So. I am thinking about going to Australia, and I thought to myself, what better way to prepare for such a trip than to read some of that country's YA literature?

In that spirit, I picked up Brigid Lowry's Follow the Blue. I have to say, we've had it for a while, and I've been avoiding it because I don't really like the cover very much.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed the story, for the most part, but I sort of wish it had been told from a different perspective. I found Bec to be extremely annoying.

The book is about annoying Bec, who's mother is a celebrity chef. Mum gets sent on a book tour to the US, and dad goes along with. Dad has recently suffered from depression and been institutionalized, and its felt that a trip will be just the thing. I should note here that most authors I've spoken feel that book tours are exhausting and not usually very much fun. Anyways, so Bec and her little brother and sister are going to be left in the capable hands of Mrs. D. for five weeks. This, by the way, is not the set up. The parents don't leave until about half way through the book.

Anyways, Bec hangs out with her girlfriends, falls in love with a boy, falls out of love when said boy shags one of her friends, and snags herself a much nicer boy as her new boyfriend.

The title of the story comes from Bec's musing about the nature of stories. About how life doesn't really have a begining, a middle and an end. That you may be following the blue yarn, but eventually you are going to get all knotted up in the other colours. In keeping with that, Lowry's story just sort of starts, and then stops. There isn't really any kind of plot. And whether you like that kind of thing or not is what will make the difference for you in this book, I think. I found it a bit boring, but that's just me.

Follow the Blue by Brigid Lowry
ISBN 0312342977
208 pages