A pet goat called Stanley, crop circles, and life in a small outback town. Night Swimming is a salute to living real, following your dreams and coming to terms with being a quirky teenager embarking upon adulthood.

Night Swimming is an example of all that is best of YA Fiction. It celebrates diversity in an authentic way, and explores complex issues such as sexuality, mental health, family dynamics, friendship, and rural life.

Seventeen-year-old, Kirby Arrow lives in the small outback town of Alberton with her pet goat, Stanley and her emotionally vacant mum. Kirby is training to be a carpenter, her best friend Clancy is seriously into musical theatre, and Kirby’s beloved Grandad is showing signs of confusion and dementia. Throw a perfect human being into this one-pub town and Kirby is thrown into a tailspin. Not to mention, Kirby is still wondering who her father really is.

Night Swimming is the third book from Australia’s talented Steph Bowe. It’s truly a delightful, and easy read and guaranteed to leave you with a contented smile. I’m even in love with the cover and I’m thoughtfully using my goat soap and wondering about Stanley and the little goat farm in Alberton.

Publisher’s Blurb:

Steph Bowe is back. Night Swimming is a love story with a twist, and a whole lot of heart.

Imagine being the only two seventeen-year-olds in a small town. That’s life for Kirby Arrow—named after the most dissenting judge in Australia’s history—and her best friend Clancy Lee, would-be musical star.

Clancy wants nothing more than to leave town and head for the big smoke, but Kirby is worried: her family has a history of leaving. She hasn’t heard from her father since he left when she was a baby. Shouldn’t she stay to help her mother with the goat’s-milk soap-making business, look after her grandfather who suffers from dementia, be an apprentice carpenter to old Mr Pool? And how could she leave her pet goat, Stanley, her dog Maude, and her cat Marianne?

But two things happen that change everything for Kirby. She finds an article in the newspaper about her father, and Iris arrives in town. Iris is beautiful, wears crazy clothes, plays the mandolin, and seems perfect, really, thinks Kirby. Clancy has his heart set on winning over Iris. Trouble is Kirby is also falling in love with Iris…

Text publication date: 3 April 2017

ISBN: 9781925498165

AU Price: $19.99

Reading age:14+

Categories: Kids & Teens

Available from Text Publishing from April 2017. My copy of Night Swimming was courtesy of Text Publishing.