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ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE BOOK

From the author of the much-loved It Sounded Better In My Head comes a deliciously entertaining new rom-com, set in a run-down student share house in Melbourne.

Eighteen-year-old Brooke is the kind of friend who not only remembers everyone’s birthdays, but also organises the group present, pays for it, and politely chases others for their share. She’s the helper, the doer, the guarder-of-drinks, the minder-of-bags, the maker-of-spreadsheets. She’s the responsible one who always follows the rules—and she plans to keep it that way during her first year of university.

Her new share house is rules-lite. But ‘no unnecessary drama’ means no fights, tension, or romance between housemates. When one of her housemates turns out to be Jesse, her high-school nemesis, Brooke is nervously confident she can handle it. They’ll simply silently endure living together and stay out of each other’s way. But it turns out Jesse isn’t so easy to ignore…

Channelling the screwball comedy of New Girl with an enemies-to-lovers twist, Unnecessary Drama is a joyful story about leaving home, dealing with the unexpected complications of life, and somehow finding exactly what you need.

DEDICATION

For Abby

1

1

There is a mouse in the corner of my room. A mouse. In my bedroom. Where I sleep. It’s sitting on its little haunches, frozen in fear. I’m in bed, also frozen in fear.

We are making direct and intimate eye contact.

It’s funny because seconds ago I was so cosy and comfortable in my bed, feeling safe and wrapped up and pleased with myself—here I am, in my new house, an adult at last, independent, free, worldly, some might even say sophisticated—and now, my shaking hand is reaching for my phone, ready to call Mum and say come back and get me right this second.

I don’t know how to end this stand-off. Should I lie back in surrender, showing my belly like a dog? Or stand my ground, slowly wave my arms so it recognises me as a human and backs off? That’s what you do if you encounter a bear, along with blowing a whistle. I memorised how to survive an encounter with a bear when I was ten, for no reason other than that I suddenly woke up one day with a pit of anxiety deep in my stomach about encountering a bear. I was also very worried about quicksand and the fact that I didn’t know how to tie an unbreakable knot or start a fire using nothing but two sticks. My ten-year-old self was earnestly imagining a future in which I would need these skills, even though I was a strictly indoors child who once cried because I was almost stung by a bee.