The Best Thing
One or two intimate scenes, fade to black or lightly described.
Euphemistic. Softened or poetic language, little direct anatomy.
Estimated from the blurb · 0 reader votes
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Content warnings
Blurb
Mel's life is totally out of sync, at school, at home, everywhere. Pug is the only good thing - loving him, in his untidy room scented and shadowed with frangipani, she finds passionate fulfilment. But his world is so different from hers - can they possibly make it together? And can she let him in on her overwhelming secret? 'Tough, tender, sexy, passionate, this is one of the year's best.' - Pam Macintyre, Age ' The Best Thing is an impossibly good book. I felt enriched by reading it. It has the energy of a rock concert, and the finesse of a violin. I wish I'd written it.' - John Marsden 'A beautiful book, a passionate novel of love, of learning, of loss and of new life.' - Sophie Masson
Read it? Rate it
Best Thing
It's the same story of Mel, Pug and her hidden pregnancy, so the class-divide passion and tender ache land identically.
Forever, Again
Another teen romance where loving someone means carrying a secret too big to share, though here the secret is a past-life murder and the mood is thriller, not gritty realism.
Kiss Me Deadly
Short forbidden-love stories with the same charged teenage yearning, but supernatural and far lighter on consequences than a pregnancy storyline.
Having My Baby
Keeps the pregnancy-at-the-center hook and class-clash tension, but it's adult, funnier, and guaranteed a happy ending.
The mermaid, the witch, and the sea
Same feel of a girl whose world doesn't fit and who finds one person worth risking everything for; slower burn, queer, and much more violent.
Darkest Mercy
Love across incompatible worlds and painful choices again, though wrapped in faerie war and grief rather than a bedroom scented with frangipani.