For fans of Twenties and Fleabag TV shows and Sally Rooney’s Normal People, this is a truly modern portrait of millennial life.
THE OVERTHINKERS
by Lisa Portolan & Ben Cheong
Big Sky Publishing, August 2021
A powerful, heart-warming novel sharing the embarrassments and excitements, horrors and humiliations, glories and defeats of a group of twenty-something year-olds, navigating life, love, sex and their dreams. Trying to appear ordinary on the outside but inside obsessing on the unspoken rules of what’s okay and racked with self-doubt.
Leo: the confident ‘Gay-sian’ – fit, fabulous and hilarious – but riddled by anxieties and seeing an unavailable married man.
Benji: a privileged pretty-boy who spends his time pining after Leo’s gorgeous house-mate Francesca, who barely notices that he’s alive.
Francesca: a social climber plotting her remarkable and glamorous future, aligning herself to well-connected but lost Hamish.
Hamish: an Eastern-suburbs private school boy dealing drugs to distinguish himself, and now he’s met a girl he really likes (who is not Francesca).
Who will they be on the other side? Will they be friends, enemies or strangers?
Lisa Portolan is a journalist and author from Sydney. She has previously published two books, including bestseller, Happy As (Echo, Melbourne). She has written for publications like the Australian Financial Review, The Guardian, 9 Honey and 10 Daily, and appeared on the Today Show and The Drum.
Ben Cheong is a PR consultant and accidental first-time author of THE OVERTHINKERS. An openly-gay, cis man, and son of first-generation Chinese Malay immigrants, Ben grew up in suburbia as an outlier in both the ‘Aussie’ and Chinese communities. Instead, Ben attempted to make connections in a very closeted, young LGBT+ community. As a young adult, Ben felt embarrassed when talking about mental health issues, and heard similar stories from his close friends, which drove him to write his debut novel with Lisa Portolan.
Everyone likes Hani Kahn—she’s easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can’t be bi if she’s only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she’s in a relationship…with a girl her friends absolutely hate—Ishita Dey. Ishita is the complete opposite of Hani. She’s an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl. Despite their mutually beneficial pact, they start developing real feelings for each other. But relationships are complicated, and some people will do anything to stop two Bengali girls from achieving happily ever after. 
Seventeen-year-old Dare Chase is the star of a popular ghost-hunting YouTube channel—or she was, until her boyfriend and channel co-creator dumps her right after junior year. Dare’s determined to prove she can find success on her own, and thanks to a tip from a fan, she knows just where to start: the Arrington Estate. Arrington is known for its dark past, notably the mysterious death of Atheleen Bell, a teenager who drowned in the lake thirty years prior—and whose body was inexplicably skeletal when it was recovered only hours after her death. Along with the rumors of ghosts on the premises, this is the perfect subject for Dare’s new paranormal investigative podcast. Dare herself doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more to Atheleen’s death, so she accepts an internship working to turn the old house into a museum. As she digs deeper into the mystery with the help of Quinn, the new homeowner’s daughter, and as her podcast gets more popular, it becomes clear that someone—or something—doesn’t want Dare getting too close to the truth. Soon, Dare will have to reckon with the possibility that ghosts could be more real than she thinks. Because there’s something lurking in the lake…and it hasn’t finished with her yet.
That’s what Jess was to me. I was the ground; she was the rain. I wasn’t anything until she woke me up.
Raquel Willis is a powerful woman. But growing up as a young boy in the South made being herself almost impossible. In this moving and provocative memoir, Raquel relives the many risks she faced in her struggle to become a fierce advocate for her community—and the powerful woman—that she is today. Today, she is known as a transgender trailblazer, both for work with the Transgender Law Center and speaker at the National Women’s March. She offers intimate reflections on masculinity and blackness, informed by a tumultuous relationship with her father. From a childhood built in opposition to expectations, all the way through her transition at a flagship Southern university, Raquel demonstrates that her story is but one thread in the larger tapestry of Black trans American life; a tapestry that has never truly been chronicled from this millennial, Southern perspective.