All I ever wanted by Vikki Wakefield

Text, 2011. ISBN 9781921758300.
(Age 15+) Highly recommended. Mim has a set of rules that she is determined to live by. The first is not to be like her mother. She lives in a down trodden suburb, her mother sits on the sofa all day and her two brother are in prison for drug dealing. She longs to get away from her life and see the world, but she is stuck even though she is determined to finish school and do something. When she retrieves a package for her mother and Jordan, the boy she has had a crush on forever, takes it away from her, she is faced with lots of questions and danger. How will she be able to solve her problems?
This is a compulsive read on many levels.& Wakefield has kept the suspense quite tense for the reader as Mim struggles to get back the package her mother sent her to obtain. There are the sinister people who are involved with drug dealing and this thriller like thread makes for an excellent story. But it is the interactions that Mim has with the many characters in the street that flesh out this story and make it stand above many other adolescent books. Tahnee, her best friend for many years, is changing. She has discovered boys and booze and Mim is not sure that the friendship can last. There is a strange girl next door and she hates the elderly neighbour nearby. Jordan, who she has worshipped from afar for years, may not be the hero that she always thought and will the monster dog Gargoyle attack her?
Mim makes many discoveries on the way about herself, her perceptions of others and whether she can manage to live by a set of rigid rules.
An ideal class set or literature circle book, one that would appeal to reluctant readers, especially girls, All I ever wanted is sure to become popular if promoted in the library. Vikki Wakefield has been interviewed by Readings  and teacher notes are available at the Text website.
Pat Pledger