Author(s): Lucy Treloar

Aust Fiction

For all her life, Till, now twenty-three, has lived in the shadow of the abduction of a childhood friend, and her tormented half-wondering about whether she might have been able to stop it.

Finally, at the age of twenty-three, Till flees her past and the hovering presence of her fearful parents. In Wirowie, a town that's on its knees, she stops and slowly begins creating a new home, rebuilding an abandoned railway station.

But there is danger here too, and Till must ultimately decide whether she can turn from her fear-filled past and face down, even pursue, the darkness that suddenly looms so near - or whether she'll flee once more and never stop running.

Both a reckoning with fear and a recognition of the power of belonging, Days of Innocence and Wonder is a richly textured, deeply felt new novel from one of Australia's finest writers.

Rebecca Reilly has created a wonderful, warm, funny world filled with complicated family (Māori , Russian and Catalonian)  relationships and hilarious friends. Greta & Valdin are twenty-something queer siblings who share an apartment in Auckland. They are at the centre of the story and narrate the travails of love, travel, romance and having a broken heart in alternate chapters. Reilly very realistically.explores the precariousness of being young in a modern world, always feeling as if you don’t quite belong and living a life relentlessly online.

I laughed out loud a lot while reading this and would really like to have a drink with Greta & Valdin! JO