Randa Abdel-Fattah is one of the most impressive Australian YA authors around. She writes with passion and understanding, and doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. Her latest, Noah’s Law, is somewhatlighter fare – a legal thriller set in Sydney’s summer.

Noah is too smart for his own good and despite his school pranks being witty and funny, they land him in all sorts of trouble. Not least with his QC father, who holds family hearings at home and sentences Noah to six weeks of hard labour at his aunt’s law firm. Despite his desire to bunk it off to watch DVDs and go surfing, Noah gets intrigued by a compensation case and soon starts questioning whether winning and justice ever go hand in hand.

This is such a smart, funny book and you can’t help but get sucked in completely. Written with such empathy, Noah makes you feel better about a literary world filled with Edward Cullens; he’s smart, cheeky and a little bit lost. The real success of this novel lies in its ability to make the law relevant. Its characterisation is so familiar and Noah reminds you so strongly of someone you could know, you can’t help but be carried along with the tide of the story. More please!