Zac and Mia by AJ Betts

JUDGES' COMMENTS

When the teenaged main characters in Zac and Mia first meet in an adult oncology ward, Zac is ugly, weary and isolated by necessity, whilst Mia is beautiful, angry and isolated by choice. After tentative attempts at connection, they find the briefest moment of solidarity before they become separated. They lose touch, even forget about one another for a time, and with healing and remission Zac becomes whole, handsome and confident, while Mia remains, at least in her own mind, hideously disfigured. And she's still angry. She's running away, too angry to come up with a better plan, too proud to go back.

Betts' telling of an unlikely and unconventional love story squeezes every drop of advantage out of a structure that is ubiquitous in young adult literature, the dual narrative. But unlike the dual voices in many of these novels, the voices of Zac and Mia are distinctive, real, raw, unsentimental, empathetic and completely believable. At times we are asked to endure a lengthy silence as one end of the ‘conversation’ goes dead for several chapters. This structural choice palpably builds the tension.

Zac and Mia is beautifully crafted and unselfconscious in style and language, and, without any hint of hyperbole, these characters become part of the reader's experience and will live on in a reader's memory. This is a novel that is completely accessible and appealing to its intended audience, the young adult reader. Zac and Mia is very well written, and will be very well read.