Friday Brown
Vikki Wakefield
Seventeen-year-old Friday Brown is on the run—running to escape memories of her mother and of the family curse. And of a grandfather who’d like her to stay. She’s lost, alone and afraid.
Silence, a street kid, finds Friday and she joins him in a gang led by beautiful, charismatic Arden. When Silence is involved in a crime, the gang escapes to a ghost town in the outback. In Murungal Creek, the town of never leaving, Friday must face the ghosts of her past. She will learn that sometimes you have to stay to finish what you started—and often, before you can find out who you are, you have to become someone you were never meant to be.
Friday Brown is the breathtaking second novel from the author of the award-winning All I Ever Wanted. Vikki Wakefield is an astonishing talent.
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‘This is one of the most memorable YA books I’ve ever read. Original, real, startling and beautiful.’
‘I loved this book.’
‘With a heart-swelling conclusion, Wakefield’s novel contains characters so palpable you can imagine passing them in the street.’
‘Vikki Wakefield has created a feisty, sharp-witted and thoughtful heroine whose voice, with its balance of teenage bravado and childlike vulnerability, serves both to illuminate the shadowy world of urban poverty and to provide welcome relief from its darkness.’
‘A true to life novel that will catch the attention of the teen reader and will also be enjoyed by adults. Highly recommended.’
‘Vikki Wakefield’s second novel is equally as intense as All I Ever Wanted, and equally as gritty; there’s just more: more emotion, more power, and more conflict…I hope it finds its way into many teenagers’ hands.‘
‘The gripping story and rich characters took me to places where I didn’t expect to venture – along with Friday, I had the feeling of never quiteknowing what her next step would be – but I devoured each page as the novel raced towards its conclusion. The themes and subject matter may be dark, and the future uncertain, but this is far from being a novel without hope.’
‘Set against an Australian landscape brimming with the gothic, and full of elegiac beauty and intelligent insights into the human mind, this is a stunning contribution to young adult fiction, and one that will rate as highly memorable among both mature young-adult readers and adults.’
‘a tense, multilayered tale about loyalty, memory and survival’
‘Wakefield’s prose is rich, gorgeous and raw…It’s not often you discover such a unique and exciting voice.’
‘Vikki Wakefield’s second novel is as gripping as her debut book, All I Ever Wanted and invites comparison with Sonya Hartnett’s All My Dangerous Friends with its psychological force and gothic characters.’
‘Wakefield’s first novel, All I Ever Wanted, revealed her as an important voice in Australian literature. This beautiful, brave book cements that position. Written for a teenage audience, it has the scope for a broader appeal.’
‘That she’s a new shining star for Australian YA is a given. But her explorations in Friday Brown are urban and fantastical, coming-of-age mixed with thriller. This is a hard novel, and that’s partly what makes it so good, but there’s something magic here too….What’s also unmistakeable is that Vikki Wakefield writes the tough stuff….Her characters are so vivid and endearing, or vicious and infuriating that she makes you feel everything down to your bones. 5/5 ’
‘[Friday Brown] is stunning, startling, agonising, explosive, poignant, devastating and joyful….There are no words to describe this novel adequately. There is only humbled, awestruck, heartbroken silence.’
‘[Friday Brown] will haunt you long after you’ve turned the last page. Vikki Wakefield weaves the fantastical and the gritty into a harrowing, heartbreaking, intensely suspenseful story that’s as dangerous and starkly gorgeous as the Australian outback. It will break your heart then put the pieces back together in a new way. I absolutely loved this book.’
‘Friday Brown is a gorgeously written, chilling and compelling tale of a girl trying to find out who she is, where she belongs and the friends and family she makes along the way. I would recommend this to all fans of contemporary YA and Australian novels.’
