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The Waiting Place
Brief Description
The perfect girl. The teen delinquent. And the bland one. All dead and sharing an unlikely afterlife. Can they run from their demons while being chased by angels? The Good Place meets a Tradwife TikTok account in this dizzyingly good YA novel about unlikely bonds, forbidden...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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25th
August 2026
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The Waiting Place
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Description
The perfect girl. The teen delinquent. And the bland one. All dead and sharing an unlikely afterlife. Can they run from their demons while being chased by angels? The Good Place meets a Tradwife TikTok account in this dizzyingly good YA novel about unlikely bonds, forbidden romance and trusting yourself when it really matters.
Sixteen-year-old Emily Woodward has lived her whole life in a tiny, high-control religious community. Some say it's a cult; Em was taught it's the only way to get to heaven on Halley's comet. She knows she'll be married off at eighteen, even if she secretly dreams of a life bigger than that.
Then the car crash happens.
In death, Emily is destined for the Good Line, but before she can be sorted, she sees her rebellious big sister sent to the Bad Line. Desperate to find a way to save her sister, Em agrees to run away from the angels with Jackson, the teen bank robber, and Xanthe, the most perfect girl in Em's community. But can she trust a clearly hell-bound bank robber? And is the perfect Xanthe just with them to snitch? The three teens find themselves in an afterlife that morphs into all the places they've waited in their lives, and for them to survive they need to take the actions they were too afraid to take when they were alive.
The Waiting Place is about judging people for what they do, not who they are, and it's for everyone who's ever been told they would not, could not, must not.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780734424273
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 25 August 2026
Country: Australia
Imprint: Lothian Children's Books
Audience: Children
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 28.0mm
Width: 127.0mm
Height: 199.0mm
Weight: 240g
Pages: 304
About the Author
Megan Jacobson is a Brisbane-based award-winning author, ABC journalist, and former TV scriptwriter.
Her first novel, Yellow, was a Shortlisted Book in the Book of the Year: Older Readers category of the 2017 CBCA Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2018 REAL Children's Choice awards: Fiction for years 7-9; shortlisted for the 2017 Davitt Awards: Young Adult and Best Debut categories; and the audible version had a starred review and was ranked a Top 10 Audiobooks of 2016 by the esteemed American magazine and website School Library Journal (SLJ). Her second novel, The Build-Up Season, won the 2018 Australian Family Therapists' Award for Children's Literature; was shortlisted for the 2018 NSW Premier's Literary Awards - Ethel Turner's Prize for Young People's Literature; and was shortlisted for the 2019 REAL Children's Choice Awards: Fiction for Years 7-9. Her debut picture book, Big Love, illustrated by Beck Feiner, was the title that launched the Walker Studio imprint in Australia - a new imprint that showcases books with elegant, engaging designs and superior production values. Big Love was a 2022 CBCA Notable book; was featured on PlaySchool's Storytime, read by Michael Theo; featured in ABC Kids Listen Bedtime Stories podcast; it has been translated into two languages, and the Spanish-language version, El amor mas grande, was listed as a Best Book of 2023 by the New York Public Library; and selected as a Best Spanish Children's Book of the Year, 2024, by the Bank Street College of Education - The Centre for Children's Literature. Megan's short stories have been published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Review of Australian Fiction, aired on ABC radio, and appeared in the UTS Writers Anthology. She has a degree in journalism and has also worked as an in-house script story-liner and script editor for several Australian television dramas, including the International Emmy nominated children's series Dance Academy. She currently works part-time as an ABC News TikTok producer and journalist when she's not writing or hanging with her family.Also by Megan Jacobson
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