Mim knows what she wants, and where she wants to go—anywhere but home, stuck in the suburbs with her mother who won’t get off the couch, and two brothers in prison.

She’s set herself rules to live by, but she’s starting to break them.

Now Mim has to retrieve a lost package for her mother. Does this make her a drug runner? Why is a monster dog called Gargoyle hidden in the back shed? And Jordan, the boy she sent Valentines to for years, why is he now suddenly a creep? How come there’s a huge gap between her and her best friend, Tahnee? And who is the mysterious girl next door who moans at night?

Over the nine days before her seventeenth birthday, Mim’s life turns upside down. She has problems, and she’s determined to solve them herself. But in the end, she works out who her people are, and the same things look entirely different.

Text Publishing - June 27, 2011

Wakefield’s debut establishes her as  a skilled writer with a new take on the teen experience.  All I Ever Wanted is filled to the brim with the seedier aspects of this small community of misfits and criminals but there is a pervasive sense of hope throughout.  Mim sorely wants to escape her family and her general lot in life but finds herself in the middle of a situation that goes against everything she’s been trying to achieve.

Wakefield’s beautiful phrasing and sparky narrative is at odds with her setting which makes Mim’s journey all the more powerful and affecting.

Genre: contemporary

Topic/s: Family, friendship, juvenile crime,

**Vikki Wakefield will be in Melbourne for CYL’s Off the Record event (evening session and youth day) August 2-3.  Information here.

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