Writer
Anna Whateley writes young adult fiction that engages with diversity, and the depth of the human experience. Read more…
Check out Anna’s YouTube channel, including her vlog, and the #AusChat series where Anna chats to Australian bookish people about life during Covid 19.
Anna is also a founding member of the team behind OzAuthorsOnline, a launching and interview website for #LoveOzYA writers, and hopefully more in the future.
Check it out here -> https://ozauthorsonline.com/
Hi all! May was an intense month – lots of changes again with school going back here in QLD, and fabulous events for Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal. I was on national TV!! Haha, it was great. I have a short recording on my youtube channel. Fauziah was warm and kind, and I really appreciate her …
I’ve had a busy time launching and talking about Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal! Avid Reader hosted a wonderful first event, with Cass Moriarty interviewing. My editor Kate spoke and we all cried! Cass asks great questions, and there’s a chance it will go on their Facebook page if you missed out. Then @ozauthorsonline hosted an …
Wow, in-store date was a much bigger thing than I realised! Peta can now be bought at your local bookstore, and online at Booktopia. If you are overseas, then there is the option for kindle I believe, or Book Depository, until overseas rights are sold. I’ll try to add links here to these, but since …
Continue reading “Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal is in stores now!!”
Wonderful news! My essay titled ‘Noisy Silence’ in Growing Up Disabled in Australia, edited by Carly Findlay, will be out early 2021. I can’t wait! More info HERE including preorders.
“I cried happy tears when I finished reading – it was so good and so validating to feel SEEN; to see someone like me written BY someone like me.” Goodreads Review
Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal is a contemporary YA novel set in suburban Brisbane bayside, and follows sixteen-year-old Peta through a difficult year of change, and questions of self, gender, sexuality, and friendship. Peta has ADHD and is autistic. With sensory issues and a gift for words and puzzles her mind is a busy place.
Following her therapist’s rules for ‘normal’ behaviour, Peta lives in a state of dissonance. Can she decide which rules to follow, and which to break? Can she survive falling in love, and still keep rating normal?
~~~
Facing the window, the heat of the fire on my left, Sam on my right, hands around a warm mug, I can’t think of a better place to be.
“I’m so happy right now. With you.” I say, and put my drink down to find my tablets. When words come out unfiltered you might need to check your watch. I scald my tongue drinking them down.
~~~
“Highly compelling, intensely moving and ultimately hopeful, this book heralds the arrival of a talented new young adult author.” Books and Publishing
~~~
Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal addresses the realities of life after diagnosis and successful social training. Being normal comes at a cost.
I really would have loved to have had a book like this during my teen years – I would have had the language and the understanding of why I felt so angry and exhausted all the time and why I felt like I was a liar and a fake and a nothing person underneath that facade. And I would have felt less alone, and understood that I didn’t HAVE to playact neurotypical. Goodreads
Peta is someone who I’m sure will sit with readers for some time after finishing the novel. She bursts on the page in technicolour, with raw honesty which makes me ache to know her.
…beautifully, sensitively and intelligently written. It has a real philosophical approach and it dispels a number of misunderstandings around neurodiversity.
Importantly, the character of diversity tells the story from her perspective.
“Anna Whateley writes proudly in her neurodivergent #ownvoice.”
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @annawhateley
Instagram: annawhateley_writer
Web: annawhateley.com
Media enquiries to Tina Quinn at Allen & Unwin.