CW: extreme bullying, alcoholic mother, death of pet ( )

Probably 4.5 stars.
Beautiful book with characters who jump off the page and tug your heartstrings. Can't wait to read Megan's next book. ( )

Actual Rating 4.25

The Setting: A small Australian town near Mount Warning, mid to late nineties.

The Plot: Kirra’s life is going downhill fast. She’s just had a talking to by her friends at school; they don’t like the way she walks, among other things, and they’re trying to show her just how undesirable she is, how much she needs them. Her dad moved out three months ago and is living with his four-month-pregnant girlfriend. Her mum is attempting to drown the pain and is drinking herself slowly to death. Oh, but don’t worry, the ghost of a teenage boy who haunts a broken phone booth is going to help her fix her life, but only if she’ll bring his murderer to justice.

It’s an old Telstra telephone booth that sits beside a disused track. The glass has been long smashed, used chewing gum is shoved into the coin slot and For a Good Time someone could Call Carly The Dirty Mole, or so says the graffiti scrawled on the back wall in faded texta. The whole thing smells like pissed-out VB. It seems so forgotten and desolate, and yet here it is, ringing to itself.

Nope, nothing insane going on here!

If asked to describe Yellow in three words, I’d have to say tragically, beautifully nostalgic.

There is so much here to love. So much to feel.

The rest of this review can be found HERE! ( )

Yellow is a young adult novel about Kirra, a fourteen year-old girl who lives in a small town in Australia. She takes care of her barely functioning alcoholic mother. Her dad left and is expecting a baby with his new girlfriend. He seems to care more about surfing than anything else. Even worse, Kirra lives in the Housing Commission section of town – where the poor kids live. She’s in the popular clique at school but is the lowest girl on the totem pole and her role in the group seems to be an object for the other girls’ bullying. They are downright mean, as only fourteen year-old girls can be.

Kirra finally reaches her breaking point, runs out of school and ends up on the beach. The phone in a nearby abandoned phone box starts ringing so she answers it. The ghost of a fourteen year-old boy named Boogie is on the other line. She is freaked out at first but then forms a friendship with him and agrees to find his murderer in exchange for him giving her advice on how to deal with the mean girls.

When listing to this book, at first I wondered why the author included the magical realism of Boogie’s character in the plot. Why wasn’t it just a straightforward book about surviving high school? It turns out that Boogie gives the story some wonderful twists that I won’t give away. And Jacobson’s prose is so beautiful it’s unlike anything I’ve read or listened to in a young adult novel. Finally, I liked that the book’s narrator had an Australian accent. The book is set in Australia and hearing it read with that accent made it that much easier for me to lose myself in the story. This is a book that both teenagers and adults can enjoy. ( )