Review

Zander is a Hollywood teen heart-throb who’s run into image problems due to a DUI (driving under the influence of drugs) charge. It’s threatening his career, so his agent arranges for him to go on a four day survival reality adventure with celebrity survival guru Rykon Hawke and whatever teen girl megafan wins the hastily arranged competition. He’s betting that being open around the cameras and interacting with a fan will help remind the public that they love him.

Charlie is an Australian working at an ice cream parlour/kids’ party place in her small coastal town, while she figures out what she wants to do post-school. She’s had a rough time: her best friend Amber had cancer and is only now in the clear, and her mum has recently died. When Amber wins the competition but can’t participate for health reasons, Charlie reluctantly agrees to take her place, despite her disgust at Zander’s DUI.

Adventuring through the Blue Mountains, they discover a lot about each other. But then real disaster strikes and they’re forced to undertake a perilous journey without their expert guide.

*

For me, this was very slow to get going. The first quarter (pre-Blue Mountains) is glacial. The second quarter (adventuring in the Blue Mountains) was better, but still lacking in any sort of effective narrative tension. Honestly, I thought about DNFing it many times. I only kept going because reader advisory is a big part of my job, and I wanted to see if it would get better. Fortunately, after disaster strikes at the halfway mark, the narrative pace picks up, and I found the second half mildly enjoyable.

It has a few niggly issues aside from pacing: some key plot points that are revealed later are easily guessed early on; characters’ actions are sometimes justified in ways that seem plot-convenient, rather than authentic; and there are a few pretty unlikely coincidences. Moreover, the whole thing just lacks zing.

However, Lynette Noni has a lot of young, devoted fans in our school, and I think they’ll probably enjoy this one too: it’s straightforward and accessible, and it’s told in first person alternating perspective, which is always a favourite. It also has an Australian setting, with Australian flora and fauna, and might be enjoyed by fans of reality survival TV. And it has a very pretty cover.

I listened to the audiobook, which was fine, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the male narrator’s Hollywood voice and the female narrator was doing a Scottish rather than South African accent for a minor character, which I found a bit interesting. I listened to it at 1.25 speed because the whole thing was just moving too slowly for me at normal speed.

Suitable for year 7 & up (although will mostly be enjoyed by year 7s & 8s, I feel).

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Charlie’s mum recently died in a car accident after colliding with a drunk driver (backstory) and Charlie is grieving; her lovely stepdad, is grieving and withdrawn; best friend Amber had cancer (leukemia, from memory?) and has only recently recovered; panic attacks (sensitively treated with suggestions for how to overcome them); Zander was roofied at a party, hence his unwitting DUI charge; Zander’s best friend is about to kill himself, but doesn’t; it’s heavily implied that Zander’s other best friend, an actress, was sexually harassed or worse (no details given) by a powerful Hollywood figure, and then was blacklisted for going public about it; Zander’s birth parents were also killed in a car accident by a drunk driver; extremely perilous situations, near-deaths and survival adventures, including: abseiling, ground collapsing, falling down waterfalls, poisonous snakes, nearly drowning, canyoning in dangerous water filled places, cold weather, crossing collapsing bridges, etc.; wild animals are eaten, including a possum (they didn’t kill it) and a brown snake (killed in self-defence); Charlie and Xander are manipulated by the entertainment industry and filmed without true consent (although they seem to get over that reasonably quickly). Romance is mlw. One near kiss and one actual kiss.

*

Noni, L. (2025). Wandering wild (N. Thomas & H. Miller, Narr.) [Audiobook]. Penguin Random House Australia Audio.

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