Dare Truth or Promise
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A love story with a difference – girl meets girl, they fall in love. A powerful and turbulent novel about first love and crossing boundaries.
Louie is a prefect at Woodhaugh High. She plays hockey, passes exams and acts in school plays. She’s going to be a lawyer.
Willa lives in a pub. She had an affair with the daughter of a preacher and was kicked out of Miller Park College. She just wants to get through her final exams and become a chef. Quietly.
Then they fall in love – fast. And everything the girls were sure of – their families, their friends, their faith, their identities – are called into question. Willa and Louie face the consequences, difficulties and joys of their relationship.
A fast-paced, turbulent but ultimately uplifting story of deep, painful, heart-wrenching first love.
Written in Paula Boock's crisp, direct style this gripping book has a strong appeal for both adults and teenagers.
'…an essential addition for all secondary school and public libraries.' Dr Elody Rathgen, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Canterbury
'…it has such a powerful and beautifully written message about the meaning of love.' Otago Daily Times
'I laughed, I cried, I held my breath, as Paula Boock's Willa and Louie fell in and out of love and dared to be true to themselves. Evening Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Zealand author Boock traces the developing lesbian romance between two high school seniors in an ultimately uplifting novel. The two are from different social strata: Louie quotes Shakespeare and poetry and comes from a conservative, upper-middle-class background, while newcomer Willa, still suffering from the repercussions of an ill-fated first relationship with another girl, lives above a pub. Told in a third-person narrative that alternates between the two characters' points of view, the book offers a frank appraisal of the girls' initial attraction, passions and the conflicts of dealing with a variety of outsiders--parents, friends, co-workers, etc. When Louie's mother discovers the two girls in bed together in Louie's room, she forbids Louie to see Willa. After a rather prolonged period of suffering and soul-searching, they are able to reunite. Although Boock's intense narrative crosses into melodrama and occasionally plants an important scene offstage, teens who are curious about or struggling with questions of sexual identity will find reassurance in these pages. The characters' interactions with Louie's father and priest, and Willa's conversations with her own mother, convey an empathy and tolerance strong enough to counterbalance the intolerance the lovers face from everyone else. Ages 12-up.
