Somehow the battles seem just as compelling, the stakes just as high. I am thrilled to report that Marchetta's writing is equally brilliant, whether it be a fantasy world ripped apart by genocide or a modern day boys' school shaken up by the admittance of a handful of sixteen year old girls. If you know Melina Marchetta's astounding fantasy novel, Finnikin of the Rock, you know how skilled she is at building a rich, detailed world and populating it with characters who are complex, multi-dimensional, compelling and highly likable.

Someone a bit like me.' What seems on the surface like a fairly typical teen coming of age story turns out to be anything but.

Standing in the doorway to her mother's room Francesca says, 'today the Mia we all know disappears and she becomes someone with nothing to say. Francesca is sullen and mostly silent until she comes home from school one day to find her mother in bed, listless, despondent and with nothing to say. Mia Spinelli is a dynamo - university lecturer, involved mother, community activist and devoted friend who never sits still. She expects Francesca to fight for change at school, make new friends and finding a boy to date. She goes on to tell us how her mother, Mia, continues to ruin her life by expecting Francesca to be more like her - socially active and extroverted.

Francesca Spinelli begins her story by telling us how her mother has ruined her life by deciding that she will spend the last two years of her high school career at St Sebastian's, a formerly all-boy school that has admitted thirty Year Eleven girls, instead of following her St Stella's friends to St Pius'.

Saving francesca by melina marchetta