Sadie Starr’s Guide to Starting Over is an engaging, funny — serious look at the downsides of aiming too high, the dangers of black and white thinking — and the journey to realising imperfections are part of being human.

Sadie Starr is obsessed with starting over. A new year, a new diet, a new social media identity. Anything that gives her a chance to be a better version of herself.

So when her dad’s job moves the family interstate, Sadie’s excited for a fresh start. It’s also the perfect excuse to leave behind the mess she’s made with her best friend and secret crush, Daniel, whose advances she rejected – for fear of screwing things up.

But at her new school, life gets complicated fast.

She meets glamorous Alexa and her pink-badged girl gang, on a mission to ‘support women’, and outcast Jack, who the girls say has been stalking fellow student Loz.

But Loz has a different story, one that changes everything.

Sadie’s torn. She wants to be popular. She wants to keep Loz’s secret. She wants to fix everything. But she’ll have to make choices. And the wrong ones could throw her perfect new life into complete chaos...

—

Miranda Luby is an author, freelance journalist and copywriter living on Victoria’s Surf Coast. She has won several awards for her short stories, and her journalism features in publications such as National Geographic, the BBC and the New York Post. Miranda was shortlisted for the Text Prize for her debut novel, Sadie Starr’s Guide to Starting Over (previously titled Therefore I Am).