Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life

So in a nutshell, Kat's a bitch, Carmel's fat yet talented and Jude's got a revolutionary dead father and is really smart.

This story is divided into 3 main sections with each girl telling her story in the first person.
The 3 girls are all from a country town and end up living together in Melbourne when they leave to go to university.

Kat's (or Katrina) studying law, and is the standard blonde good looking one but she gets messed up with the wrong people, including a gay drug dealer, a older rich married man and a 'naughty' photographer.

Carmel's pretty overweight and has a gorgeous singing voice. She didn't get into the music course she wanted and is studying some course so non descript I couldn't even recall it. She ends up pulling out, singing in a jazz band and hooking up with Kat's family friend's son Anton. She also fights a battle against her huge family who want her to come back and help around their farm.

Jude's incredibly smart and is therefore a medical student. She is trying to emulate her doctor Chilean father who died when she was very young. It all goes wrong for her when she finds out one of the men who tortured and possibly killed her father back in Chile is now working as a chef in Melbourne. Jude becomes a confidante and protector of Carmel and the two form an unlikely bond.

We don't get Kat's perspective until the final 3rd of the book and it is safe to say most readers would not have related to her up until this point. She does also undergo a transformation and becomes a 'better' person and the journey is realistic.

This was a book I reread a lot in high school and my late teens. For some reason I never actually bought the book though. I just kept checking it out at the library and bringing home a familiar friend every once and a while.

It did get made into a mini series in 1999 with the title dropping the 'get a life'. I didn't see all of it but I always felt they didn't get a lot of the main actors right. Regardless a great story though, by Maureen McCarthy who has also done quite a few good YA books.