“I laughed. I cried. Sometimes at the same time!’ – Tim Ferguson.
Portolan and Cheong’s voices stitch seamlessly together to lay out a funny, honest and extremely relatable story, so clearly born of the 2020s. I couldn’t get enough of it! – Marlee Silva
Four people, figuring out sex, love, and how to ‘adult.’ Sydney – one of those places that just consumes you. A private school boy, a tortured drug dealer, a starving artist and a gay outcast, try to do their best as they navigate through the unspoken rules which govern the fast paced, status obsessed harbour city.
Benji: desperate to stand on his own, and be perceived as separate to his overachieving family.
Francesca: plotting her remarkable and glamorous future.
Leo: the confident gay-sian, but despite the pretence, lacks a sense of identity and self-worth.
Hamish: fell into drugs to distinguish himself.
Four stories interlaced together. Anxiety masked as confidence. Ambitions as arrogance. Insecurities which fester … until the cracks appear in the perfect façade.
bs_admin –
This book gives me the feels of ‘A Secret Life of Us.’
bs_admin –
I flew through this book, it’s not my normal genre but I couldn’t put it down.
Let me start out by saying, I don’t think there is one “perfect” character in this book.
They’re shown in the gritty light of Sydney living – young adults finding their feet in the humdrum of Sydney living!
Dealing with racial profiling, online dating, sexuality, body dysmorphia, drug addiction and more,
This little book packs a punch in delivering how some of these bigger issues can become normalised in our minds, justified in our actions, and how sometimes we need to take a moment to really ask what it is that WE want out of life – that is to say beyond the expectations from friends, family, work, society and trends…
bs_admin –
This book is extremely relatable and I really enjoyed it.