If you’re looking for spooky and surprising and generous and sweet, then I solemnly swear you should pick up ‘Yellow’ by Megan Jacobson.

Because it’s all of these things.

Dead dude on the end of a phone. Suspense and suspects and twists. And a seriously awesome friendship. A girl who learns how to be happy. And CBCA Shortlisted too, judging by the sticker on my library edition 🙂

I think the book works so well because of how much is happening in it, everything intertwined. (Beware the occasional weeny eeny spoiler as you read on…) I work on the belief that every book needs a central idea that is DROP-DEAD GREAT.

And then, like, three more FAB ideas added to it in order to make it IMMENSELY AWESOME.

Publishable.

Jacobson shows how it’s done with this one. She doesn’t stop with the fabulous spin of magic realism that is Boogie on the phone, trying to catch his own murderer. And our MC Kirra trying to solve this old mystery. Nup. Jacobson adds in an alcoholic mother, a heavy dash of excruciating peer pressure, a dead dog, an unexpected friend and a love interest.

‘Yeah, almost drowning is what all the great surfers are doing these days, didn’t you get the memo?’

There’s a terrible, stretched-out moment when he looks at me like I’m an alien, and then his face breaks and he laughs, a soft laugh.

Kirra to Noah p. 84

We’re taken on a journey that flashes back two decades, and leaves us increasingly questioning who can be believed. What is real? And is being popular really the best thing you can be?

I don’t particularly advocate chaining anyone to their beds to force a detox, but I understand what drives Kirra to do the things she does in the book. Desperation. Empathy. Embarrassment. Love.

Kirra’s walking a fine line between breaking, and soaring.

A line that mimics Boogie’s own.

Clever writing. Coming with a warning that this book deals with issues like suicide, bullying and alcoholism.

Pick it up and see what you think!