Young Adult reviews
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
Emoni has a deep love of cooking. She’s extraordinarily talented in the kitchen and has dreamed of being a chef since she was a child. When a culinary arts course is offered at her school, she is, na…
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
This debut thriller is set on a remote island that has been infected by a virus known only as ‘the Tox’. It has been eighteen months since the Raxtor Boarding School for Girls was put under quarantin…
Impossible Music by Sean Williams
Simon Rain is eighteen, a guitarist, songwriter and passionate metalhead. When, a month before Christmas, Simon suffers a minor stroke, his life will never be the same. He cannot hear a note. Nothing…
Meat Market by Juno Dawson
For those young readers interested in the glamorous world of fashion and modelling, this novel provides a more realistic look at the far less enticing reality behind the scenes and the dangers inhere…
River Stone by Rachel Henessy
In Rachel Hennessy’s vision of the future in River Stone, civilisation has been devastated and humanity has retreated into nature to survive, living off the land and leaving modern technology behind.…
The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods by Emily Barr
Artemis was raised in a secluded forest in India, part of a tiny community trying to create a place where humans could live together in peace and harmony. Arty grew into a teenager without having any…
Sick Bay by Nova Weetman
In this beautifully written dual-narrative story, two very different Grade Six girls meet in sick bay at school. Meg mostly has to look after herself since her dad died and her mother has sunk into d…
Shauna’s Great Expectations by Kathleen Loughnan
Shauna is a Year 12 student on an Indigenous scholarship at Oakholme College, a prestigious Sydney girls’ private school. She’s suffered endless racist taunts from the school’s number one bully, Keli…
Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
For five years Tyler has trained hard to earn the privilege of hand-picking his own team of cadets at the Aurora Academy. The night before the big draft he can’t sleep and he convinces the lieutenant…
Promise Me Happy by Robert Newton
Melbourne writer Robert Newton is well known to teenage readers. His colourful novel Runner, about a boy caught up in Squizzy Taylor’s 1920s underworld, is a staple of early secondary reading lists. …
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