Heart-expanding young adult fiction, supporting your self-understanding and emotional healing

Hello I’m Jodie! Author & Psychologist

Never, Not Ever

A smart summer romance about family secrets, finding yourself, and falling in love, perfect for fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Every year, Tilly dreams of the dad she’s never known showing up for her birthday. But he never does. When she wakes up on the morning of her sixteenth birthday dadless yet again, she knows it’ll never happen.

In fact, it’s her worst birthday ever because her grandmother died a few months ago, her mum is working again, and the boy she’s in love with—the ridiculously gorgeous Josh—refuses to break up with his drama-queen girlfriend and notice her instead.

Then Tilly’s dad does show up, shocking everyone, and she works out an awful truth: Her mum and her grandma lied to her. For sixteen years! Tilly is drowning in her family’s lies. Worse, these feelings for her neighbour Zack—these stupid, flustering, more-than-friends feelings she’s been trying to ignore—mean she’s also lying to herself.

Books that are unputdownable, exploring mental health healing

Everything’s Fine, Absolutely Fine

This is the year that 16-year-old Eliza is going to be the best girlfriend ever to the boy, Seb, she met over summer, win the national debating championships after failing at the final hurdle last year, and make her mum proud, just like her big sister did when she won the national singing comp.

But Seb seems to have missed the memo about taking on the perfect boyfriend role, going days without contact, and Grandma’s arrival for a 12 week stay to recover from hip surgery robs Eliza of her privacy and ratchets up the tension at home.

Then Declan, the new boy at school and a past national debating champ, joins the debating team, which is good because they absolutely must win. But also bad because he’s way too distracting. When mum and grandma’s bickering reaches catastrophic levels, an avalanche of family secrets explode, exposing Eliza’s secret too - the one that she’s been keeping from everyone, including herself.

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