisha doesn't know exactly what happened that night, but she's afraid it's going to happen again. Her mom has a new man in her life and the patterns, they are repeating. (From Penguin Teen)

Sheena Kamal is a Vancouver-based writer of crime novels. Her book The Lost Ones won the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the mystery category. Her 2018, novel is called It All Falls Down, follows The Lost Ones' protagonist, Nora Watts, as she investigates her father's death by suicide. She Fights Like a Girl is her debut YA novel.