Waiting on Wednesday: Yellow by Megan Jacobson

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week, my most anticipated release is:

Yellow by Megan Jacobson

Anticipated Release Date: 2016

Yellow is a YA murder mystery with a slight supernatural edge, but at heart it's about the redemptive power of kindness. Publishing in February 2016, it’s a beautifully written coming-of-age story about family, first love, finding your place and uncovering the secrets of the past.

If fourteen-year-old Kirra is having a mid-life crisis now, then it doesn't bode well for her life expectancy. Her so-called friends bully her, whatever semblance of a mother she had has been drowned at the bottom of a gin bottle ever since her dad left them for another woman, and now a teenage ghost is speaking to her through a broken phone booth. Kirra and the ghost make a pact. She'll prove who murdered him almost twenty years ago if he does three things for her. He makes her popular, he gets her parents back together, and he doesn't haunt her. Things aren't so simple however, and Kirra realises that people can be haunted in more ways than one.

I grew up in Darwin and the far north coast of NSW, Australia, but now I live in Bondi Beach, Sydney. The ocean always feels like home.

I write young adult novels, and my debut, Yellow, will be released by Penguin in February 2016. I've worked as a script storyliner for several TV shows, including the Seven network soap 'Headland' and the ABC children's series 'Dance Academy', but now I work in television news production at the ABC.

I started Yellow when I was living in New York in 2013, cold and homesick, and I finished it in the rice paddies of Ubud, Bali. Eventually I had to return to the real world, so I'm back in Sydney, working on my second novel, which will hopefully be released in 2017.