 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I'm here to talk to you about the Young Adult Shortlist for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards for 2024. So last week I shared my thoughts on the Children's Shortlist and this week we're going to talk about the Young Adult Shortlist. So I do own all four books that were on the shortlist and the highly commended list but I couldn't find one of them, so I've only got three of them physically here with me. Just like in the last video, I'm going to start with the highly commended book and I'm kind of disappointed that this didn't make the actual physical shortlist but I'm glad that it was highly commended and that is We Didn't Think It Through by Gary Lonsborough. So this is a Young Adult Queer Contemporary Story. Hi guys, editing Steph here. I didn't realise when I started filming this video or when I filmed this video even though I say it in just about every single review of the book but every book in this shortlist is a Queer Young Adult title and I think that is absolutely wonderful. I think that is such great representation to see in a book prize shortlist for kids. About an Indigenous teen called Jamie who gets into trouble with some friends and finds himself in the youth justice system and it really looks at how the system is broken and very much geared towards and how the system is really stacked against Indigenous teens in particular and how there need to be more systems in place to stop reoffending perpetuating in the future and this is really Jamie having to make a lot of decisions about how he wants to live his life, how he wants people to see him and whether or not he can actually move past the decisions that he's made and it is very hard-hitting. It is an incredibly well-told story. Gary Lonsborough is just incredible. I can't say that I enjoyed reading it because it can be a very confronting read but the actual experience of it is just very powerful and it is a really great book particularly if you want to look at the realities of the justice system in Australia. Then we move into the three books that are in the shortlist so I'll start off with one that I couldn't find my physical copy of and that is We Could Be Something by Wilka Starkis. Wilka Starkis is an incredible Australian Young Adult author. This is another Young Adult queer contemporary story but it's told in two timelines and from two perspectives. So we start off with Harvey who lives with his two dads and his two dads are currently in the process of separating and Harvey and one of his dads are moving back to Darlinghurst to live with his yaya and this kind of upsets Harvey's world and so he's having to adjust to being in a new place, having to make new friends etc. And then the second point of view is Satyrus and this one is set in the past and Satyrus had a very successful book published when he was 17 and now he's still chasing that high and trying to chase that success and his career is starting to stall and then he meets Gem who is a young bookseller and the two start a relationship and both Satyrus and Harvey's stories converge on Darlinghurst and we get to see how they're connected and how they're relevant to each other. I won't say why because that would be a spoiler. It's very much a story about generations coming together. It is about learning from your mistakes and sometimes taking many many many many years to learn from your mistakes and it was just a really interesting read. Wilka Starkis has a great writing style that's very easy to read. There is also The Quiet and the Loud by Helena Fox. I recently read this one so The Quiet and the Loud is a young adult contemporary fiction story with a slight romantic subplot in there that's rather messy and it is also set during a wildfire season. George lives with her mom and her and her stepmom. Both George and her mom lived through domestic violence situations with her father who was an alcoholic and who she no longer sees but hasn't really dealt with the after effects of that. She's also trying to support her best friend who is pregnant, her best friend will be a teen mother. It's a really interesting story because her friend deliberately got herself pregnant thinking that a child would make her life better and we rapidly learned that her best friend has a lot of mental health issues that she needs to work through as well. So there is a really complicated codependent friendship happening here. They also have another friend who is a climate activist who is obviously deeply affected by the wildfires and Australia's response to environmentalism and alongside all of this George meets a new girl in town who she begins to fall for but because George hasn't dealt with a lot of the things in her life it makes that relationship really really complex. There is a lot that goes on in here. It is a very very complicated, very messy at times story about growing up, about anxiety and working through your past trauma. So it's definitely an upper YA story because there is a lot that goes on in here that needs to be unpacked. And then there is a hunger of thorns by Lily Wilkinson which is a fantasy story and I really enjoyed this one when I read it. This is a book that I do have an individual review for so I'll leave that on the screen and link down below. So this is the story of Maud whose friend goes missing while investigating a out of bounds area part of the town called Sicklehurst and Maud decides to try and track her down. This is a book that's all about wild magic. It has an incredible girl gang who are just these wild girls who do not conform to what society expects them to. We learn a lot about Sicklehurst which is a place that is basically a character in this story. It is an intriguing and terrifying place where strange things happen when you go in there. At times it's pretty dark and creepy which is the kind of YA fantasy that I like to be honest. It does have complex relationships and it does look at how Maud's family have kept some secrets from her and how she begins to unravel those and learn a lot more about herself as she goes. So if you're interested in a dark creepy YA fantasy story with some really incredible female protagonists this is definitely a book to pick up. So those are the books that made it to the premieres literary awards for the Young Adult category. I'll leave links to where you can find out more information about all of them down below as well as any video reviews that I have for specific books. In the comments I'd love to know if you have read any of these books or if you're planning on picking any up or if there are any other Australian Young Adult titles that you feel should have made this list. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a rose emoji down below otherwise I hope that we're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.