The Wedding Forecast & I'm Not Really Here

By chance, I ended up reading two contemporary Australian romances at the same time: Gary Lonesborough's YA novel, I'm Not Really Here, and former YA writer, now adult novelist, Nina Kenwood's The Wedding Forecast.

Both these books were sweet, satisfying romantic stories. In I'm Not Really Here, gay Aboriginal teenager Jonah's struggles are mainly internal doubts -- he feels fat and unattractive, he's not sure if his crush Harley returns his feelings or if he's even gay. In contrast, in The Wedding Forecast, thirty year old Anna is fresh out of an eight year relationship with Joel, when she meets hot but US-based actor Mac at a mutual friend's wedding. There's no doubt that Mac finds Anna equally attractive, but how can they build a life together when he's so far away? The obstacles here are mostly external ones.

Interestingly, given the different ages of the characters and presumably the intended audience, the amount of sexual content is about the same and at about the same level of explicitness (ie not massively explicit, but enough to make these books probably unsuitable for very young children -- not that they'd be harmed by reading either of these novels. I got most of my sex education from reading Jean Plaidy historical novels as an eight year old, so what would I know?)

I really enjoyed both these books. I had a long wait at the library for the Nina Kenwood, so I'm obviously not the only fan out there! And I'm happy that Gary Lonesborough's book has made it to the CBCA Shortlist, because we need so many more of these kinds of tender, honest stories, especially for boys.