A New Kind of Beautiful
Age 13+
Romance & Relationships Stories
A moving novel about love, loss, and the beauty in the things we can't always see.
Paige Wilding has her future mapped out — the Year 10 Art prize. Graduation. A coveted spot in an elite art school in New York. But when she's diagnosed with an incurable eye disease, the perfect life she’s planned starts to blur.
She makes a choice to keep her condition secret and live louder, love wilder, and paint like her life depends on it. Only her best friend Jazz knows the truth, and is helping her cram a lifetime of colour into a single year.
But as her sight fades and she’s forced to give up painting, it’s Zac, her rival for the art prize, who helps Paige find a way back to her art and a new kind of beautiful; messy and imperfect but also raw, unfiltered and fiercely alive.
A powerful story about choosing real over perfect.
Creators
An award winning, internationally published author of more than a dozen books, Suzy Zail is best-known for her young adult novels The Wrong Boy, Alexander Altmann and I am Change, books that shine a light on injustice. Her books are studied in schools and have been included in the USBBY’s Outstanding International Books list. Her most recent novel, Inkflower, draws on her childhood and tells the story of a man who, in his last months with Motor Neurone Disease, reveals to his daughter a Holocaust story he has kept hidden. Inkflower has been shortlisted for the CBCA awards, the Booklinks Historical novel award, the YABBAs and the ASLA Danz awards, and won kids’ choice for Book of the Year, Older Readers, at the 2024 CBCA awards. You can visit Suzy online at suzyzail.com.au and @suzyzailauthor
