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Table of Contents
About The Book
One of The Observer (London)’s Best Debut Novels of 2026
A story of class and coming-of-age as a group of best friends investigates the allegations against their teacher.
It’s the mid-nineties, and in the small, shitty coastal town of Vincent, Australia, four Nirvana-obsessed fourteen-year-old girls form a grunge band. The Bastards are “forgettable girls”—poor, not particularly clever, ridiculed by their better-off classmates, and desperate to escape the fates of their mothers, who seem locked into a life of minimum-wage jobs, surprise pregnancies, and drunk boyfriends. The Battle of the Bands is the girls’ one ticket out.
As small-town rumors swirl, however, The Bastards are abandoned by their lead singer Lily Lucid, who accuses their beloved music teacher of assault. The three remaining girls are left with nothing. Nothing, that is, except their amateur detective skills, a conviction that Mr. P is innocent, and a readiness to sacrifice everything to keep their dream alive. Spinning with rage at the confines of their lives, they reach a precipice where there’s no turning back.
Brash and bold, grungy and propulsive, In Bloom is a coming-of-age novel about class, girlhood in precarious circumstances, and how to build a sense of self when the foundations of friendship fail.
A story of class and coming-of-age as a group of best friends investigates the allegations against their teacher.
It’s the mid-nineties, and in the small, shitty coastal town of Vincent, Australia, four Nirvana-obsessed fourteen-year-old girls form a grunge band. The Bastards are “forgettable girls”—poor, not particularly clever, ridiculed by their better-off classmates, and desperate to escape the fates of their mothers, who seem locked into a life of minimum-wage jobs, surprise pregnancies, and drunk boyfriends. The Battle of the Bands is the girls’ one ticket out.
As small-town rumors swirl, however, The Bastards are abandoned by their lead singer Lily Lucid, who accuses their beloved music teacher of assault. The three remaining girls are left with nothing. Nothing, that is, except their amateur detective skills, a conviction that Mr. P is innocent, and a readiness to sacrifice everything to keep their dream alive. Spinning with rage at the confines of their lives, they reach a precipice where there’s no turning back.
Brash and bold, grungy and propulsive, In Bloom is a coming-of-age novel about class, girlhood in precarious circumstances, and how to build a sense of self when the foundations of friendship fail.
About The Author
Matilda Hill-Jenkins
Liz Allan’s fiction has won the Rachel Funari Prize and been shortlisted for the Alan Marshall Short Story Award, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize, and the Overland Writers Residency, and longlisted for the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. She is the author of the novel In Bloom and her short stories have appeared in Overland, Verge, Yen magazine, Aesthetica, and Best Summer Stories 2018. She teaches at an all-girls school in the United Kingdom.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (January 27, 2026)
- Length: 256 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668205952
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Raves and Reviews
"Powerful... Empathetic, addictive and feverish as a Nirvana gig." —The Guardian
“A novel about girlhood, class and the audacity to believe that one is destined for greater things… Nobody can keep the Bastards down after all, and once you start reading, you won’t be able to put them down either.”
—Pittsburgh Post Gazette
"Written in an eerie first person plural – 'We practice our songs on the skate home, singing in harmony, over and over' – that narrates short, propulsive chapters, In Bloom is deeply evocative of 1990s suburbia, passionate teenage friendships? and the looming shadow of patriarchal violence."
—The Observer
"A smart look at teen culture, the inner workings of status, and the importance of true friendship. If ever there was a book to which one could consider head banging, this might be it."
—Town & Country Magazine
"Part Virgin Suicides, part Veronica Mars."
—LOUISE HEGARTY, author of Fair Play
"I loved this book: as raw, grungy and frenetic as Nirvana’s Nevermind, In Bloom smells like disillusioned teen spirit."
—ALICE SLATER, author of Let the Bad Times Roll
“In Bloom is effervescently paced and outrageously funny, but as deep as the hope and angst that drives its protagonists. A perfectly detailed encapsulation of an era we’ve collectively not quite gotten over. It’s also a jaw-dropping exercise in perspective with one of the most brilliantly conceived denouements I’ve encountered.”
—LUKE KENNARD, author of The Transition
Resources and Downloads
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