Tag Archives: Emily O’Beirne

Tierney reviews Future Leaders of Nowhere by Emily O’Beirne

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Finn takes a break from high school in Melbourne to attend a camp for high-achieving students who are “future leaders.” There she is elected to lead her classmates as they compete against teams from other schools, and she meets a fellow young leader who intrigues her: serious, driven Willa. With their teams, they work to do well at the camp’s month-long competition (and, while they’re at it, outwit one of the other leaders, Drew, referred to alternately as “douche,” “turd boy,” and “idiot kid”). As the game progresses, Finn and Willa get to know each other better despite their rivalry – and begin to fall for one another, navigating their feelings on top of the competition’s complexities and struggles in their personal lives

​.​The first half of the Future Leaders of Nowhere is told from Finn’s perspective, and the second half from Willa’s: together their perspectives weave not only a delightful romance, but also a compelling narrative of young adults on an emotional journey to find themselves and their place in the world. Though the outer framework of the game is a slightly convoluted plot element, it does the trick in terms of providing external conflict and helping get Finn and Willa together, and its machinations don’t detract too much from the character arcs. Finn and Willa are both engaging, endearing characters – as a reader, you root for them to end up with one another, but you also root for their individual character development, and for the external storyline (winning the game!).

Representation matters – and O’Beirne does a deft job composing a diverse cast of characters​,​without heavy-handedness. Willa is confidently a lesbian, and Finn is unapologetically and unquestioningly bisexual. Willa is also multiracial (her mother is Indian and her father is white), and many of the secondary characters are people of color as well – O’Beirne’s descriptions of her characters are natural and flow into the story without giving pause, though these details are for the most part relatively minor and don’t unpack much of the characters’ identities as people of color in Australia​.

With Future Leaders of Nowhere, O’Beirne has crafted another excellent young adult novel, replicating many of the strengths of her previous novel, Here’s the Thing (which was published in November 2016, and which I reviewed for the Lesbrary in December): both novels boast appealing characters, a queer relationship that draws the reader in (and a thoughtful – if perhaps occasionally overly intricate – storyline that revolves around more than the relationship), and relatable emotional journeys. Future Leaders of Nowhere is well worth the read if you are into captivating queer YA – make sure to pick it up before the upcoming publication of its sequel, All the Ways to Here.

Tierney reviews Here’s the Thing by Emily O’Beirne

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When Zel’s family moves back to Australia from the United States, she has to find her bearings in Sydney, while also making sense of the relationship she left behind: as Zel narrates the process of settling in and making friends at her new school, she also uses flashbacks to tell the story of meeting and falling for Prim in New York. It’s a sweet young adult novel – the story focuses thoughtfully on adolescent relationships, and as the present unfolds and the past is slowly revealed, you eagerly start to fit together the pieces that make up the puzzle that is Zel’s life.

Here’s the Thing is a thoroughly enjoyable read – Zel is a well fleshed-out character, and her first-person narrative (and copious endearing parenthetical asides) really draw the reader in. It’s refreshing to read a YA novel with a lesbian protagonist whose story doesn’t revolve exclusively around coming out or finding one true love. Coming out is an important step, and a process that never really ends (Zel even talks about coming out to people and clocking their reaction), but it’s great to see a YA character who is gay right off the bat, and for whom romance is just one aspect of the story (though there is certainly romance in Zel’s life – an excellent slow burn romance with one of her new friends, built up in just the right way that has the reader wholeheartedly rooting for them).

The novel does have a few missteps. There are a few regrettable comments: for example, there is an odd interaction between Zel and her father in which he proclaims that she couldn’t have been asexual because they are Italian and they need to love. Zel also seems to live that special shiny kind of life found only in YA novels: she has moved across the globe twice, her mother works for a modeling agency, and her father makes costumes for the opera. Some of these details detract from, rather than add to, the relatable nature of Zel’s story – but these qualms are minor, and easily overcome.

The novel’s greatest strength is its focus on the characters’ relationships. The account of Zel’s relationship with Prim, in both the past and the present, is an excellent exposition of unreciprocated teenage love and teenage angst – their emotions and actions feel raw and real. At the heart of Zel’s story is the process of figuring out friendship and love, and the messiness that can come in trying to distinguish between the two – Zel’s journey is both universal and wholly her own.