Trouble

Hannah is a typical teenage girl. She fights with her mum about homework, she loves hanging out with her best friend and boys are very much on her radar. Life is fun. That is, until Hannah falls pregnant at only 15 and life takes a path she never expected. Dealing with not being able to tell people who the father is and a best friend who has ditched her for their old enemy, Hannah feels totally alone. That is until Aaron, the new guy at school, offers to be the fake father of her unborn baby. With a history that haunts him every day, Aaron sees this opportunity as a way to do the right thing and make amends to his past. But life isn’t that simple.

Non Pratt has done the impossible in my eyes; Trouble is centred around a very taboo issue in YA fiction, and Pratt has managed to make it so much more than just a book about teen pregnancy. The voices of Hannah and Aaron are spot on and the relationships between all the characters ring so true I felt like I was back in high school (terrifying!). I hope parents can see past the controversial storyline and still give this to their teens to read– it’s a beautiful, heartwarming story.

Katherine Dretzke