{"id":122597,"date":"2026-05-26T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/ballarat\/?p=122597"},"modified":"2026-05-20T18:01:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:01:05","slug":"universal-themes-in-young-adult-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/ballarat\/living\/universal-themes-in-young-adult-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal themes in young adult novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOPE and a realisation young people share similar feelings are what one Ballarat writer wanted readers to take from her debut novel.<\/p>\n

This month, Annie Drum released Don’t Forget to Remember Me, a heartfelt and emotionally resonant young adult tale that centres on first love, friendship and searching for identity.<\/p>\n

After years of working with teenagers through social welfare programs, Drum began identifying universal themes.<\/p>\n

“I suppose I see the struggles that young people often have about fitting in, about friendships, who’s going to like me, how can I talk about my strange family, what if I’m not like everybody else?” Drum said.<\/p>\n

“All these themes just kept coming across, so I thought I’d write a story about young people who feel like they don’t fit in but they’re able to form friendships anyway.<\/p>\n

“I think it leaves readers with a sense of hope that when we feel like we’re alien and we’re different and we’re too weird to fit in, we’re actually not.”<\/p>\n

She said young people needed reassurance and confidence because of the indirect way they communicated with peers on platforms such as social media.<\/p>\n

Drum said she found young people fascinating.<\/p>\n

“Fascinated by their rawness, by their vulnerability, when they do trust in someone to tell them something, that’s a really brave thing to do,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I was a pretty lonely teenager and felt like a real misfit in myself, and I had friends, but I felt like I was just so different from them. Looking back, I really wasn’t.<\/p>\n

“I’m hoping that readers will go away with a sense of, of feeling a sense of hope.”<\/p>\n

Don’t Forget to Remember Me is available at bakerslane.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HOPE and a realisation young people share similar feelings are what one Ballarat writer wanted readers to take from her debut novel. This month, Annie Drum released Don’t Forget to Remember Me, a heartfelt and emotionally resonant young adult tale that centres on first love, friendship and searching for identity. After years of working with […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":122599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-122597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUniversal themes in young adult novel - Ballarat Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover universal themes in YA fiction. 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