Wild Awake by Hilary T Smith

Kiri has her whole summer planned. With her parents away on a cruise and her brother off at camp, Kiri plans to practice the piano for her recital, win Battle of the Bands and get Lukas, her co-pot smoking best friend and fellow band member, to fall in love with her. However, when Kiri gets a phone call from an anonymous person saying they have her dead sister’s stuff, her summer holidays go from organised to completely out of control.

This is a story about grief, namely, how grief can do some strange things to people. As Kiri learns more about her sister’s death, she slowly starts to break down. This is an unnerving, upsetting yet beautiful debut novel by Hilary T. Smith that was incredibly hard to put down and incredibly hard to get out of my head (I’m already thinking of reading it again). For ages 15 and up.


Katherine Dretzke