This is my second YA novel, out through UQP. 

Frankie and Joely are best friends. They love each other like no one else can. But when a summer break in the country brings fresh distractions, simmering jealousies and festering secrets – can their friendship survive? 

It’s the holidays and, together, Frankie and Joely board a train and escape the city and their mums for a week of freedom. But when Joely introduces Frankie to her country cousins, Thommo and Mack, it soon becomes clear that something other than the heat is getting under their skin.

As the temperature rises and the annual New Years’ Eve party looms closer, local boy Rory stirs things up even more and secrets start to blister. Suddenly the girls’ summer getaway is not panning out how either of them imagined. 

Will they still be ‘Frankie and Joely’ by the end of their holiday?

In Frankie and Joely I set out to explore the complex relationships that often exist between teenage girls and their best friends, using the hot, dry backdrop of an Australian country town in the middle of summer.

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‘Frankie and Joely went straight to my heart. It’s a quietly mesmerising, finely wrought tale of friendship, loyalty, loneliness and “firsts'". Simmone Howell, author of Girl Defective