Review: Friendship on Fire by Danielle Weiler

Friendship on Fire, Danielle Weiler

Release date: March 2011

Publisher: Sid Harta Publishers
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Pages: 471

Author's website

The first few days of Year 12 are disastrous for school captain Daisy Brooks.

But Daisy’s life takes a sudden turn when she is dared by Skye, the leader of the Blonde Brigade, to meet the mysterious, drop-dead gorgeous stranger, Nate, from rival school Addison Grammar. Daisy’s instant attraction to him disrupts her world. But what about her best friend Roman? How will he respond to this intruder?

Daisy is a vulnerable, yet fiery girl going through the chaotic phase between teenage-hood and adulthood. She is about to discover the complexities of relationships, the etiquette of friendship, and most of all, the development of herself as a woman.

Is it too late for Daisy to realise that the choices she makes shapes who she is and who she will become?

So I actually won this book (signed!) in a giveaway, and since it's Aussie YA, I was really happy about it. So this book is about Daisy's last year of high school-- Yr 12. And we all know how stressful that is! I loved the beginning of the book. I thought it quite funny and typical of kids my age. The same thing also happens to one of my friends, so I totally got it. No wonder the publishers  liked the book:

... 'RANGA.'
Not for the first time today.

Oh, yes. Daisy's dad picked the wrong shade of hair dye (Tip  1: don't even trust your dad to pick out hair dye for you when he goes to the shops!), and her hair is now a very vibrant shade of red. Daisy's a blonde, by the way. Her school also has a really nasty rule about dyeing your hair natural colours only (I wasn't sure school even had rules that this! My school certainly doesn't), so her principal, Mr Head, is really not quite happy. 

I have to tell you guys this: this book is long. Close to 500 pages. So of course it dragged on a bit at a few points. All books tend to. I spent hours in my bed reading it, refusing to put it down because it was so interesting! I loved how Daisy's life wasn't the glamorous, cool one of a popular senior girl. She's just a normal girl with three brothers, two best friends, and a new boyfriend. Her new boyfriend Nate is  really lovely, and Daisy ends up really loving him.

This book is all about life and its really unattractive bits, like betrayals, sadness and general bad luck. Daisy has it all, as well as a great best friend Roman to help her out, though he starts acting kind of weird when she gets a boyfriend... Hmm! I don't want to spoil it for you guys, but you get the idea. ;)

Can I say that I want Daisy's brothers? DUDE. I'm a twin, which means my sister is older by two minutes-- a fact which she lords over me at every possible minute of our lives-- but I've always wanted a big brother to look out for me and tease me. I love to read stories with awesome big brothers, and I loved all of Daisy's. I must say that I am very jealous!

A few things that I wasn't a fan of: the length, I found, was a bit long for a YA novel, because let's admit it: teenagers don't have such a great attention span when it comes to long books, and long books tend to take ages to get to the point. Friendship on Fire didn't  really have a 'point': it documented Daisy's last year of school, and the point was at the end when heaps of good things made up for the bad ones that she'd gone through. I also didn't like the kind of cliched mean-popular-girl-gets-what-she-kind-of-deserves-in-the-end-but-turns-good factor. Really quite cliched, and I don't like cliches. And I thought some of the punctuation needed a bit of work. Some sentences didn't have commas where I thought they needed to be-- as in, if I said the sentence, I would have pauses in it that weren't there in the book, if you get what I mean.

My verdict: I really liked this book. It highlighted a really important thing that teenagers need to realise: Life isn't going to magically work out, and when it does, you'll have suffered some mishaps and unfortunate things one the way. Yeah, it wasn't perfect, but I would recommend this to anyone who wanted to read about real life and how it works with and against you.