Beginner's guide to Lili Wilkinson
Lili Wilkinson is a national treasure in the Love Oz YA world, but when an author has so many books out, it can often feel overwhelming. Wilkinson has dipped her toes in multiple genres including fantasy, dystopian and contemporary, but there are common threads throughout every book. Every story centres around a strong female protagonist, includes complex characters and there are always queer elements. So what book do you read first? Of course, I would say read every.single.one but you have to start somewhere! This guide will help you decide what book to pick up first.
For the fantasy-loving feminists
Deep Is the Fen
Merriwether Morgan doesn't need a happily-ever-after. Her life in the idyllic town of Candlecott is fine just as it is: simple, happy, and with absolutely no magic. Magic only ever leads to trouble.
But Merry's best friend, Teddy, is joining the Toadmen - a secret society upholding backward thinking and suspiciously supernatural traditions - and she is determined to stop him. Even if it means teaming up with her academic arch-nemesis, Caraway Boswell, an ice-cold snob who hides his true face behind a glamour.
An ancient Toad ritual is being held in the nightmarish Deeping Fen, and if Merry doesn't rescue Teddy, she'll lose him forever.
For the witches with stories to tell
A Hunger of Thorns
Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic – and her best friend.
Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.
Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst. And every good story is sure to have a monster.
For those fascinated by human behaviour
The Erasure Intiative
A girl wakes up on a self-driving bus. She has no memory of how she got there or who she is. Her nametag reads CECILY. The six other people on the bus are just like her: no memories, only nametags. There’s a screen on each seatback that gives them instructions. A series of tests begin, with simulations projected onto the front window of the bus. The passengers must each choose an outcome; majority wins.
But as the testing progresses, deadly secrets are revealed, and the stakes get higher and higher. Soon Cecily is no longer just fighting for her freedom - she’s fighting for her life.
For the doomsday preppers
After the Lights Go Out
Seventeen-year-old Pru Palmer lives with her twin sisters, Grace and Blythe, and their father, Rick, on the outskirts of an isolated mining community. The Palmers are doomsday preppers. They have a bunker filled with non-perishable food and a year’s worth of water.
One day while Rick is at the mine, the power goes out. At the Palmers’ house, and in the town. All communication is cut. No one knows why.
It doesn’t take long for everything to unravel. In town, supplies run out and people get desperate. The sisters decide to keep their bunker a secret. The world is different; the rules are different. Survival is everything, and family comes first.
For the cult-obsessed
The Boundless Sublime
Ruby Jane Galbraith is empty. Her family has been torn apart and it’s all her fault. The only thing that makes sense to her is Fox - a gentle new friend who is wise, soulful and clever, yet oddly naive about the ways of the world. He understands what she’s going through and he offers her a chance to find peace. Fox belongs to a group called the Institute of the Boundless Sublime – and Ruby can’t stay away from him. So she is also drawn into what she discovers is a terrifying, secretive community that is far from the ideal world she expected.
Can Ruby find the courage to escape? Is there any way she can save Fox too? And is there ever an escape from the far-reaching influence of the Institute of the Boundless Sublime?
For the climate warriors
Green Valentine
Astrid Katy Smythe is beautiful, smart and popular. She’s a straight-A student and a committed environmental activist. She’s basically perfect. Hiro is the opposite of perfect. He’s slouchy, rude and resentful. Despite his brains, he doesn’t see the point of school.
But when Astrid meets Hiro at the shopping centre where he’s wrangling shopping trolleys, he doesn’t recognise her because she’s in disguise – as a lobster. And she doesn’t set him straight.
Astrid wants to change the world, Hiro wants to survive it. But ultimately both believe that the world needs to be saved from itself. Can they find enough in common to right all the wrongs between them?
For those who love wearing pink AND black
Pink
Ava Simpson is trying on a whole new image. Stripping the black dye from her hair, she heads off to the Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence, leaving her uber-cool girlfriend, Chloe, behind.
Ava is quickly taken under the wing of perky, popular Alexis who insists that: a) she’s a perfect match for handsome Ethan; and b) she absolutely must audition for the school musical.
But while she’s busy trying to fit in - with Chloe, with Alexis and her Pastel friends, even with the misfits in the stage crew - Ava fails to notice that her shiny reinvented life is far more fragile than she imagined.
