Dress Rehearsal, by Zoe Thurner

‘This term we’ve had a bank robbery, an abduction and this crazy show. You kids are running wild, Lara. It’s too much.’

Lara Pearlman is a teenage girl with a busy life. She loves shopping for retro clothes, eating anything loaded with cream and chocolate and a boy called Blake. Her best friend Oggy likes some of those things – which can, at times be a problem. Add to that the complication of her other friend, Nathan, seeming to want to kiss her, and life is pretty complicated.

At school, Lara’s drama class is preparing for a production – but the drama isn’t all on the stage. There are relationships starting and finishing, friendships in trouble, and cast members coming and going. Oggy and Lara witness a bank robbery, and are part of an abduction, both of which have ramifications they don’t foresee.

Dress Rehearsal is a funny, turbulent story full of highs and lows as the likeable Lara shares her journey in an honest first-person voice. At times the reader will want to shake her, but this is part of her appeal – the feel that she is a real, flawed teenage girl.

Dress Rehearsal is an outstanding debut novel for West Aussie author Zoe Thurner.

Dress Rehearsal

Dress Rehearsal, by Zoe Thurner
Fremantle Press, 2011
ISBN 9781921696671

This book can be purchased in good bookstores, or online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.