What They Told Me by Hayley Lawrence

Title: What They Told Me

Author: Hayley Lawrence

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st February 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 360

Price: $18.99

Synopsis: We are the luckiest, Elliot’s dad told her. And Elliot, of course, believed him. Elliott and her family have lived in the house of a thousand storms by Crooked River all her life, with her best friend, Drake, just a kayak ride downstream. But one ordinary evening, Elliott’s parents tell her some shattering news and Elliott realises they are no longer the luckiest. Has it all been a lie? As Elliott’s life is split apart, she stands to lose all the places and the people she calls home. Except Elliott refuses to lose anything. Because if she lets go of everything she loves, Elliott will surely lose herself too. A heart-wrenching story of loss, love and the things you get to keep from the author of The Other Side of Tomorrow, CBCA Children’s Book of the Year Award Honour Book, 2023.

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Meet fifteen-year-old Elliott Gillespie, who lives in an old house that has been in her family for generations, and her dad has always told her that they are Gillespies, that they are the luckiest family ever. And for fifteen years, she has believed that. Until one ordinary evening, her mother makes an announcement – the Gillespies are not the luckiest, and she is moving out – into a unit in the city. Leaving Elliott, her dad and her little brother, Lachy. And Elliott finds her life split in two, divided in ways she never thought were possible. As she navigates a new life that she doesn’t want everyone to know about, something that she hopes is temporary, Elliott starts to focus on what she is losing and what she has to let go of as grief and confusion take hold – she’s feeling lost and hates all the changes in her life.

As Elliott navigates a new life, her feelings are front and centre – as they should be in a young adult novel tackling the issue of parental separation and divorce. Her voice is strong and clear, and it is easy to see where she is coming from – how she has taken on everything she has ever been told, the way she has never questioned things, and her considered yet angry reflection on the past through several snippets between the chapters called ‘The Gillespies’ as her family life is explored – and Hayley has cleverly used these snippets to show how the family came to be and what has driven them apart. Elliott feels things strongly – and she knows how to deal with events like the flooding of her friend, Tamar’s house, but not with people leaving her – giving up what they promised they would have forever.

Her story is filled with the cracks in life that affect us – losing family, losing our home, people moving on with their lives beyond school, and the fear of facing up to friends – the very people who can help you. I truly felt for Elliott – it was like she was speaking to the young adult reader, or whoever is reading the book because nobody else was hearing her. She needed to be heard, and in writing this novel, Hayley has given her and other children who are going through or who have been through what Elliott is experiencing a voice. At the same time, though it is through Elliott’s eyes, we see how the rest of her family is affected. What she feels she has to do now – take care of her dad and brother now that her mother has – as Elliott puts it at the start of the book – abandoned them. We see how each member copes – in Elliott’s words and the frustration she feels that everyone thinks she can’t cope – I could see that she had a good handle on things and kept waiting for her parents to talk to her properly – her rage whenever she felt placated or shut down worked – and was the impetus to help her start looking for the things that she could keep. The little things that mattered, the memories and moments that remind her of the love her family has for each other, and the love they will always have for each other. This was a beautiful thread throughout the book as Elliott grapples with life as a teenager as well as a life divided between two parents.

I felt the pacing suited Elliott’s journey. Everyone around her seemed to expect her to accept things and get on with it quickly, as though they thought she would bounce back faster than adults. Yet, Elliott and her parents are human – and the pacing of the novel allowed the story and characters to explore this and how people are not perfect. That everyone adjusts to things differently and at different paces, and illustrated the idea that we can’t expect everyone to deal with things the way we want them to. Like her parents, Elliott was hurting – her pain was just as valid, her need to process things was valid, and I could see ad understand that she needed time to come to terms with things, to be able to sit down and talk with her parents, and to understand how her dad’s stories of their lives differed from the stories her mother had.

This pacing made the story powerful, because it was understandable that characters held things back, or bottled things up and then exploded with rage – it was a situation where there was no right answer, and everyone was just doing the best that they could. I think this is what made it work well for me – it allowed all these flaws and imperfections to come to life and are shown sympathetically on the page for readers to understand, to see themselves represented and to empathise. I wanted to hug Elliott, especially when things started to get really bad, and I could see how overwhelmed she was getting and how much she was struggling. Hayley knows how to write highly emotional novels for teenagers, where the main character is dealing with something lifechanging, and this one, drawn from her own experiences, is exceptionally powerful and one that I could not put down. I wanted to see how Elliott’s journey ended and I loved seeing how it all came together.

A sensitive and emotional young adult novel that I hope will be widely read and shared amongst older readers.