I wanted to love this story, but I have an awkward relationship with time-slip novels about adolescent girls (and presumably about adolescent boys, but I can't point to one I've read recently enough to remember). This one does a lot of things right, with the characterisation, the story line, the refusal to whitewash and sanitise Australian history, the conflicting perspectives of the two main characters. And it does a really good job of introducing a lot of concepts, handling the political climate surrounding Federation and suffrage in Australia. There are some really well done scenes showing both the diversity of the Australian community at the time and the racism and sexism inherent in the system.

But I really struggled with the protagonist. I don't know if I would have had the same issue reading as an adolescent, but I frequently had to put the book down and go away for a period of time, because I just knew things were about to be dodgy . And I wasn't entirely convinced that all of the sub-plots were necessary*. I suspect that some of this might be characteristic of early career writers, and i'm interested in seeing where Kane goes to next (and will be looking out for one of their other books)

[*spoiler: In particular, the sections relating to infidelity seemed forced] ( )