Less Than Perfect by Ber Carroll, Pan Macmillan Australia, $25.
Striving to achieve your parents’ expectations is a battle with universal resonance and is at the emotional heart of this intriguing tale of love and loss.
Caitlin O’Reilly meets the love of her life at her 18th birthday party. The boy in question is a friend of her brother’s and the fact that he is deaf only enhances the attraction.
Soon Caitlin and Josh are inseparable, much to her father’s distress, but when he is killed by a terrorist bomb, both Caitlin and her family’s worlds disintegrate.
Ten years later, Caitlin is in Melbourne avoiding her grief on a hedonistic rollercoaster. But when she starts to fall in love all over again, her past rises to the surface.
There’s a fresh, rawness to Irish-born Ber Carroll’s confessional and slightly girly writing style that pulls you into her character’s world and some surprising twists in the tale make for a satisfying denouement.
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