His fiction has appeared in New Australian Fiction 2021, Meanjin, and Award-Winning Australian Writing, among other publications. The online world had an enormous impact on my life and my social interactions in my late teens and early twenties. Martha struggles to fit in at school until she makes one friend who helps her unveil the ‘abomination’. The story alternates between past, when the scandal unfolds, and present, where the consequences are still in full force. A fascinating contemporary story that offered a glimpse into a world that has always intrigued me, did not disappoint.

I’ve come to realise that leisure time is an important part of the writing process—the difficulty comes when you only have so much spare time to allocate to either leisure or writing.

Together they manage to find a way to change her life, whether the two shall ever meet again remains open, but the last 25% are so dramatic it reels off an entire film behind your eyes just from the simple descriptions the author has ascribed to his two teenage MCs. When this book was written in 1998, the internet was only 5 years old so Scott’s abilities in using it are actually quite impressive. One of these day's I'm going to read it again as an adult, for the sake of nostalgia I'm holding off at the minute.

The juxtaposition of the secular way of life and ultra orthodox makes the novel equal parts relatable and enlightening.ABOMINATION would be classed as contemporary fiction, but I can tell you, it was a stressful read that had the intensity of a thriller – page after page, I needed to know what was happening, where is this going, how will our protagonists fair, what choices will they make? We don’t even have a kitchen table so most of my writing is done either on the couch or in our spare room/library/my partner’s yoga studio.

We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work. Due to bad copying, I was missing one chapter of the book, but it was in the middle and I got the gist of what happened. Though to quibble: he never truly admitted all of his wrongdoing to Teagan, so their sort of reconciliation (as friends) felt a little false to me.My biggest criticism of this book is the disappointing romantic relationship which the author attempts to shoehorn into the story. A fascinating book, giving rise to many discussion topics ranging from religious fanatism to child abuse.

Scott also mentions author, Pete Johnson, who has now written more than 50 books for young people of all ages. There were several deliveries a day, so you could send a postcard in the morning and it would be received by tea time. If Martha chooses to ignore this rule, she may end up like her sister, Mary, who had been sent away for greatly disobeying the rules of the Righteous. Her older sister, Mary, was expelled from the family at age 16 for bad behavior, and now sends an occasional post card to Martha, which is promptly torn up by their father, and then retrieved and saved by Martha. Martha is an outcast at school, in homemade uniform and different to the others in her Year 8 class.Martha is 12 and very different from other kids--no TV, no computer, no cool clothes, and especially no friends. Having read Swindells' Stone Cold in school, I decided to read Abomination, which I enjoyed even more! Ashley- Short fiction is my first love and my favourite form of prose—I’m always writing short fiction and I hope to have a collection one day.