Book: Tomorrow When the War Began

I recently read the series "Tomorrow when the War Began" by John Marsden. I literally could not put the book down, it was so thought provoking and engaging.

The novel sets place in a fictional town known as Wirrawee, in Australia in the outback. The main character is 17 year old Ellie, who is a farm girl and knows about cattle, how to shoot a rifle and things like using a chainsaw. Ellie decides that instead of going to the yearly Wirrawee Show that her and her friends from school go camping out in the bush. She organises a group with her best friend Corrie, Corrie's boyfriend Kevin, Lee who is Vietnamese and works at his parents restaurant, Robyn the daughter of the church pastor, her neighbour and close friend Homer who is Greek-Australian and Fi who is the daughter of lawyers, and even though she doesn't know much about farming they ask her to come along.

The group of teenagers go out to the bush to camp (to me the landscape reminds me of the blue mountains) while they are in a place known as "Hell" cut off from the rest of civilisation, Ellie wakes up to notice fighter jets in the night sky. They aren't too worried, thinking that these jets are just the Australian Army planes.

However, once they return home to their parents places, they find that Australia has been invaded and the population has been imprisoned at the Wirrawee show ground.

The teenagers, soon have to fight for their survival and I did not find it farfetched at all. It makes you think about what is right and wrong, loyalty, friends, in a way the book kind of reminded me of the mateship that is outlined in Australian Army history, such as not leaving anyone behind. It's not all brave though and the characters have meltdowns and breakdowns, many people die and friends are lost. Being in the generation that I am in, it makes me actually think of the fact of the generations before who had to fight for their freedom and in turn guaranteed our freedom today, it puts in perspective of what our population would have to do to protect our country, friends and family, that if we lost our homes, freedom, how would we cope?

They have already made the movie for the first book, I enjoyed it even though it was a low budget. The books are great though. There are seven book in the series.

Happy reading! xox V