AustLit

'When 18 year-old Maya leaves Chicago for a six week Australian home stay, she assumes she's heading to beautiful Barangaroo with its famous Sydney Harbour views—NOT Barangaroo Creek, a stinking hot, fly-ridden, wi-fi dead zone hours from a decent body of water. Add her host brother, Gus, who wishes she landed in someone else's sheep paddock, and Maya is convinced she's in for six weeks of Hicksville hell. Gus has an important trip planned this summer—a trip that does NOT include helping an animal-phobic girl from the States tick off items on her seriously cliched Aussie must-do list.

'So he comes up with a list of his own-one guaranteed to send Maya back across the Pacific, leaving him free to enjoy the last of his freedom before he heads off to agricultural college like every generation of his family has. But when Maya doesn't scare that easily, sparks begin to fly. Soon Gus and Maya discover there are hidden depths to cliched bucket-lists and secret summer trips, and that sometimes it takes someone half a world away to remind you of all the reasons you're here.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Ionic and covalent bonds are a piece of cake for MJ. But human bonds are a little harder ...

'There are only two things MJ wants in her final year of high school:

'1) Glowing grades and ...

'2) to convince uber-smart, chiselled-jaw Jason they’d be a winning team outside the science lab as well as in.

'Tutoring deadbeat drummer, Luke, isn’t part of the plan. After all, he has average intelligence, takes disorganised notes and looks like a partied-out zombie at their study sessions! Not even his taut biceps will win MJ over.

'But MJ learns that she could be tutored in a few life lessons too: That sometimes there’s good reason to skip chemistry tutorials. That intelligence is so much more than a grade average.

'And that sometimes you can’t beat the chemistry.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Love curses don’t exist. At least that’s what Jonas, master of the meaningless hookup, tells himself when a letter warns him he’s an Eros Guardian cursed to endure a test of true love or forever be alone. His levelheaded longtime friend Cora figures it’s a revenge prank by an ex. The way Jonas stamps each girlfriend with a weeklong use-by date, it serves him right.

'But when an impulsive kiss between the two friends reveals potential for more, Cora becomes the target of the Groth Maar: demons sent to wipe out the Eros Guardian line. And suddenly the curse becomes dangerously real.

'Breaking the curse means Jonas’s biggest challenge yet. Failure guarantees Cora’s death. But success may cost him his own life…and the loss of his carefully guarded heart to the one girl far too sensible to fall for him.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.