He thinks his sister has shiny paper, hospital corners, and a big pink bow.” This book is not all about the romance or the middle-class characters it’s about Mim and her place in the world, about the people around her. Of Jordan, Mim says “He’s got me all boxed up in a brown, shabby little package, like the one he stole from me. The novel examines fear and safety, intimidation and revenge, dreams and realities, assumptions and expectations. Mim lives in the “worst street in the worst suburb”, and her life lies in sharp contrast to the shiny, white, alien middle-class life of her crush Jordan and his muso sister Kate. I could see the broken chain link fences and feel the the brown crispy grass and smell the train exhaust and Breezer vomit. As a reader I could feel the heat, sweat, and mosquitoes of a summer blackout, the shift in the air from bone-dry to muggy-damp, the huge drops of warm rain that turn dust to sludge. She deftly paints a picture of the poorer Australian suburbs. Vikki Wakefield’s scene-setting is beautiful. But she does know you don’t walk too close to the Tarrant house.

* One day I will leave this place and never come back.ĭoes she sound like a goody two-shoes? She isn’t.ĭoes she know everything? She doesn’t. And it is not your typical sodapop middle-class romantic-love-triangle YA contemporary! “Should you keep moving forward, even if you don’t know where you’re going?”Īll I Ever Wanted is a standalone novel, unlike so many YA offerings – but I was left wanting more. But in the end, she works out who her people are, and the same things look entirely different. She has problems, and she’s determined to solve them herself. Over the nine days before her seventeenth birthday, Mim’s life turns upside down. How come there’s a huge gap between her and her best friend, Tahnee?Īnd who is the mysterious girl next door who moans at night? Why is a monster dog called Gargoyle hidden in the back shed?Īnd Jordan, the boy she sent Valentines to for years, why is he now suddenly a creep? Now Mim has to retrieve a lost package for her mother. She’s set herself rules to live by, but she’s starting to break them. Mim knows what she wants, and where she wants to go - anywhere but home, stuck in the suburbs with her mother who won’t get off the couch, and two brothers in prison. Publisher & Year: The Text Publishing Company, 2011 Yesterday I read my first book of the Australian Women Writers Challenge! You can see my AWWC sign-up post here. “All I Ever Wanted” by Vikki Wakefield: A Review Home › Culture › arts & entertainment › “All I Ever Wanted” by Vikki Wakefield: A Review

All I Ever Wanted by Vikki Wakefield