Reaction Time

Luce May has had a brutal first year out of high school, and she is determined to leave the chaos of Sydney behind. She enrols at a university in a remote, out-of-the-way town, hoping to reinvent herself and keep her past hidden from everyone she meets. Few people know that she walked away from her younger sister to escape their volatile mother, whose drinking made home unlivable.

As Luce gradually discovers a different version of herself, she builds a close circle of unconventional friends who begin to feel like family. A tentative romance with Eva, a young woman who moved across the world to be surrounded by forests, offers Luce comfort and a sense of what her future might hold.

But when her sister starts retracing the reckless path Luce once took, Luce's guilt grows and her old and new lives become harder to keep apart. The novel asks whether Luce can embrace the life she is building and care for her family without falling back into the destructive habits she left behind.