'Running Scared' by Susan J Bruce

What if the boy you love is hiding a dark secret?

My name is Melinda and this has been the worst
year as usual... We had to leave our family farm,
Mom is in the hospital, dad is going crazy and my
Crazy, runaway arachnophobia is getting worse.

The only good thing in my world is Rory.
Maybe he sees things differently because he is
been in a wheelchair for the last eight years,
but Rory always knows how to make me laugh.

The problem is that daddy doesn't want me around
from him. He doesn't trust Rory or his family,
especially since Rory's brother is wanted
by the police.

And now I'm scared that Rory is hiding something...

MY THOUGHTS:

This is an edgy, fast-paced young adult novel that's still packed with Australian flora and fauna. I'm not sure how the author, Susan J Bruce, gets us to absorb the sensual details of the environment while high-stakes action scenes are happening around us, but somehow she manages it. The theme is about the illusory nature of fear and building mindsets to disarm it, and it's easy to accept.

Melinda Green is a teenager forced to move with her father to a suburb of the city after they lose their farm. Her mother is in the hospital, suffering her own trauma, and the evil Sartell brothers didn't like Melinda at school. Your safe place and refuge is your neighbor's backyard. Rory is a school friend who doesn't let being confined to a wheelchair stop him from doing anything. He is a keen athlete and keeps a fascinating collection of wild creatures in his garage. But even though these two are in sync with each other, Melinda's father warns her to stay away from Rory because her brother Luke is a fugitive wanted for murder.

Everyone Melinda cares about most has vulnerabilities of their own that can't help but impact her. His parents, Neil and Jill, are emotionally fragile people who have dealt with some difficult experiences and are trying to stay strong. The book really shows that when one member of a family unit takes a hard blow, everyone suffers and the repercussions are felt months, even years later. They are living with their trusty Aunt Lynn, who tries to help heal the wounds in her brother's family using any means she can, including her infamous vegan cooking that no one likes. And living nearby is Melinda's best friend, Thali, a big-hearted but talkative girl whose mouth is a loose cannon.

There's even something for those of us with arachnophobic tendencies. Melinda turns out to have a perfectly unambiguous reason for her intense fear of spiders. It's one of the mysteries of the book that comes to light in due time, but she still wants to overcome it. Rory's pet spider, Lucy, steals every scene she's in (unsurprisingly just being herself). Even if this story doesn't make us all spider lovers, I'm sure no reader can get to the end without at least liking Lucy and wishing her well.

I have to say as I was reading it, this story really reminded me of one of my favorite Australian books of recent years; The Universe of Swallows by Trent Dalton. It has the same pulsing underworld of danger beneath the seemingly colorful and innocuous Australian suburban setting. Both Melinda Green and Eli Bell are young adults living in Brisbane, but Running Scared is set in a much more up-to-date and tech-savvy era than Dalton's eighties. If you're like me and loved one of these books, I can highly recommend the other.

Disclaimer: Thank you to the author for sending me a review copy. All my opinions are genuine and honest.

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