#LoveOzYaBloggers

#LoveOzYABloggers – Indigenous

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 1 Comment

#LoveOzYABloggers: 'Indigenous'

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

This Month theme is ‘Indigenous’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

Three books! I could have just used all three books in The Tribe Series because they are brilliant. But I’m just going to use the first. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf will have you racing to get your hands on the second and third books. Ambelin Kwaymullina has managed to bring something extra to the dystopian genre and breathe new life into it.

I Could have just used only Jared Thomas books, I’ve got three of them on my TBR shelf. But I’m just going to use Songs That Sound Like Blood. How could I not. It is a coming-of-age story exploring cultural identity and sexuality with interracial F/F romance, dah enough said.

And for number three, a coming-of-age tale of personal and cultural discovery with the backdrop of 80’s Melbourne, bring on Becoming Kirrali Lewis.

13552764The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe #1) by Ambelin Kwaymullina

“There will come a day when a thousand Illegals descend on your detention centres. Boomers will breach the walls. Skychangers will send lightning to strike you all down from above, and Rumblers will open the earth to swallow you up from below. . . . And when that day comes, Justin Connor, think of me.”

Ashala Wolf has been captured by Chief Administrator Neville Rose. A man who is intent on destroying Ashala’s Tribe — the runaway Illegals hiding in the Firstwood. Injured and vulnerable and with her Sleepwalker ability blocked, Ashala is forced to succumb to the machine that will pull secrets from her mind.

And right beside her is Justin Connor, her betrayer, watching her every move.

Will the Tribe survive the interrogation of Ashala Wolf?

27803898Songs That Sound Like Blood by Jared Thomas

Roxy May Redding’s got music in her soul and songs in her blood. She lives in a hot dusty town and is dreaming big. She survives run-ins with the mean girls at high school, sings in her dad’s band and babysits for her wayward aunt. But Roxy wants a new start. When she gets the chance to study music in the big city, she takes it. Roxy’s new life, her new friends and her music collide in a way she could never have imagined. Being a poor student sucks… navigating her way through the pressure of a national music competition has knobs on it… singing for her dinner is soul destroying… but nothing prepares Roxy for her biggest challenge. Her crush on Ana, the local music journo, forces her to steer her way through a complex maze of emotions alien to this small town girl. Family and friends watch closely as Roxy takes a confronting journey to find out who the hell she is.

25580726Becoming Kirrali Lewis by Jane Harrison

For Kirrali, life in 1985 was pretty chill. Sure, she was an Aboriginal girl adopted into a white family, but she was cool with that. She knew where she was headed – to a law degree – even if she didn’t know ‘who she was’. But when Kirrali moves to the city to start university, a whole lot of life-changing events spark an awakening that no one sees coming, least of all herself.

Story flashbacks to the 1960s, where her birth mother is desperately trying to escape conservative parents, give meaning to Kirrali’s own search for identity nearly twenty years later. And then she meets her father…

Thanks for visiting The Adventures of SacaKat.
Until next time, enjoy your shelves :-).
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#LoveOzYaBloggers – Short Stories

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#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Short Stories’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

I have eleven short story anthologies, sadly only four have Aussie authors and out of those four only two are YA!

In this photo I have the only four authored by Aussie’s and the only four that are YA (not the same four), the rest of my collection are either adult or eBook short story anthologies.

Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions and Novascapes: A Speculative Fiction Anthology from the Hunter Region Australia are authored by Aussie’s from my neck of the woods :-). Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean is a duo of Aussie and Indian YA authors. And last but not least Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology is, yep you guessed it, Aussie YA authors.

Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean:

Be transported into dystopian cities and other-worldly societies. Be amazed and beguiled by a nursery story with a reverse twist, a futuristic take on TV cooking shows, a playscript with tentacles – and more, much more. Plunge in and enjoy!

A collection of sci-fi and fantasy writing, including six graphic stories, showcasing twenty stellar writers and artists from India and Australia: Isobelle Carmody, Penni Russon, Justine Larbalestier, Margo Lanagan, Lily Mae Martin, Kuzhali Manickavel, Prabha Mallya, Annie Zaidi, Kate Constable, Vandana Singh, Mandy Ord, Priya Kuriyan, Manjula Padmanabhan, Samhita Arni, Alyssa Brugman, Nicki Greenberg and Amruta Patil.

Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology

The YA event of the year. Bestsellers. Award-winners. Superstars. This anthology has them all. With brilliantly entertaining short stories from beloved young adult authors Amie Kaufman, Melissa Keil, Will Kostakis, Ellie Marney, Jaclyn Moriarty, Michael Pryor, Alice Pung, Gabrielle Tozer, Lili Wilkinson and Danielle Binks, this all-new collection will show the world exactly how much there is to love about Aussie YA.

Goodreads Links:

 Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean | Begin, End, Begin | Sproutlings | Novascapes

Thanks for visiting The Adventures of SacaKat.
It you want to make my day, just Like this post, simples.
Until next time, enjoy your shelves :-).

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Maps

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 2 Comments

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Maps’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

MAPS! I love it when a book includes a map!

These three #LoveOzYa masterpieces all have maps and are all sitting on my shelf waiting to be explored.

Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) by Jay Kristoff

In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.

Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?

Heart of Mist (The Oremere Chronicles #1) by Helen Scheuerer

In a realm where toxic mist sweeps the lands and magic is forbidden, all Bleak wants is a cure for her power.

Still grieving the death of her guardian and dangerously self-medicating with alcohol, Bleak is snatched from her home by the Commander of the King’s Army, and summoned to the capital.

But the king isn’t the only one interested in Bleak’s powers.

The leader of an infamous society of warriors, the Valia Kindred, lays claim to her as well, and Bleak finds herself in the middle of a much bigger battle than she anticipated.

Heart of Mist is the gripping first book in The Oremere Chronicles, a fantasy series of epic proportions.

Esme’s Wish by Elizabeth Foster 

This was her last chance.

Her hand twisted high in the air.

When fifteen-year-old Esme Silver objects at her father’s wedding, her protest is dismissed as the action of a stubborn, selfish teenager. Everyone else has accepted the loss of Esme’s mother, Ariane – so why can’t she?

But Esme is suspicious. She is sure that others are covering up the real reason for her mother’s disappearance – that ‘lost at sea’ is code for something more terrible, something she has a right to know.

After Esme is accidentally swept into the enchanted world of Aeolia, the truth begins to unfold. With her newfound friends, Daniel and Lillian, Esme retraces her mother’s steps in the glittering canal city of Esperance, untangling the threads of Ariane’s double life. But the more Esme discovers about her mother, the more she questions whether she really knew her at all.

Esme’s Wish is the first book in the Esme series.

 

 

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Spring Reads

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 2 Comments

 

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Spring Reads’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

When I saw ‘Spring Reads’ I internally shrieked. I couldn’t think of any stories set in spring (correct me if I’m wrong), so I started to think of other ways to tackle the prompt. What does spring mean? New Life? Still I couldn’t think of anything much. What colours do I think of when I think of spring? Umm yellow! I texted my mother (formally a high school art teacher).

With my mind still screaming yellow, like daffodil yellow. I googled daffodils, turns out they bloom in autumn – far out my brain is muddled. Keeping on the flower brain wave I then googled Australian spring garden’s.

GREEN!! Green Trees!!! Mother knows best, she did say GREENS and pastels.

In the end I picked three books solely by their covers.

This whole process was kind of wonderful. I found three #loveozya books I’d never heard of and that in Australia daffodils blown in autumn. Woop Woop.

Stray (Touchstone #1) by Andrea K. Höst  [View on Goodreads]

On her last day of high school, Cassandra Devlin walked out of exams and into a forest. Surrounded by the wrong sort of trees, and animals never featured in any nature documentary, Cass is only sure of one thing: alone, she will be lucky to survive. The sprawl of abandoned blockish buildings Cass discovers offers her only more puzzles. Where are the people? What is the intoxicating mist which drifts off the buildings in the moonlight? And why does she feel like she’s being watched? Increasingly unnerved, Cass is overjoyed at the arrival of the formidable Setari. Whisked to a world as technologically advanced as the first was primitive, where nanotech computers are grown inside people’s skulls, and few have any interest in venturing outside the enormous whitestone cities, Cass finds herself processed as a ‘stray’, a refugee displaced by the gates torn between worlds. Struggling with an unfamiliar language and culture, she must adapt to virtual classrooms, friends who can teleport, and the ingrained attitude that strays are backward and slow. Can Cass ever find her way home? And after the people of her new world discover her unexpected value, will they be willing to let her leave?

The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky   [View on Goodreads]

 Funny, tough-minded and tender, this is the story of Matilda and her two sisters growing up in Sydney, Australia, in the early 1950s. Their father is mentally unstable and largely absent, their mother is possibly in the thrall of his brother, and a headline-making Russian spy defection is taking place next door. Punctuated by the headlines of the times, The Red Shoe depicts how the large events of the world can impinge on ordinary lives. This is a novel to savor by one of Australia’s most gifted writers for young people.

New Guinea Moon by Kate Constable   [View on Goodreads]

Julie has grown up not knowing her father, with just the occasional Christmas card and the knowledge that he flies planes for a charter company in New Guinea. When she comes to stay with him one long summer, she learns to appreciate not only her long-lost father and his love of flying, but also New Guinea itself and the people she meets.

An awkward romance with a young expat contrasts with her growing attraction to the son of a local coffee plantation owner. And, left to her own devices much of the time, Julie learns to rely on herself and gain her own independence. A tragedy and then a mystery leave her reeling, but force her to evaluate what she really wants out of life.

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Favourite Covers

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 2 Comments

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Favourite Covers’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

Summer Skin by Kirsty Eagar. I love the hot pink forefront with the grey scale image behind. I think the cover is bold and beautiful just like the story. A kick-ass cover for a kick-ass book.

Green Valentine by Lili Wilkinson. Pink and Green, my two favourite colours and a combination of both will always tickle my fancy. I think this cover is super cute and sets the mood for the adorable story.

Beautiful Mess by Claire Christian. I am still yet to read this one (hope to get into it this month). I think the colours and gold embossing are simply stunning on the paperback, but try as I might I couldn’t get a picture to do the cover justice.

I’ve done a bit more detailed post using these books and their synopsis’s over on the #AusYABloggers site. If you want you can check that out HERE.

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Coastal

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 2 Comments

#LoveOzYABloggers: 'Coastal'

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Coastal’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

When I saw the Coastal prompt, I thought “U’beauty, I’ll do books set in Newie”. Newie being my teenage stomping grounds. I already had two YA books sitting on my shelf that are set in Newie and I assumed considering Newcastle is the second oldest city in Australia, beaten out only by Sydney, and that it is still one of Australia’s biggest shipping ports, it wouldn’t be hard to find a third.

I Googled and found quite a few non-fiction books. I consulted the Newcastle Writers Festival Facebook group and ended up with recommendations for some fantastic sounding Aussie adult contemporaries and thrillers, which have been added to my TBR list, but no YA!

I decided to stick with #loveozya books based in Newie for this week’s prompt anyway, in the hope that somebody out there can prove me wrong and give me a third!

7493681Surf Ache by Gerry Bobsien

Paperback, 265 pages
Published 2009 by Walker Books
*

This is a story about a family who embark on a sea-change moving from Melbourne to the coastal city of Newcastle. It’s about the crazy impact this move has on the kids in the family, Ella and Creaky, and the resilience of young people to handle change. Ella is fifteen and finds herself in a new town having to start all over again leaving behind a full and happy life complete with best friend and boyfriend. In Newcastle, Ella doesn’t know who to be or what to do but she slowly starts to make new friends. A dancer for most of her young life, Ella is thrown into a new world where surfing is the city’s obsession and she takes it on with all the joy of a new challenge. Through Ella’s newfound love of the sea, we learn a few secrets about her mum’s controversial past as a gun surfer. Above all, this is a story about family and love and the secrets we keep. It’s a book about girls doing things. Through Ella, we are infected with a passion for dance and surfing. This complete immersion in doing something you love is an important part of this book.

6889947Losing It by Lizzie Wilcock

Paperback, 314 pages
Published March 1st 2006 by Scholastic Australia
*

Once you’ve lied about something, lying becomes easy. You keep lying to cover your tracks. The lie grows. It becomes huge. Savage. Hungry.’

Gabbie likes her life just the way it is. She has a cool best friend and parents she can tell anything, and she’s just met the perfect guy.

But there are some things you can’t control. When her best friend starts to go off the rails, Gabbie finds it harder and harder to share the truth with her parents. Her family is changing, and that may become the biggest problem of all . . .

“Losing It” was shortlisted for the Young Adult Fiction Prize in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2006.

My posts for the previous prompts: 

 [High School]  [Fantasy]  [Feels]  [Sci-Fi]  [Series]

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Series

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 2 Comments

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Series’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

For todays prompt I’ve picked three #loveozya series which all also happen to be trilogies.The Every Series, book one: Every Breath by Ellie Marney

Rachel Watts has just moved to Melbourne from the country, but the city is the last place she wants to be.

James Mycroft is her neighbour, an intriguingly troubled seventeen-year-old who’s also a genius with a passion for forensics.

Despite her misgivings, Rachel finds herself unable to resist Mycroft when he wants her help investigating a murder. He’s even harder to resist when he’s up close and personal – and on the hunt for a cold-blooded killer.

When Rachel and Mycroft follows the murderer’s trail, they find themselves in the lion’s den – literally. A trip to the zoo will never have quite the same meaning again…

 [The Every Series on Goodreads]

The Colours of Madeleine Series, book one: A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty

This is a tale of missing persons. Madeleine and her mother have run away from their former life, under mysterious circumstances, and settled in a rainy corner of Cambridge (in our world).

Elliot, on the other hand, is in search of his father, who disappeared on the night his uncle was found dead. The talk in the town of Bonfire (in the Kingdom of Cello) is that Elliot’s dad may have killed his brother and run away with the Physics teacher. But Elliot refuses to believe it. And he is determined to find both his dad and the truth.

As Madeleine and Elliot move closer to unraveling their mysteries, they begin to exchange messages across worlds — through an accidental gap that hasn’t appeared in centuries. But even greater mysteries are unfolding on both sides of the gap: dangerous weather phenomena called “color storms;” a strange fascination with Isaac Newton; the myth of the “Butterfly Child,” whose appearance could end the droughts of Cello; and some unexpected kisses…

[The Colours of Madeleine Series on Goodreads]

The Circle of Talia Series, book one: Shadows of the Realm by Dionne Lister

This is an epic fantasy adventure book with lots of action, intrigue, creaturas and dragons, for young adult to adult.

Bronwyn and Blayke are two strangers being drawn into the same war. Their world is facing invasion from the Third Realm. While they move unknowingly toward each other, they are watched, hunted, and sabotaged. When the Dragon God interferes, it seems their world, Talia, will succumb to the threat. Can they learn enough of the tricks of the Realms before it’s too late, or will everything they love be destroyed?

The young Realmists’ journey pushes them away from all they’ve known, to walk in the shadows toward Vellonia, city of the dragons, where an even darker shadow awaits.

This book’s been given the Grub Street Reads seal of approval.

 [The Circle of Talia Series on Goodreads]

My posts for the previous prompts:  [High School]  [Fantasy]  [Feels]  [Sci-Fi].

 

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Sci-Fi

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#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘SciFi’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

Today I’ve posted my entry for the Sci-Fi theme on the #AusYABloggers site. So if you want to find out a little bit more about the books I picked, just click [HERE].

Or if you want to check out my previous entries >  [High School]  [Fantasy]  [Feels].

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Feels

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / 1 Comment

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Feels’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

My brain automatically went; Ok three books. Sidekicks, The simple Gift and Clancy of the Undertow. But as I came to type out this post I realised I’d used The Sidekicks in the first week, so I decided to go with The first Third also by Will Kostakis which I loved just as much. Amusingly in the first week I also used another Steven Herrick book, Slice. Haha can you tell i’m a big fan of both fellas. I just finished Cinnamon Girl (right before I sat down to type this post) and totally adored it, so I’m chucking it in as a fourth 😛 🙂
So in conclusion, below are four Aussie young adult books that I absolutely adored and gave me “feels” to the point that I actually had to just sit and physically hug the book at the end. They are books I can see myself re-reading multiple times down the track.

17185857The First Third by Will Kostakis 

Published July 24th 2013  [Goodreads]

Life is made up of three parts: in the first third, you’re embarrassed by your family; in the second, you make a family of your own; and in the end, you just embarrass the family you’ve made.

That’s how Billy’s grandmother explains it, anyway. She’s given him her bucket list (cue embarrassment), and now, it’s his job to glue their family back together.

No pressure or anything.

Fixing his family’s not going to be easy and Billy’s not ready for change. But as he soon discovers, the first third has to end some time. And then what?

It’s a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.

722292The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick

Published January 4th 2000 [Goodreads]

I’m not proud.
I’m sixteen, and soon
to be homeless.
Weary of his life with his alcoholic, abusive father, sixteen-year-old Billy packs a few belongings and hits the road, hoping for something better than what he left behind. He finds a home in an abandoned freight train outside a small town, where he falls in love with rich, restless Caitlin and befriends a fellow train resident, “Old Bill,” who slowly reveals a tragic past. When Billy is given a gift that changes everything, he learns not only to how forge his own path in life, but the real meaning of family.

26802671Clancy of the Undertow by Christopher Currie 

Published November 16th 2015 [Goodreads]

We’re sitting there with matching milkshakes, Sasha and me, and somehow, things aren’t going like I always thought they would. We’re face to face under 24-hour fluorescents with the thoroughly unromantic buzz of aircon in our ears and endless flabby wedges of seated trucker’s arsecrack as our only visual stimulus.

In a dead-end town like Barwen a girl has only got to be a little different to feel like a freak. And Clancy, a typical sixteen-year-old misfit with a moderately dysfunctional family, a genuine interest in Nature Club and a major crush on the local hot girl, is packing a capital F.

As the summer begins, Clancy’s dad is involved in a road smash that kills two local teenagers. While the family is dealing with the reaction of a hostile town, Clancy meets someone who could possibly—at last—become a friend. Not only that, the unattainable Sasha starts to show what may be a romantic interest.

In short, this is the summer when Clancy has to figure out who the hell she is.

19403811The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl by Melissa Keil

Published September 2014 [Goodreads]

Alba loves her life just as it is. She loves living behind the bakery, and waking up in a cloud of sugar and cinnamon. She loves drawing comics and watching bad TV with her friends.

The only problem is she’s overlooked a few teeny details:

Like, the guy she thought long gone has unexpectedly reappeared.
And the boy who has been her best friend since forever has suddenly gone off the rails.
And even her latest comic-book creation is misbehaving.

Also, the world might be ending – which is proving to be awkward.

As Doomsday enthusiasts flock to idyllic Eden Valley, Alba’s life is thrown into chaos. Whatever happens next, it’s the end of the world as she knows it. But when it comes to figuring out her heart, Armageddon might turn out to be the least of her problems.

#LoveOzYaBloggers – Fantasy

/ Riot @ Absidity Art - Sarah Fairbairn / Leave a comment

#LoveOzYABloggers is hosted by #LoveOzYA, a community led organisation dedicated to promoting Australian young adult literature.

The theme for this fortnight is ‘Fantasy’.

Keep up to date with all new Aussie YA releases with their monthly newsletter, or find out what’s happening with News and Events, or submit your own!

Today I’ve posted my entry for the Fantasy theme on the #AusYABloggers site. So if you want to find out a little bit more about the books I picked, just click HERE.

Or if you want to check out my entry to the last prompt, High School, click HERE.