What YA Reading?

Reviews by Polly Jude

It’s Not You, It’s Me

by Gabrielle Williams

When forty-year-old Holly Fitzgerald wakes up inside the body of a teenager living in LA in the 1980s, it takes her a while to work out what’s going on. The last thing she remembers was being gifted the vintage typewriter. Mysteriously, the same typewriter once belonged to Trinity Byrne, the teenager whose life Holly seems to have taken over. Now trapped on the other side of this weird time-space-continuum glitch, Trinity can only communicate with Holly through the typewriter. And when she gets going, Trinity can really let Holly have it. Both Holly and Trinity are stuck in the wrong bodies, both trying desperately to work out what the hell is going on and trying to get back to their own lives before the other destroys it all. New girl in school, Chloe, never got to meet Yin before she disappeared. But now it’s all the girls at Balmoral Ladies College can talk about. Chloe’s busy trying to survive in the new elite school where she’s on a scholarship and doesn’t belong. Natalia was Yin’s best-friend until they fell out a few years ago. Yin’s disappearance forces Natalia to face some of her own demons and to think about the friendship and where it all went wrong. Told in both their voices, The Gaps forces the characters in the story and the audience to consider the role of women and how they are presented in the media as victims. The Gaps explores female vulnerability, strength and sticking it to the man. It’s the YA femo injection you didn’t know we needed.

Add a cute Aussie teenager who has a thing for Trinity and doesn’t know Holly’s replaced her, a murderer on the loose who has eyes for Trinity, Trinity’s all-girl punk band with a gig in just a few days, and what could possibly go wrong? Trinity has discovered Holly’s boring-old-lady wardrobe and isn’t impressed with the clothes or the hair. When Trinity goes to work in Holly’s job as an art teacher, her professionalism isn’t really what the Department of Ed are expecting. There’s also a rare blood type, some cosmic lining up of the planets, leap year birthdays and a mystery to solve! They’ve both been sent to save the other. They just have to work out how and why. It’s Not You, It’s Me is all about finding your punk attitude and second chances. It’s an unexpected hero’s journey. It’s Not You, It’s Me will suit YA readers aged fourteen and over. The strong female characters will appeal to female readers and their mums. Williams’s fastpaced writing will hook readers from the opening page. Readers who enjoyed Williams’s other work won’t be disappointed, but this body swap crime thriller will attract a new audience as well.

Allen and Unwin / 288pp / RRP $19.99

The Gaps

by Leanne Hall

Text / 356pp / RRP $19.99