Dreaming of Amelia / The Ghosts of Ashbury High
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Dreaming of Amelia (or The Ghosts of Ashbury High, in the US and Canada) is the story of Amelia and Riley. They're bad kids from the bad crowd at bad Brookfield High, and they've just transferred to Ashbury. Brilliant, mysterious and probably evil, they have the rich kids at Ashbury spellbound. But just who are Amelia and Riley? Tantalisingly aloof, they are somehow managing to have an extraordinary impact on all the HSC Ashbury students, and the staff. Told through memoirs written as part of the gothic fiction elective in the HSC English exam, Dreaming of Amelia is a story about ghosts, secrets, madness, passion, locked doors, femme fatales – and that terrifying moment in the final year of high school when you realise that the future's come to get you. |
First Reviews of Dreaming of Amelia
"An irresistible novel about bad kids ... this will keep you more than entertained."
- The Sunday Age
"This novel is an absolute gem - the sort of book you really can't put down.... anyone who has lived through the HSC recently - as a student or parent - will appreciate how brilliantly this book captures that final year of school with all its fear, angst and hope."
- Family Circle magazine
"Moriarty knows her characters intimately. She knows how to hold the reader's attention and keep them guessing to the end with her clever, sharp prose and subtle innuendo."
- Good Reading magazine (5 stars)
"This very clever and bewitching novel mostly takes place during an HSC English exam on gothic fiction. ... There is a beautiful weaving of a story of a young Irish convict, the uncovering of a frightening past and a storm-lashed ending that will test each one of these students as they face the final moments of their school lives."
- Deborah Abela, ABC Radio Canberra
"Poetic and original."
- Magpies magazine
"Just the right balance of spooky and hilariously funny."
- Steph Bowe on Hey, teenager of the year blog
"Dreaming of Amelia, by Jaclyn Moriarty, was a wondrous strange, gorgeous, funny, bizarre mind trip of a novel that had me totally captivated, ensnared, drunk on its beauty and wildness, for two whole days. When I wasn't reading it (i.e., when I was meant to be working), I was thinking about it; mulling it over; wishing I was still reading it; wanting to find out what happened next. ... It made my brain glow. It was fabulous."
- Miss Cackle's Booky Nook Blog (cacklesbluemoonyear.blogspot.com)