Danielle Binks

Representation: Kosovar-Albanian character, Asian character
Trigger warnings: Death from stillbirth, hospitalisation, racism, grief and loss depiction, displacement, deportation, blood depiction, death of a mother in the past
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7/10, after reading a not-so-great book published around a decade ago I decided to read this more recent one and wow was it worth it since I actually enjoyed this but I can surely say this is one of the heavy ones I've read and I can definitely see the parallels between this and The Thing About Jellyfish, but not so much with Wolf Hollow which I did not enjoy so where do I begin? It starts with the main character Winifred otherwise known as Fred and her family is different from other children her age and it was interesting to see a book set in Australia in the late 90s which I haven't seen since last year. Her family has changed ever since her mother died so now she has adoptive parents, she doesn't even have a grandmother and her grandfather was hospitalised early in the book.

The first half was interesting since it foreshadowed the events that would happen later on when there was news of the Balkan Wars and some refugees were reluctantly accepted into Australia. The latter half revolves around the second major plot point after Fred's family changed and that was the arrival of two characters whom I got to see for a while named Merjeme and Arta. If you thought the book was heavy enough as it is, boy is it going to get a lot more than that and even though the text size was quick to read through I still found it quite profound and full of raw emotions and several scenes packed a punch. Fred's parents whom she names by their first names Anika and Luca are expecting a baby and I anticipated it and read on to see what would happen but I was shocked when it was a stillbirth and only a few pages later there was some manipulation going on at the "safe haven" where there was an announcement telling the Kosovar-Albanians that their home was safe now when it was all an attempt to just deport them and some of them went back including Merjeme and Arta which was sad, at least one refugee managed to obtain a permanent asylum. Not to mention the interesting imaginative analogies involving maps, who knew? Also liked the representation of Asians in this, nice touch but why is Trung named Jed, his original name is perfectly fine.… (more)