Review: The Yearbook Committee by Sarah Ayoub

Sarah Ayoub's second novel is a bleak story of five seemingly very different kids, a school yearbook and a tragic event that occurs at a school party. As the lives of the main characters Matty, Ryan, Tammi, Charlie and Gillian begin to intersect, all start to learn some big lessons from each other, while the reader is left to speculate about the central mystery of who comes to harm at the party at the end of the school year and the how's and why of it all.

To be honest, I didn't really enjoy this one. As well the whole thing about the kids putting aside their social and class differences to become friends, I didn't care for how a number of stories within the book were resolved, particularly that of Matty. Gillian's story was sadly realistic, and the others were not interesting to me at all.

So maybe I'm just not the right reader for this book.

This one would probably have greater relevance to readers who are in their upper years of high school and who are pondering the big questions of how to break free of cliques, stereotypes and the expectations of their parents (and the mistakes made by them.)

This book counts toward my reading goal for the Aussie Author Challenge 2021

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