Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Ruth Starke reviews four recent Young Adult novels

by
June–July 2016, no. 382

Ruth Starke reviews four recent Young Adult novels

by
June–July 2016, no. 382

Summer Skin (Allen & Unwin, $19.99 pb, 347 pp, 978192526-6924) by Kirsty Eagar, a raunchy romance for older readers, is set in the halls of residence of a Queensland university during O-Week. Jess Gordon – nickname Flash – has devised a little game for the freshers, a payback for what her friend Farren endured the previous year when she was secretly filmed and Skyped having sex with a boy from Knights, an élitist all-male college.

Summer Skin 150pxThe game for the Unity girls is to lure a Knights boy back to their room, tie him up, and, after giving him a 'creative makeover', post the photographic evidence on Instagram, the winner to get a Knights jersey. It is the stealing of this jersey that occupies Jess for the opening chapters and puts her on a collision course with Mitch Crawford, the handsome and arrogant rugby champ who has his own reason for wanting that stolen jersey. A 'meet cute' then, followed by Jess and the freshers of Unity proving that they are just as adept as the boys at inflicting humiliation amplified by social media.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.