This year’s winner of the Ampersand Prize for unpublished manuscripts is a contemporary coming-of-age novel that focuses on family and discovering your own identity.

Maria is a deadpan misanthrope who has been stifled by her big, outspoken Italian-Australian family. When they scoff that she couldn’t possibly survive on her own as an exchange student in Italy, she decides that is exactly what she is going to do. Despite her family, she has never learned Italian or how to cook and is absolutely terrible at finding her way anywhere. So naturally, when she arrives in Italy she is a fish well and truly out of water.

At her foreign language school in Rome, Maria meets Kennedy, who is excessively friendly and kind. This naturally makes her suspicious. Maria doesn’t really appreciate Kennedy until she has her first kiss with a boy, who is then exceedingly mean to her. It is then Maria realises she likes Kennedy a whole lot more than any boys. When Maria and Kennedy witness a murder and are kidnapped by the murderers, it sets them off on an adventure where they discover the real Italy but also even more about themselves and their growing attraction.

Awkward, funny and surprising, this student-exchange adventure in Italy gone terribly wrong is an entertaining romp with a gentle queer coming of age. It will be enjoyed by teen lovers of Looking for Alibrandi and comic writing aged 12+.