Liar's beach by Katie Cotugno

Linden is a lacrosse-playing scholarship-holding College student living amongst other students with far greater financial means. An injury has allowed him to escape vacation work and a romance break-up and yet it also puts his scholarship at risk.  Invited to holiday with his College room-mate, Jasper, on their east-coast island holiday home, Linden encounters the life of privilege that is far removed from his own life and his struggles. Keeping his background a hazy unknown allows him the pretence of fitting in and romancing Jasper’s sister.  His former childhood companion (ironically named Holiday, and from the wealthy family where his mother works as housekeeper) is also on the island and they reconnect in the heady environment of the USA young adult social life of wealthy indolence. A potentially fatal mishap to one of the former friends of Jasper’s family leads Holiday and Linden to reconnect and try and unravel who might have caused the violence and solve the mystery that the police seem uninterested in pursuing.

This is a story far removed from middle-class Australia, and yet television has given us a glimpse of how wealthy US teens might live their lives. This book feels like it might be waiting to become a film script, with romance, mystery and conflict melding together in an older teen drama set amidst mansion-like holiday homes. I can’t say I loved the setting and the characters, and it has hints of a Great Gatsby drama. The influence of great wealth has a cloying atmosphere and relationships seem to bounce between bedroom and swimming pool or beach parties. The story revolves around the envy and yet desire of Linden to fit in, and his inability to read those around him, and the nonchalance of the wealthy young adults towards the individual whose life has been altered irreparably in the family swimming pool. I won’t rush to recommend this book, but there will be some 16-20 year olds who might enjoy the escape into the alternative life of the uber-wealthy young adults and the mystery in their world. Note: Some drug-references, swearing.

Themes: USA – Social life, Wealth and privilege, College students, Mystery, Relationship conflict.

Carolyn Hull