TRICK OR TREAT #B10: AUSSIE OUTSIDER

Genre: Contemporary
Category: Young Adult
Title: AUSSIE OUTSIDER
Word Count: 63,000  

Hands down, the costumed character I relate to most is Alice from ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Not only is my new home in the Land Down Under, where everything is not what it seems, but it comes with a very unhospitable Queen of Hearts, my father’s best friend and ex-fiance, Rita Harper, whose eyes say, “Off with her head,” every time she looks at me.

Swoon-worthy boys, the most stunning setting on Earth, a dysfunctional family relationship and a seventeen-year-old mystery equal a tasty YA read.

First 200 Words:

When a girl turns sixteen, she has certain expectations as to what will happen.

Her bra size will mysteriously increase at least two cup sizes and she’ll shoot up three inches overnight. The guy she’s been crushing over her whole sophomore year will dump his cheerleader girlfriend and ask her out instead. Her numerous friends will throw a surprise party for her in which the whole school turns out. Later, everyone will remember it as the best party they’ve ever been to. And for the finale, her parents will blindfold her and guide her to a shiny new convertible parked in the driveway with a giant red ribbon around it. “Happy birthday,”they’ll say as they hand her the keys. “And don’t worry about the gas or insurance; we’ve got it covered.”

I never thought I’d be alone at the airport on my sixteenth birthday, handing my passport and one-way ticket to a United Airlines agent for the flight leaving in twenty minutes from Los Angeles to Sydney.

I never thought the only happy birthday I’d hear would be from the surprised agent as he glanced at my passport and back at me. “Sweet sixteen, isn’t it?” he asked as he scanned my passport through the computer.