Golden

Golden by Jade Timms has been short-listed for the CBCA Awards, and it's immediately obvious that it's a cut above the average YA title. Eddy (Edwina) is dealing with untreated PTSD after the drowning death of her brother-in-law Jackson three years earlier; in fact, her entire family is still struggling with his loss. Eddy feels haunted, angry, miserable and very much alone. The story of Golden tracks her turning toward recovery.

I really liked the big cast of characters, mostly Eddy's teen cohort from her small coastal town, including her twin brother Pat. (Timms really likes unisex names -- as well as Eddy, we have girls called Stevie, Joss and George.) The cast is nicely diverse, too, and there's a satisfying web of cross-currents that link and divide the friends/boyfriends/girlfriends/ exes/wannabes. The adults are all pretty useless, though Eddy's dad is doing his best. I also enjoyed that Eddy didn't discover a miracle silver bullet to cure her trauma; it's the sum of a whole lot of different things that end up helping her, including messing with art (I feel as if this might have been intended to take up more of the story at one point, it fades away toward the end), running, friendship, finally talking about her experience, cooking, and first love all playing their part.

While it's not action packed, Golden is thoroughly engaging and kept me turning the pages. Eddy is appealing but plausibly flawed, and I kept wanting to make an appointment for her at a therapist (at the end of the novel, she's going to try therapy again); it was hard to believe that no one in her circle had recognised how badly she needs help in three years. But then, maybe I come from a therapy-positive background! I won't be surprised if Golden wins a medal to match its title.

Unhallowed Halls

Lili Wilkinson just gets better and better, she is right at the top of her game (disclaimer: we've been friendly for years, she lives near me and we run into each other sometimes). Over the course of her writing career, she has produced delightful rom-coms, gripping realist novels about cults and apocalypse, and lately she's turned to chunky volumes of fantasy, all of which have been standalone stories with a fresh world and magic each time. Gee, she's good.

Unhallowed Halls has been deservedly shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year, and at this stage (without having read all the shortlisted books), I hope it wins. It's a terrific tale of elemental magic, set in a remote Scottish school for troubled, rich teenagers (surely there is a nod to Hogwarts here). Page has been brought from Florida to Agathion on a scholarship -- but why? Among a host of gifted adolescents, her gift is a particularly dark and mysterious one. For the first time in her life, Page finds herself part of a friendship group, and even falling in love with a boy. But a web of lies and a horrifying history of deception and murder lies beneath Agathion's seductive surface.

There is a lot of body-swapping in this story and Wilkinson does a stellar job of helping the reader keep track of whose soul is inhabiting who, and when. Underlying the plot (and surely this too might be a gesture toward the weird cruel creature that JK Rowling has become) is a concern with minds, souls and bodies -- are they, and can they be, split? What if mind and body don't feel as if they belong together? Is the body a gross flesh machine to be despised and mortified, or a gift to be relished? These deep questions are wrapped in a thoroughly thrilling and often beautiful fantasy tale that weaves together the boarding school, magic, romance and sacrifice in a fresh and gorgeous way.
 

The Worst Perfect Moment

I'm usually pretty positive about the books from the CBCA Notables list, and Shivaun Plozza's The Worst Perfect Moment has an intriguing premise: sixteen year old Tegan is dead, and she's landed in an afterlife that recreates the worst weekend of her life. She needs the help of cute, annoying angel Zelda to figure out just what the Marybelle Motor Lodge has to teach her, or they are both in serious, eternal trouble.

Unfortunately, The Worst Perfect Moment didn't quite work for me. To start with, I think the cover is pretty awful -- that murky green is true to the story, but it's also one reason why the Marybelle is such a horrible place. I know it's important for Australian authors to appeal to an international (ie US) readership, so Tegan is American, her mother is 'Mom,' and the Marybelle is in New Jersey. But I have a visceral aversion to Australian stories pretending to be American. I also felt uneasy about the casual co-option of the architecture of Christian heaven, angels and even God to unpack teenage angst -- I couldn't help feeling that all these supernatural beings must have bigger problems to occupy their time? For me, the whole tone of the novel felt slightly off: in focusing on Tegan's past friendship dramas, I felt as if we were losing sight of the fact that she's just died-- her father and her little sister, who obviously love her to pieces, are going to be absolutely shattered, let alone her mother, who has left the rest of the family and will now no doubt be burdened with a lifetime of irredeemable guilt.

I can understand that it's a tricky mix to pull off a humorous take on the afterlife, existential life questions, queer romance, grief and death in one young adult cocktail, but for me, this time, the recipe didn't quite work. 
 

This Stays Between Us

Margot McGovern's second YA novel, This Stays Between Us, has made it to the shortlist for the CBCA Older Readers award, which is fairly unusual for a genre novel (not that it should be). Perhaps the CBCA judges are making a belated attempt to recognise the excellent work being achieved by Australian authors in these categories, or perhaps it's a recognition of their popularity with readers. No shade on This Stays Between Us, which is a sharp, accomplished novel that ties together a scary horror tale with a distinctly feminist message about violence against women.

Set in the early 2000s (so no one has mobile phones), four teenage girls are spending two nights at a remote South Australian school camp. Between ghost stories by the campfire, rumours of a phantom haunting the old settlement, ambiguous experiences that might be imaginations running riot, or might just be a real threat, McGovern expertly ratchets up the tension to a bloody climax.

There is a lot packed into these two nights and one day. Sexual harrassment, queer love, friendship tensions, power imbalances and peer pressure, all bring a texture of reality to the horror content. I'm not usually a horror fan (I keep making exceptions to this rule!) but I'm not surprised This Stays Between Us made it through to the next round. 

The Locked Room

Adam Cece's The Locked Room was my next read from the CBCA Notables list, and it was such an entertaining ride, I raced through it at top speed. Andy and three other teenagers wake up in a locked room with no idea of how they got there or what they are supposed to do next. It turns out that this locked room is just the first in a series of escape rooms to be solved before they can leave the maze in which they're imprisoned, and discover why they were put there.

Each of the rooms provides a puzzle to solve, challenging enough but not impossible, and each of the teens has their own personal issues to grapple with. Andy, our narrator, has learned passivity and hopelessness from his father; Chad is a bully; 'Nameless Girl' has been struggling with depression, while even popular high achiever Gabriella Lee has her own secrets. And of course there are twists and surprises along the way.

I'm not familiar with Adam Cece's books but apparently he usually writes for younger readers; you can see the traces of that background in the fast pace of the story and broad brushstrokes of the characters. The whole book unfolds over a matter of hours, so arguably there isn't much room for depth or complexity. The Locked Room is an immensely appealing and engaging novel for readers looking for a fast, satisfying plot and, dare I say, some escapism? Upper primary readers will enjoy this, too.

How To Be Normal

Ange Crawford's How to Be Normal is the next book on my CBCA Notables List. Astrid has been homeschooled for years, but when her dad's business collapses (record store, no surprise), her mother has to go back to work and Astrid goes to high school for the first time.

There is quite a lot going on for Astrid. Her older brother has left home, her father is controlling and sometimes verbally abusive, and Astrid has never mixed with 'normal' teenagers before, so she has a lot of new friendship politics to negotiate, complicated by her father's 'strictness' and rules around behaviour. Though Cliff isn't physically violent, Astrid and her mum are always walking on eggshells, placating, soothing, forestalling his outbursts, and it's uncomfortably tense to read about. I must admit I was more engaged with the domestic drama than the high school situation.

Astrid's passion is electronic music, which was a refreshing novelty for me and worked really well as a method for her to communicate her isolation and her tentative reaching out, as well as a pathway to a future course of study and career. Sound became a really effective element of the story and a fascinating window to a field I know nothing about.
 

The Foal in the Wire

  

In terms of size, there could hardly be a bigger contrast between the whopper King Sorrow and The Foal in the Wire, which barely tips over a hundred pages, with lots of blank space and wide margins. As a verse novel, The Foal in the Wire covers a lot of ground with few words.

Sam's older brother is dead, his parents are fighting and he's struggling to find anything to make life worthwhile when he and the girl on the neighbouring property rescue an injured foal. Together, they nurse the young animal back to health, and in the process, discover companionship and then love in each other.

While The Foal in the Wire doesn't exactly have a happy ending, it does offer the prospect of change, and ultimately, hope. And how beautiful is that cover, by artist Tannya Harricks?

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire is the third novel in Amy Doak's tremendously enjoyable series; the first two are Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer and Eleanor Jones Can't Keep a Secret. In this book, Eleanor is still a new-ish student in country town Cooinda, but she's managed to gather a group of friends around her and some of her social awkwardness has mellowed, though she still speaks her mind. She's even got a kind of boyfriend! But Eleanor seems to attract trouble -- or does she go looking for it, as her friend Holly the police officer seems to believe? This time, in a tinder-dry rural community, someone is setting fires. But who could it be? And why?

Amy Doak has created an appealingly forthright and funny protagonist in Eleanor Jones, but she doesn't carry the story alone. Doak is adept at exploring issues of friendship, loyalty, small town politics and toxic masculinity in this novel, all wrapped up in a satisfying mystery plot (not actually a murder this time, though initially it seems like it might be). I really enjoy the way that Eleanor has collected some adult allies, and her willingness to ask questions about things that other people take for granted. I really hope there are some further installments to Eleanor's adventures!
 

Drift

Drift, a free verse novel by Pip Harry, is next on my list of CBCA Notables -- this one didn't make it to the short list, but I ended up enjoying it very much. Nate has just moved back to Australia from Singapore; girl next door Luna is struggling after becoming the victim of a viral video. Nate's dad is still in Singapore, and his mum Amber is almost incapacitated by a back injury. When a swarm of bees invade the walls of Amber and Nate's house, it opens up a new world of beekeeping to Nate and Luna, and enables community bonds to form.

This is a gentle story, despite the violence of Luna's history, filled with tentative connections and slow unfurling. Luna's salvation is running; Nate makes friends with the musical theatre kids. And of course, their developing friendship becomes a source of strength. Traditionally I haven't been a huge fan of verse novels, but Drift (still not quite sure what the title refers to, but it does capture the atmosphere of the book) won me over -- it's so warm and tender, and it was lovely to come back into the world of bees and beekeeping (my first fantasy novel, The Singer of All Songs, had bees in it, and I had to do lots of research). 
 

The Edge of Everything

Next read on the CBCA Notables list was The Edge of Everything by Miranda Luby. This is Luby's second novel and I liked it a lot. Lucy's older brother Charlie has died in a freak accident and thrown everything about Lucy's life into chaos. Her former best friend is being too sensitive around her; her new friend doesn't even know that Charlie is dead; the boy she'd been kinda-sorta starting to get together with has backed off. Her parents seem to be coping okay -- but are they really? And an existential black hole is opening up inside Lucy that she's afraid to confront.

The Edge of Everything is a solid, satisfying novel packed with poignant moments and big life questions. The characters are well-rounded and sympathetic, and Lucy is an attractively dorky protagonist. There is a deep and realistic sadness hanging over this book, but it's countered by humour, friendship and love. The message is that life can be painful and unpredictable, but that makes it all the more worth cherishing, is something that we all need to hear, whatever our age.

Darkest Night, Brightest Star

Darkest Night, Brightest Star is a fantastic inclusion on the CBCA Notables list -- a really timely, pertinent and immediate book about Australian masculinity. Barry Jonsberg is an elder statesman of Australian YA writing, and he turns his former teacher's eye on the kind of boy I bet he saw a lot of in his classrooms. Morgan is thirteen, not interested in school, growing up with his dad and older brother after his mother left the family when he was just two. Morgan is not articulate; he keeps himself to himself, and not surprisingly, he's internalised a lot of not-great messages from the men in his family, who believe in never showing emotion (especially not vulnerability or fear), belittling women, and physical toughness as the measure of a man. But Morgan befriends Gray (who turns out to be gay); he'd rather look after plants than kick a ball on the soccer field; and his innate kindness comes to the fore when he starts helping out an old woman, Mary, who has a muddled idea that Morgan might be her own long-lost son.

Darkest Night, Brightest Star has a tight cast of characters. Sometimes the reader is able to draw connections that Morgan is a little slower to make. Morgan makes plenty of mistakes as he goes along, but he's lucky to have a handful of people in his life who really care about him, and at the end of the day, that's all any of us can ask for. The book doesn't wrap up everything in a tidy bow, but there is hope for Morgan (maybe not for his dad, who is not a great guy -- though Jonsberg drops us some hints about he became the damaged person that he is, and how he's passed on that legacy to his elder son). I hope boys read this book and perhaps see something of themselves in Morgan. I really liked it. The only element that Jonsberg hasn't tried to deal with here is the pernicious influence of the online 'manosphere' (I wish we had a better name for it), but maybe that's too big a topic to shoehorn into a short novel.

Catch

  

What a fantastic start to my traditional (since last year) read-through of the CBCA Young Adult Notables list! I knew as soon as I began Sarah Brill's Catch that I was going to like it. It has a quite bizarre premise: over the summer holidays, sixteen year old Beth has grown tall and hot, and she's also developed an unexpected gift -- she can anticipate when someone is going to fall, and she can catch them. At first her strange ability is a secret. She can tell when a catch is coming because she starts to feel nauseous, then she's compelled to run to the location where she positions herself, and confidently, competently, no matter how heavy or awkward the person or how far they're falling, she catches them. 

Some falls are deliberate, and Brill doesn't sugar coat this reality; some (most) are accidental -- kids falling out of trees, a collapsing scaffold. But Beth has other problems to deal with, like her crush on neighbour Etienne, who for the first time seems to like her back, and her slightly older sister Meg, who is pregnant (for ages I thought the book would end with Beth 'catching' Meg's baby, but it doesn't). As more and more people find out about Beth, her life becomes more complicated.

Brill gives us a first person narrator in Beth, but she also deploys a technique of reporting a lot of conversations indirectly, rather than in direct dialogue, which gave the story an interesting, slightly flattening feeling which I enjoyed. I suppose Catch is magic realism? Brill definitely thinks through all the real world implications of Beth's unlikely gift (for one thing, she becomes amazing at basketball). Her mysterious ability is never explained; it just is. My only quibble is that the novel didn't really resolve, it just kind of... finished. Perhaps there is a sequel on the way, and Brill has left it deliberately open-ended? Despite this niggle, I loved Catch and I hope it makes the shortlist.

Secret Sparrow

There seems to be no end to the stories to be found in the history of WWI, even though it ended over a century ago. In Secret Sparrow, Jackie French has uncovered a largely forgotten cohort of women Morse code signallers who were recruited after many of the male Post Office employees had been killed early in the fighting. According to French, the service records of these women were destroyed after the war so that the government wouldn't have to pay them pensions, which sadly sounds  all too plausible! However, it seems their status was always ambiguous: they remained Post Office employees, despite wearing uniforms and having to obey Army orders.

Secret Sparrow is the story of Jean McLain, who recounts her wartime experience to young Arjun during a long night when they're stranded by a flash flood (this part of the story takes place in 1978). It's a cracking tale, full of action and peril -- Jean's transport ship is blown up, she is frequently under fire, eventually she's sent right to the front line and endures ten days of terror and excitement during a big forward push. There's even a bit of romance. There are a few moments of contrivance, but I'll forgive them in the service of the story (even 1978 seems a little early to be talking about Bletchley, but what would I know). I'm always up for a wartime tale and Secret Sparrow is a good one.

Wolf on the Fold

 

Wolf on the Fold by Judith Clarke was another pick-up from the Allen & Unwin clearout. I only discovered Judith Clarke's writing a few years ago, but she was a deeply admired and prize-winning author. Wolf on the Fold won the CBCA Book of the Year in 2001, just as I was starting out on my own publication journey. It's not really a novel, but a set of short stories linking generations of one family, from 1935 to 2002. Characters weave in and out; sometimes the family members are not even the centre of the story, but just appears on the margins.

Wolf on the Fold is a beautiful and sad book, and beautifully written, but I doubt very much if any young adult reader would pick it up today. It mixes history and politics, but seen through the lens of the personal, and brings into sharp focus the idea of 'family stories,' those well-polished anecdotes that every family has, sometimes only one or two lines, that ends up defining an ancestor or a generation forever in the family memory. One of the stories is set in Jerusalem, around the time of the Gulf War, which was a shocking reminder of the ceaseless history of bloodshed in that region.

All the children in these stories are confronted with the harshness of the adult world, whether in the form of poverty, war, murderous intent, racism, or institutional cruelty, and they each find their own way of dealing with it. I suppose each story is a stepping stone toward maturity. Because of this, I think Wolf on the Fold works better as a reflective adult book than as a YA novel.

 

Foxspell

Foxspell by Gillian Rubinstein won the CBCA Book of the Year for older readers in 1994. It's a seamlessly accomplished mix of social/family drama, and eerie supernatural story, and I'm not surprised that it won. Tod and his mother and sisters have moved to the fringes of Adelaide to live with Tod's grandmother after his English father has returned to the UK for an indeterminate period of time. Tod has learning problems and isn't particularly invested in school; his older sisters are starting to be interested in boys, his mother wants to be a stand up comedian, his brisk grandmother is busy with her hens and her vegie garden. As Tod starts to explore the quarries and bush that surround Grandma's house, he becomes fascinated with the foxes that live there, and one fox in particular offers him a chance of a very different, wild, fierce kind of life.

Rubinstein is clever in her handling of the foxes, acknowledging that they were imported from far away, just like the white inhabitants, and don't belong in this landscape. I've just realised that the foxes in the book only hunt other imported species -- hens, rabbits, cats -- neatly sidestepping the issue of the damage they do to native animals. It's a narrow line to tread, recognising the attraction of these cunning, beautiful animals but also the fact that they should never have been brought here.

The book ends on a breathtaking climax, leaving the resolution to the reader's imagination. I think my copy might have belonged to a teacher who could have been reading it aloud to two separate classes -- there are pencil notes in the margins marking (I guess) where each class is up to. It would make a wonderful read-aloud, appealing to both those who like realism and those who love fantasy. For a thirty year old novel (gulp, I feel old!), Foxspell holds up incredibly well.
 

Thunderhead

FINALLY I got to read Sophie Beer's Thunderhead, after the library found it, or restocked it -- the very last book on this year's CBCA Notables list. I must admit when I started reading it, I wasn't sure if this was going to be a book for me. Our narrator, Thunderhead, is writing a blog, but one they hope that no one ever sees, shouting their troubles into the void. Thunderhead adores music, but they have tumours growing on their auditory nerves which may one day make them completely deaf. As someone who is (gulp) let's say, music-indifferent for the most part, I told myself that I couldn't really relate... Sadly, years working in the music industry have left me jaded and cynical :(

But then, unexpectedly, when Thunderhead was given the bad news about their hearing, and realised that their dream of becoming a music journalist would never happen, I found myself blinking back tears. And from then on, I was all in. Thunderhead is not just grappling with serious illness and losing music, they also have Year 8 friendship woes to navigate. Their best friend, Moonflower, has changed schools and found a new friendship group, while Thunderhead is left with two impossible nerds as the next best option. 

I really loved the nuanced way that the Moonflower situation developed, with the friends drifting apart, but still caring about each other. And I had to laugh at the musical theatre and animal-loving nerd, who shares a name with my younger daughter, who is/was also obsessive about those things. (She said, who is this author and why were they spying on me as a 12 year old lol) Long story short, I ended up enjoying Thunderhead much more than I initially thought I would, and I loved the illustrations, too. There are also loads of playlists for various moods, should you feel inclined to explore Thunderhead's musical tastes more deeply. A great note to finish on (see what I did there).
 

Ghost Bird

Look at that impressive array of award stickers! Lisa Fuller's Ghost Bird is her debut YA novel, and it's jam packed with creepy atmosphere, Aboriginal lore and fully rounded family drama. It's kind of a horror story: Stacey's twin sister Laney goes missing after a night out with some local tearaways. Is she being held hostage by the neighbourhood racists? Has she simply run away? Or is there a supernatural explanation, linked to the mountain where the elders have forbidden them to go?

Fuller switches effortlessly between Aboriginal English for the dialogue and standard English for the narrative. Stacey is realistically scarred by her experiences by the end of the book; things aren't wrapped up easily. There's a lot of back and forth between Stacey and her peers while they search for Laney, or try to gather information, and it sometimes felt like the wheels were spinning slightly. But Ghost Bird is a gripping and accomplished YA supernatural thriller, and it thoroughly deserves all the award stickers it's amassed. I really enjoyed it.
 

Wrong Answers Only

Finally I've made it to the end of the 2025 CBCA Notables list! (With the exception of Sophie Beer's Thunderhead, which seems to have been lost by my local library -- however, they have still got my reservation, so perhaps they are intending to replace it at some stage??)

Wrong Answers Only by Tobias Madden is the story of Marco, over-achiever, happily gay, about to move to Melbourne from Ballarat to study Bio-medicine, when his life is derailed by a panic attack (not that Marco will admit that it's a panic attack). Nonna Sofia comes to the rescue, sending him to Europe to join his long-estranged uncle who is captain of a Mediterranean cruise ship, on which, by a happy coincidence, Marco's best friend Celine is also working as a dancer. It's CeCe's idea that Marco, who has always done  everything right, should start doing things wrong for a change.

If you're a fan of cruise ship life, clubbing, casual sex and drinking, arguments and misunderstandings, then Wrong Answers Only has a lot to offer. It moves along briskly and I appreciated the no-drama queer content, and the strong bond between Marco and CeCe, but by the end of the novel I wasn't altogether convinced that Marco had found the solution to his anxiety problems, or that the family rift with Uncle Renzo was on the way to healing. It's quite a crowded narrative and I'm not sure that all the ends really tied together. But still a lot of YA fun.
 

White Noise

I'm still working my way through the 2025 CBCA Young Adult Notables list -- only a couple of books to go, but I'm still finding gems that didn't quite make it to the final round. Raelke Grimmer's White Noise is really good. It's rare to find a novel set in Darwin (the closest I've been to Darwin is applying for a job there -- I can't imagine how different my life would have been if I'd actually got it!) and White Noise is very evocative of the tropics, with lightning storms, oppressive heat and humidity, and outdoor markets. In other ways, Emma's life is utterly relatable, with friendship difficulties, a possible new boyfriend and navigating grief for her dead mother.

But what really sets White Noise apart is that it's a first person autism story. Emma has meltdowns where she completely shuts down; she forgets to eat; she misreads some social signals; she finds noisy, crowded environments difficult; she doesn't register pain well. All these things directly affect her daily life, and I don't know that I've seen such a realistic, empathetic portrayal of life with autism in YA fiction. It definitely helped me to understand what it might be like to live with autism from day to day.

I loved the portrayal of Emma and Summer's friendship, which hits some bumps in Year 10, and also Em's relationship with her father, who is still dealing with his own unresolved grief. At the end of the book, not everything is tied up neatly, which I also appreciated. White Noise is great, especially for a debut, and I'm interested to see what Grimmer does next.
 

How to Survive 1985

As you know, I'm a sucker for a time slip story and How to Survive 1985 is right up my alley. Shannon goes into a Sydney cinema in 2025 and emerges into 1985. This is not her first supernatural experience, so she's not as phased as you might expect. She quickly comes up with a plan: she'll track down her mum, who is sixteen years old in this world. This idea works surprisingly well, and her mum becomes an ally in Shannon's quest to find her other friends (who were all part of her previous adventure).

Shannon explains in some detail what happened to her and her friends in the book before this one, Royals, where they were all trapped in a time loop inside a shopping centre. That time, the earth seemed to be trying to teach them something about the perils of consumerism, but this time round the lesson is a little more vague -- something about climate change, something about plastic, something about caring for the planet? There are plenty of reflections about how much the world has changed (or not) in the last forty years, but How To Survive 1985 keeps a light, pacy touch which makes it a hugely enjoyable adventure.

I ended up really loving this novel. It's not long, and it never flags, and it's made me hungry to track down the gang's prior magical adventure, which annoyingly is not available at my local library. I hope Shannon, James, Akira and the others have more strange experiences in store.