Inbetween Days (Vikki Wakefield, Text)

The small-town setting of Mobius captures and amplifies the isolation of adolescence. It is the perfect backdrop for Inbetween Days, a story about the bruises left on our hearts by love, which will resonate with older teens who enjoy the gritty realism of Australian YA. Jacklin (Jack) is the main character, a 17-year-old high-school dropout who lives with her sister Trudy and works at the general store. She is stagnating in Mobius, a town that seems to call out to lost souls. Jack is caught between the person she has always been and the one she would like to be. She is reckless, but fragile. Readers will love her attitude and her uncertainty. She is far from perfect, and this makes her all the more real. In her previous books, Vikki Wakefield has shown that she is not afraid to tackle challenging issues. Inbetween Days tends more towards happy endings, although she runs her characters through the wringer to get there. Wakefield has captured small-town life perfectly. There is the stifling sense of everyone knowing everyone, but also the boredom that comes from being a teenager with nowhere to go. In these claustrophobic conditions, she explores love, death and identity.

Bec Kavanagh is a Melbourne writer and reviewer and the schools coordinator for the Stella Prize