PLAIN JANE

YA BOOK PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR

At nearly 16, Jane has lived in the shadow of her little sister Emma's cancer diagnosis for over three years. And now, with her parents struggling to cope financially and emotionally, Jane's life in her rural mining village is a never-ending monotony of skipping school, long bus rides to the hospital, and hanging out with a boyfriend she doesn't even know why she's with. Nobody really cares that her life is stuck in neutral. That is until she meets Farley, an unlikely friend with irritatingly upbeat ideas, who, despite Jane's attempts to avoid him, seems to show up everywhere she is. Slowly, she begins to see what he can see in her - maybe he is right to think that life can be better. When Emma's doctors decide that the only hope for her recovery is a radical and life-altering procedure, Jane can't - she won't - accept it. But why is she the only one prepared to fight?