Dessi's Romance' is a compelling read, rich with humour and the ups and downs of being a teenager. Anyone can relate to the trials and tribulations of each character in this gripping read.
Dessi and Emma are best friends like their mothers before them and can't imagine anything or anyone ever coming between them. They've just graduated from high school and are looking forward to Schoolies celebrations on the Gold Coast with a group of mates while waiting to find out if they've been accepted into their chosen university courses.
When Dessi is injured in a traffic accident and must stay home to recuperate, Emma asks her new boyfriend and her best friend to look after each other while she's away. What Emma couldn't have foreseen was the instant attraction between Dessi and the older, darkly exotic Middle Eastern Abdul. Dessi's romance threatens to destroy a friendship that promised to last a lifetime. To complicate matters, Abdul's family is far from welcoming of his Australian girlfriend.
Virginia Lowe, acclaimed reviewer of young adult novels adds the following:
'What is the best way to punish a so-called "close friend"?'
Emma and Dessi have been best friends forever, as have their mothers. Nothing comes between them until 'schoolies week' when 'love' hits Dessi for the first time - then disaster! All the problems and worries of the end of Year 12 are here: jobs (Emma works in 'the supermarket-from-hell'), results, tertiary applications and 'schoolies week' at Surfers. But alas, poor Dessi has also just acquired a badly broken ankle.
This is a teen romance told in two alternating voices. Emma is the artistic one, and she's sure her folio from Year 12 Art will get her into a course she'll love - or she hopes so. She spends quite a bit of time throughout the story sketching her environs, or thinking how she could mix a particular colour she encounters (especially, it must be said, among her friends' faces, who are going right over the top with alcohol and drugs, in celebrating schoolies week.)
Dessi is the literary one. She writes flawless poetry. This is one of the strengths of the book - unlike many stories in which a young person is a poet of some renown, but the poetry is very weak - here the short simple free verse poems are a delight.
Love is a leach, a bloodsucking vampire
whose sole aim is to turn you into a babbling idiot
with sightless eyes, deaf ears, and helpless limbs.
The story is a powerful picture of people at the end of their school years and the beginning of their lives in romance, work and tertiary study. It is gripping reading, as the relationships get more and more complicated, and we yearn for their resolution.
Genre: Children's Fiction
Dessi and Emma are best friends like their mothers before them and can't imagine anything or anyone ever coming between them. They've just graduated from high school and are looking forward to Schoolies celebrations on the Gold Coast with a group of mates while waiting to find out if they've been accepted into their chosen university courses.
When Dessi is injured in a traffic accident and must stay home to recuperate, Emma asks her new boyfriend and her best friend to look after each other while she's away. What Emma couldn't have foreseen was the instant attraction between Dessi and the older, darkly exotic Middle Eastern Abdul. Dessi's romance threatens to destroy a friendship that promised to last a lifetime. To complicate matters, Abdul's family is far from welcoming of his Australian girlfriend.
Virginia Lowe, acclaimed reviewer of young adult novels adds the following:
'What is the best way to punish a so-called "close friend"?'
Emma and Dessi have been best friends forever, as have their mothers. Nothing comes between them until 'schoolies week' when 'love' hits Dessi for the first time - then disaster! All the problems and worries of the end of Year 12 are here: jobs (Emma works in 'the supermarket-from-hell'), results, tertiary applications and 'schoolies week' at Surfers. But alas, poor Dessi has also just acquired a badly broken ankle.
This is a teen romance told in two alternating voices. Emma is the artistic one, and she's sure her folio from Year 12 Art will get her into a course she'll love - or she hopes so. She spends quite a bit of time throughout the story sketching her environs, or thinking how she could mix a particular colour she encounters (especially, it must be said, among her friends' faces, who are going right over the top with alcohol and drugs, in celebrating schoolies week.)
Dessi is the literary one. She writes flawless poetry. This is one of the strengths of the book - unlike many stories in which a young person is a poet of some renown, but the poetry is very weak - here the short simple free verse poems are a delight.
Love is a leach, a bloodsucking vampire
whose sole aim is to turn you into a babbling idiot
with sightless eyes, deaf ears, and helpless limbs.
The story is a powerful picture of people at the end of their school years and the beginning of their lives in romance, work and tertiary study. It is gripping reading, as the relationships get more and more complicated, and we yearn for their resolution.
Genre: Children's Fiction
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