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 sixteen-year-old Eliza is going to be the best girlfriend ever to the gorgeous boy she met over summer, win the national debating championships after blowing it last year, and make her mum proud, just like her big sister did when she won the national singing title.
Except that’s totally not what happens. First, super-hot Seb missed the memo about being the perfect boyfriend, going days without contact. Then Grandma shows up for a twelve-week stay, stealing Eliza’s room and whipping the constant tension at home into a full-scale frenzy. And then Declan, the intriguing new boy at school and a past national debating champ, joins the debating team and throws her off her game. Eliza’s perfect year is ruined.
Eliza tries to hold it together, she really does, but then Mum and Grandma’s bickering reaches catastrophic levels and an avalanche of family secrets explodes, exposing Eliza’s secret too—the one she’s been keeping from everyone, including herself.
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The Story of You: A short guide to greater self-understanding
