A Good Kind of Trouble by Brooke Blurton and Melanie Saward

Title: A Good Kind of Trouble

Author: Brooke Blurton and Melanie Saward

Genre: Contemporary Young Adult

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 29^th January 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: A brilliantly warm-hearted NEW series from Brooke Blurton and Melanie Saward, full of high school longing, friendship, footy matches, and dreams to change the world!

It’s funny how your life changes.

I used to worry about playing footy and whether my first kiss would be with a boy or a girl. I used to worry about having enough time after school and putting my little cousins to bed to go for a run with my best friend, Loz, and whether she’d ever look at me the way she looks at my brother, Poss.

But a new girl came to school and there’s something about her … I suddenly got the courage to stand up to our history teacher about teaching our true history with books written by blackfullas. And somehow she did too!

At first we were on top of the world – and we might even have a chance to change it just a little bit. But now I’m banned from footy, and I wonder … is it all going to be worth it?

~*~

Jamie lives in a small town in Western Australia with her aunt, her uncle, her brothers, and Little Pippa, her cousin’s daughter. Her cousin and mother are off in Perth, and Jamie’s supportive family has stepped up to care for them in Parko. Jamie is fourteen and in high school, navigating friendship, football, school, and who she is when a new girl comes to school. And once she sees Stella, Jamie finds she has the confidence to speak up against social injustices and the need to diversify history lessons – the need to include more voices. She’s noticed things throughout her life, and has never felt things are fair. Has always felt that her intersecting identities have been what has held her back. She’s forced to miss out on footy because of her gender. She’s conflicted over who she loves and who she sees as a friend, and she’s determined to make sure Indigenous voices are heard.

To make this happen, she teams up with Stella for a humanities project to show why schools need to teach and showcase more voices than are currently heard, and make sure people have the opportunity to learn more than what they are offered officially. Jamie’s story of fitting in and direct or indirect discrimination, working out who you are and who you can trust goes to the heart of what makes us human and what drives us to live and make changes in our lives and communities. It is at its heart a story about Indigenous and queer identity, which feeds into intersectional identities, and examines the various people that make up a family, and how they teach us, what they teach us, and how they help us or try to understand us. In doing so, it shines a light on the workings of a small town, and the conflicts of what people want to see in their education versus the constraints that politics can put on what is included, used or excluded. This book has a strong, confident queer and Indigenous voice that sparks a revolution in a way to widen what schools teach, and to give everyone a voice. To allow everyone a chance to learn an Indigenous language, to learn more about Indigenous history, stories, science and other areas alongside what is already taught in the school in the story.

Jamie, her friends and her family are determined to have their voices heard, and by extension, the voices of other groups who are marginalised, silenced or ignored and excluded – whether directly or indirectly. It starts out as Jamie wanting more Indigenous knowledge in her curriculum, but expands to include the voices of so many other people in her community, which I think goes to show that there are issues that affect everyone, even if we don’t think they look affected. There are issues that people have opinions on, but might be too scared to speak out. A character like Jamie gives her entire community the confidence to speak out, to be themselves, to embrace knowledge they have previously been denied by those in power. We can’t know about things that are kept from us, or things that have been hidden or things people in the past have tried to erase. It’s not scary broadening our knowledge in a diverse way. It gives everyone in a community and country a chance to understand more of where they live. It can help create a more accepting culture, and as someone who is only learning about some of the things Jamie brings up now – often in kids’ books – I find that it’s helping me see how rich a culture and country can be when more voices than the winners – the ones with the power to control the narrative – are heard. And there is probably a very long way to go so that the voices Indigenous people, disabled people, queer people, women, people of other races, immigrants and anyone who does not fit into the supposed norm are all heard equally.

This is going to be one that I think many readers will find empowering because there will be things they agree with or can relate to. Or it will spark people to take action and speak out, because a truly inclusive world does everything it can to make sure everyone is included equally and equitably. And a great young adult book for younger young adult readers around age 13-15 that has relatable characters and themes, with humour and joy.