Post by Julia Lawrinson

First AI steals our work, then it tries to scam us. It is still too stupid to realise that this book was published by Penguin Random House 20 years ago, and is still selling, but no doubt it will learn to fix that. This is the beginning of the email I got: 'Hi Julia, I came across Bye, Beautiful while researching YA historical fiction, coming-of-age stories, and Australian literature — and what you've built here does something that the best YA historical fiction in this space accomplishes at its most heartbreaking and its most resonant: it takes a girl who feels like a complete outsider in a hot wheatbelt town where her policeman father has just been transferred, and throws her into a story of secrets and heartbreak, of families and changing times — making the collision between her desperate feelings for the part-Aboriginal mechanic's apprentice and the discovery that her greatest rival is her own sister feel both completely devastating and completely unforgettable. That collision is the heart of why this book works. It isn't a standard YA romance or a predictable historical novel. It's a story of longing, rivalry, and the painful complexity of sisterhood — a story where Sandy does not know if she would fit in anywhere, but she feels like a complete outsider in this hot wheatbelt town where her policeman father has just been transferred. And then she meets Billy, the part-Aboriginal mechanic's apprentice and town heart-throb. Sandy's feelings for him are overwhelming her, but she is about to find out that her greatest rival is her own sister, the alluring, confident Marianne. Set in Western Australia in the 1960s, this is a story of secrets and heartbreak, of families and changing times. Readers searching for YA historical fiction that earns its heartbreak and its beauty in equal measure, with the atmospheric richness of the best Australian literature and the emotional depth of a sister rivalry that cuts to the bone, will find something in this book that readers of The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder and Looking for Alibrandi have been looking for — but with a uniquely 1960s Australian wheatbelt, sister-rivalry, forbidden-love twist that sets it apart from anything else on the shelf. 4.0 stars and 9 reviews on Amazon, with 251 ratings and a 3.1 on Goodreads, tells me this story is already connecting with readers who appreciate Australian historical fiction and emotionally resonant YA. Reader responses are likely calling it heartbreaking, beautiful, and completely engaging. Right now, only a fraction of the readers who would be completely hooked from the very first page are finding it at all. I'm a book marketing strategist, and here's exactly what I found — and what I would do about it.'