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kiwikathleen's review
5.0
The world in this book is light-years away from the world I grew up in, and though we were far from rich and we five kids never went to private schools, you'd still have to say I was privileged. By the time we got to secondary school we'd had violent responses socialized out of us and I never saw anyone pushing anyone around, let alone getting into fights. Towards the end of my years at school it was becoming 'fashionable' to swear, but it was never part of an everyday vocabulary. If any of the girls at my school were sexually active it wasn't common knowledge, and alcohol was rarely on the scene.
A cloistered environment? Maybe so. Since then, however, (and it was quite a good number of years ago in the early 1970s that I was at secondary school) I have read much, viewed much on the TV, and been involved (at the periphery) with lives that would fit in the world of this book. So there was nothing new for me, in that way, in this book.
But I didn't read it to learn anything new, I read it because it was recommended highly by other reading-friends. And I read it in less than one day because it's the sort of book that you can't put down (though I had to put it down to sleep, and then there were other things that had to be done first today before I could sit down with it again).
This book is fast-paced and brutally honest. Marita Hansen writes with a truly authentic voice - the spelling reflects the pronunciation accurately, and the broiling emotions of teenagers are perfectly reproduced. The characters are drawn with great sympathy, while not pulling any punches (often literally in the plot), and the teen-reader is guided to an understanding that not everything is black and white, and that everybody has more to them than you see. The multicultural aspects of different cultures growing up in close proximity in suburbia are laced throughout, and no issues are avoided.
While the main characters are Ash (part Croatian, part Maori) and Liana (Tongan) and it's their 'love story' that is the main plot device, the reader also gets to know a number of other characters well, and what happens to them really matters. An excellent cast.
An excellent book.
A cloistered environment? Maybe so. Since then, however, (and it was quite a good number of years ago in the early 1970s that I was at secondary school) I have read much, viewed much on the TV, and been involved (at the periphery) with lives that would fit in the world of this book. So there was nothing new for me, in that way, in this book.
But I didn't read it to learn anything new, I read it because it was recommended highly by other reading-friends. And I read it in less than one day because it's the sort of book that you can't put down (though I had to put it down to sleep, and then there were other things that had to be done first today before I could sit down with it again).
This book is fast-paced and brutally honest. Marita Hansen writes with a truly authentic voice - the spelling reflects the pronunciation accurately, and the broiling emotions of teenagers are perfectly reproduced. The characters are drawn with great sympathy, while not pulling any punches (often literally in the plot), and the teen-reader is guided to an understanding that not everything is black and white, and that everybody has more to them than you see. The multicultural aspects of different cultures growing up in close proximity in suburbia are laced throughout, and no issues are avoided.
While the main characters are Ash (part Croatian, part Maori) and Liana (Tongan) and it's their 'love story' that is the main plot device, the reader also gets to know a number of other characters well, and what happens to them really matters. An excellent cast.
An excellent book.
shahrun's review
4.0
An interesting clock rewind, visiting the characters from the Behind the Lives Series, 10 years earlier to see where it all began. I loved that the characters are multi-dimensional, it makes them more real. I think the author deals well with some very tough life events - bullying, rape, teen pregnancy and sexual orientation/prejudice. I can't wait until I can get hold of huge next book in the series (hint hint lol).