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Summary
Summary
This is the story of Amelia and Riley, bad kids from bad Brookfield High who have transferred to Ashbury High for their final year. They've been in love since they were fourteen, they go out dancing every night, and sleep through school all day. And Ashbury can't get enough of them.
Everyone's trying to get their attention; even teachers are dressing differently, trying to make their classes more interesting. Everyone wants to be cooler, tougher, funnier, hoping to be invited into their cool, self-contained world.
Author Notes
Jaclyn Moriarty is the prize-winning, best-selling author of novels for young adults and adults including Feeling Sorry for Celia and The Year of Secret Assignments. Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, lived in England, the US, and Canada, and now lives in Sydney again. She was born in 1968 in Perth and studied English and Law at the University of Sydney. She then completed a Masters in Law at Yale University and a PhD at Gonville Caius College, Cambridge. She worked asan entertainment an dmedia lawyer before becoming a full-time writer.
The Asbury Brookfield Series is four novels that revolve around various student that attend the exclusive private school, Asbury High. Many of the students cross over into more than one novel. The series includes: Feeling Sorry for Celia, Finding Cassie Crazy, The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie, and Dreaming of Amelia. Her title The Cracks in the Kingdom won the Aurealis Award in 2014 for Young Adult Novel. It also won the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People¿s Literature.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-This Australian author adds another volume to her sequence of novels centered around a private high school. When two mysterious new scholarship students begin their senior year at Ashbury High, suspicions arise. Amelia and Riley are clearly a couple with an unknown past, and Emily Thompson is determined to find out their secrets. Em is also convinced that there is a ghost haunting Ashbury, and with the (sometimes) help of her friends Lydia and Cassie, she makes the new couple and the ghost her projects for the year. Told in multiple voices through essays written by the students for their senior exam on gothic literature, emails, blog entries, and scholarship-committee meeting notes, the plot moves slowly with numerous side stories woven throughout. They all add up to tell several interconnected stories from a variety of perspectives in an imaginative manner. There is an air of mystery as readers wonder if there really is a ghost and exactly what Riley's and Amelia's past secrets are, but, overall, the suspense doesn't carry the story. Inclusions of humorous gothic elements throughout are pluses along with the ideas of giving second chances and leaving one's past behind. Readers expecting a spine-tingling tale of ghosts and intrigue are likely to be disappointed; this is more of an examination of high school friendships and social life. Those willing to stick with the sometimes slow-moving narrative will be satisfied in the end.-Gina Bowling, South Gibson County High School, Medina, TN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Returning to the setting and characters of her earlier Ashbury High books, Moriarty offers a mosaic composed largely of students' gothic fiction exams, as they write about their final year of school as a ghost story. Enigmatic Riley and Amelia, a beautiful couple on scholarship, are embroiled in many of the narratives. But like a game of telephone, the conjectural haunting changes as interpreted through each student. The students delight, to varying degrees, in playing with the tropes of gothic literature, lending the story an often wicked sense of humor, creating modern and effective ghost stories in the process. "The more I followed Riley and Amelia, the less I knew of they. Who were they? Whenceforward had they come? Why? Why not?" reads a typically breathless passage from Emily (from The Year of Secret Assignments), who returns along with other characters. Fans of the previous books will enjoy clever references to past events, but this book more than stands on its own, as the students' chorus creates a compelling collective portrait of adolescence-the limbo between childhood and the shadowed future. Ages 12-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
The characters from The Year of Secret Assignments return in another multi-format, genre-busting novel that melds mystery, gothic ghost story, school story, and early Australian history. Two new scholarship students, Riley and Amelia, bring mystery to senior year at Ashbury High as Emily, Lydia, Cassie, and Toby write their final history and English exams. The ghost Emily claims is haunting the school adds additional intrigue. Could Riley and Amelia's appearance be linked to that of the ghost? And what about the local convict-history Toby is immersed in? Few of the multiple narrators appear to be native Australians, but their accents are consistent and convincing; further, they are all adept readers and lively presences, and their distinct voices help to keep the story lines and characters straight. Even better as an audiobook than in print, as the narration serves to compel listeners through this complex -- but terribly clever -- story. martha v. parravano (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Moriarty has done it again. Fourth in the loose Brookfield-Ashbury saga (Feeling Sorry for Celia, 2001; The Year of Secret Assignments, 2004; The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie, 2006), this Australian import uses multiple formats (journals, exam essays, letters, transcripts) to relate the events of senior year at Ashbury, when two scholarship students with dark pasts and astounding talents shake up the lives of characters who will be familiar to fans. Quirky, comic and self-referentialexam questions about Gothic novels highlight the novel's own gothic elements; weather then plays a crucial role in a climactic, possibly supernatural finalethis romp explores serious issues (especially class and privilege). No one is exactly who you think, and figuring out just what is going on is much of the fun. The author effortlessly employs multiple voices and narrative devices for maximum effect, and each member of the ensemble comes across loud and clear. Despite the heavy underpinnings, the focus is the redemptive power of friendship. Another winner, sure to please old fans and create new ones. (historical note) (Epistolary dramedy. YA)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Australian author Moriarty follows The Year of Secret Assignments (2004), a Booklist Editors' Choice selection, and The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (2006) with another madcap novel set at exclusive Ashbury High in Sydney. Best friends Emily, Cassie, and Lydia return to recount their dramatic senior year, when the entire student body becomes obsessed with two mysterious scholarship students. Once again, Moriarty tells her story in a clever jumble of forms and voices, including faculty-meeting minutes; IMs, e-mails, and blog entries; and students' essays on gothic literature, a genre that is hilariously referenced throughout the story, right down to a madwoman in an attic. This feels both more ambitious and more crowded than the previous Ashbury novels; some plotlines, particularly one that suggests time travel, feel roughly integrated. The off-the-rails zaniness, though, is just as satisfying, and in between all the irreverence, Moriarty slips in plenty of sharp-eyed, poignant observations about first impressions and second chances, class prejudice, parental foolishness, and the ache and thrill of leaving high school behind.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2010 Booklist