Title: All I Ever Wanted
Author: Vikki Wakefield
Release Date: 27th June 2011
My Rating: 3/5
Blurb:
Rule Number One: I will not turn out like my mother.
Mim wants to be anywhere but home - in a dead suburb and with a mother who won't get off the couch.
Mim wants to be anywhere but home - in a dead suburb and with a mother who won't get off the couch.
She's set herself rules to live by, but she's starting to break them.
In nine days, she'll turn seventeen. What she doesn't know is that her life is about to change forever. And when it does, the same things will look entirely different.
In A Nutshell:
All I Ever Wanted was a unique novel, distinctly Australian with likeable characters fighting to figure out who they are, and who they don't want to be.
My Review:
All I Ever Wanted is one of those novels that pretty much everyone raves about. I thought it was well-written and different to a lot of other stuff in the YA world. It had a distinctly Australian style to it with likeable characters in Mim, Lola and Kate. But I don't think I saw what everyone else seems to, even if I can't put my finger on why.
Our main character Mim feels like everyone is always waiting for her to screw up, for her life to never amount to anything more than a single teenage mum, hooked on drugs, or in jail like her brothers. So she has rules. Rules that she has set herself so she doesn't turn out like her mother or brothers, and so she can get out and get a new life. It is a heartfelt and desperate story about a girl who is stuck. Stuck in a world she doesn't think she belongs in and doesn't want any part of.
What she realises during the summer she turns seventeen is that there are bad, horrible people in the world, but there are also good people. There is no clear line though and if she stops pigeon-holing people for a moment, then sometimes, people can surprise you, for better or worse. She might discover that family is not always just blood, but the people around her, "your people", who will look after her no matter what. And she just might find her place in the world in the process.
Second Opinions
