Obsession

by Julia Lawrinson

Charlie is fifteen. She's just moved to a new school and nothing is going right. She's hanging around with a girl she can't stand, her mother is a grief-stricken, wine-sodden mess, and she has no one to talk to except the pages of her diary. Everything seems hopeless. And then she meets Kate.

Kate is sixteen, she's a singer, and she's wonderful. She's everything Charlie isn't, and she makes Charlie's life seem bearable. But when Kate announces she's leaving, Charlie is desperate. Desperate enough to do anything - anything - to get Kate to stay.

259 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

About the author

Julia Lawrinson is an Australian writer of children's and young adult fiction. Her debut novel Obsession (Fremantle Press, 2001) won the Western Australian Premier's Prize for Young Adult Writing: since then her work has been shortlisted for numerous awards. Her latest book for young adults is Before You Forget (PenguinRandomHouse 2017). Her latest novel for children is Mel and Shell (Fremantle Press 2021), and in 2023 she published her first picture book, City of Light (ill. Heather Potter and Mark Jackson) with Wild Dog Books. Her memoir, How To Avoid A Happy Life, is out with Fremantle Press.

Reviews

[Anjali · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obsession by Australian Julia Lawrinson catches your eye and the blurb certainly was an interesting plot.
But the main character Charlie is annoying and not a very likeable character. The story isn't actually very interesting. It only centres around a girl Charlie...fatherless, miserable, hates life. I hate the mother...and Charlie certainly conveyed her feelings about her mother well. That was the only time I went "Go Girl!". And this obsession thing she has with Kate takes some time before Charlie's feelings really settle in.
The blurb for the book is pretty misleading. It says something among the lines of: But then Kate announces she's leaving and Charlie will do anything to stop her. But that only happens in the last few pages that Kate announces her leave.
The story was very drab, boring. I only read it hoping for some suspenseful climax in the story but was sadly disappointed. I don't reccoment this book. I gave it two stars because to be honest it did hit a few high points such as the character descriptions and the loathesome mother but the rest. Not very good.

[fatima kassira · Rating 1 out of 5]

it had a bad story line, bad ending, bad everything
and the synopsis was so mis leading

[Sarah Thornton]

Anything's better than people -page 219

[Shannon Castle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll always have a soft spot for this book. When I was a confused teenager, unsure about my sexuality and couldn't understand why I wasn't attracted to boys like every other girl in my grade it made things so much clearer for me. It was the first book I read with a lesbian protagonist. Although Charlotte's behavior was a little creepy, it's quite realistic to a teen having her first major crush and being so inundated with feelings that confuse the crap out of her.