Review: The Brink, Holden Sheppard
Perth's Holden Sheppard is the country's new biggest hitter in young adult fiction.
His debut novel, Invisible Boys (Fremantle Press) was a huge hit with readers, won the WA Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, named Notable Book by @cbcaustralia and is in production for TV.
Safe to say his second novel was hotly anticipated (no pressure )... and now it's out! Well, out next month; pictured is the advance proof copy I was lucky enough to receive from Text Publishing, check out my Instagram for a look at the ‘real’ cover.
The Brink opens with a group of school leavers ready to party, but diverted by an unforeseen roadblock to a remote island where they will carry out their week's celebrations with only each other for company.
And while there are some tensions between members of the group, and each member is battling their own demons, it's all good and they're making the best of it, more or less... until, that is, they find the body.
Their fragile cohesion quickly destabilises and a power struggle emerges that will threaten more than their friendship.
Readers will love its breakneck pace, ominous premise, and warts-and-all depiction of the beauty and ferality of boys; its pitch-perfect Australian vernacular that flings you headlong back into what it was like to be a teenager again, its strange mix of sensual strength, sexual confusion and social helplessness, its complicated friendship structures and rules. It's like Dawson's Creek meets Lord of the Flies. I promise you'll be rooting for these protagonists in their perilous quests.
It's a different book to Invisible Boys, of course; it doesn't have quite the same element of devastation that the conclusion of Invisible Boys delivered. But that’s not a criticism, just a comparison because comparisons help with description and understanding. It also is in many ways a more fun book, and it certainly has the same combination of emotional integrity, social relevance and no-holds-barred humour that made Invisible Boys a bestseller. I'd be very surprised if this doesn't make it to the screen too.
Buy for yourself and lend to the teen in your life, or buy it for the teen then ‘borrow’ it; either way, be quick because I predict a sell-out.