Golden

Host Poppy and young reader Kara discuss Golden with author Jade Timms.

Golden is Shortlisted for the 2026 CBCA Book of the Year Awards for Older Readers.

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Golden is a warm-hearted optimistic story about friends and friendship and art and beauty – and the power of letting yourself be loved…

When you work in the juice bar of your small coastal town. When your twin brother is the fun one with all the friends. When something happened three years ago that you can’t talk about, but everything makes you remember it. When it might have been all your fault. When going to the beach, to that beach, takes all the air out of your lungs. When the new guy in town, the one who makes you feel like  you’re charged with electricity, seems to want to hang out with you.

When it comes time to let your friends back in.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hello and welcome to the CBCA's Shadow Judging Podcast, where young readers share their thoughts on the shortlisted books. My name is Poppy Holden and I'm the host for today's conversation. We'll be discussing the 2026 shortlisted title Golden by Jade Timms. Joining us is our reader, Kara Anger, and later we'll also hear from Jade Timms herself. First, Kara's response to the book. Kara, would you like to share?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Um, so I read the book Golden by Jade Timms, and it shows the journey of a girl named Eddie as she overcomes her grief from her brother-in-law Jackson's passing. And through the story, we can see her struggles with friendship and difficulties of relationship as she overcomes her grief. And as I read the story, I was engaged with many characters and their different stories. And it goes through many like relatable topics for teens, such as like dealing with falling outs of longtime friends and fun moments with friends that also could be relatable and enjoyable to read. So like she goes through her grief and so it shows how grief isn't always overcome in one way, as we can see through her journey along with her older sister Vivian. And I really enjoyed reading as it felt really immersive, and it was enjoyable to I really liked it because they had lots of fun moments with like at the smoothie bar, going on morning runs, and it showed how things aren't always perfect, even in those moments, like how she had those moments where she was still worried about what people thought of her. Some other things that I really enjoyed were how they had this nice atmospheric mood of like a small town, and it really showed the nuances of different relationships. Like for some of examples of that are like her relationship with Hal and along with her friend Hazel. When I really enjoyed reading the romance, it was really nice to read and it was really well written. And yeah, that was what I thought of the book.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Yeah, perfect. Thank you. I have a couple of follow-up questions. What struck you when you first finished the book? What were your immediate responses?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

When I first finished reading the book, I was really struck by the sense of like, wow, and how we just went on like a journey, and it really made me reflect on the effect of trauma on one's life and how grief can be like expressed in different forms. And it was really beautiful to see how that growth was expressed through the book.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, for me as well, when the book finished, straight afterwards, I was thinking about Eddie's growth throughout the book and particularly her grieving process. And the moment that I mean it's the last word, but the moment that left me with that was the repetition of Golden, the resolution of that from the start, and how that sort of appears throughout the book, and that just wrapped it all up for me and made it feel very resolved and almost nostalgic for the start. Yeah. You already mentioned a lot of the activities that happen in the book, like the smoothie bars and the running in the morning. And I agree that they made the story a lot richer. Is there any other things that you enjoyed reading about or how they added to the story?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

I really liked how all of them sort of added to the sort of vibe of the story because reading it felt sort of like what it's like being a teenager, and it was sort of like reading a movie almost, and it was really fun. I loved reading about Eddie's love for art and all the different foods that make you hungry while you eat, and it was really nice, and I think it feels like an actual teenager's life who doesn't just do studying but shows her different interests in life.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

I think that's a very good way to describe it about adding to like the vibe of the novel and how it makes a teenager's life yeah, more real in that way. And I felt for me, because all the descriptions, particularly around the food and the art, they're so vivid, they're so specific. And I when I was reading it, they're the bit apart from obviously the storyline around grief, stuck out to me so much because it doesn't feel like it's necessary for the plot line, but it makes it so much richer having all those specificities around the descriptions, and it added to like the texture of the novel in that way. You already mentioned relationships a little bit and how you thought they were very realistic and true to a teenager's life. Did you resonate particularly with any of them?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Um, there's not a particular one that I found relatable, but I really liked how they were portrayed. I found some of them a bit realistic, although sometimes I found it like a little too confrontational for a teenager. But I really one of my favorite relationships was her relationship with her sister Viv. And I really liked the part where she wanted to tell her sister about how, but she didn't want to make her sister upset. I thought that was a really nice moment. And I also like how she has arguments with her friends and how and how that's shown as like it's not just a straight relationship, it's sort of a bit of like almost a rocky road.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah. For me, the relationships that felt the realest to me, or I could relate most of my life, was those like female friendships, I guess, and how they're also different, and how Eddie interacts with them in different ways, depending on where she is in her personal journey, in her personal growth, but also those family dynamics as well. I don't have any siblings, but I read it, having that older sister and the twin brother, it was interesting how she interacts differently with both of them and has yeah, there's complications in her life with it. There were lots of different reveals throughout this book. I've already talked about a couple, but with Jackson's death, the mother returning, and Eddie's different falling outs. Is there one that shocked you the most?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

For me, I found it really surprising when the mother came back. The whole situation of that was really surprising to me. Because personally, I wasn't a big fan of the mother's character. But that whole situation really shocked me that she came back. And Jackson's death was also like a little surprising because that was slowly revealed throughout the book as we slowly got little hints about it, and I liked how it was finally revealed somewhere in the middle of the book. And the many falling outs, those were interesting to read because it showed like how humans aren't always perfect.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, yeah. I thought it was very well developed in that sense of having a character that isn't and lots of characters that aren't perfect, or none of them are cliched in that sense of having a direct role. They all have their issues. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Oh, I just felt like they were all like had their own problems and they were all developed well, like how Hal had his own problems and how everyone had their own reasons for doing their thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah, and I liked how the mother wasn't necessarily displayed as a likable character from Eddie's perspective, and particularly that scene when she comes back with the book, when oh, Eddie finds out about the book, about trauma, and that argument that like ensues with the whole family about who was there when he died, and who like sort of has sort of ownerships in some way over his death, and I thought it was very telling of her isolation after that. And so, in that way, I felt that all the confrontations and arguments, as you said, they show the development in that character and in every character. Yeah. Thank you for those insights. It's always fascinating to hear other responses. Now we're joined by Jade Timms, author of Golden. Was Kara's reaction to your novel what you intended? Or did anything surprise you in that discussion?

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Yeah, that was really fun. And at one point was trying not to start crying because I thought, oh, that would be really awkward for everyone. Um yeah, I never really thought much about how people would react to the like I know that's a stupid thing to say because you write a book and you expect people to read it, but I truly didn't have any sort of preconceived idea of how people might experience a book. But I did very much write it for the younger version of myself and the way that she read books like that, the way that books like that felt like friends and books like that that I would sort of come back to again and again because they were yeah, they were just like old friends. Um, so I I wrote hoping that, you know, knowing that the teenager Jade, if she had had a book like that, she would have she would have considered them all her friends and returned to it. But it's really just grateful that actual teenagers are reading my book.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

So I love that. I love the idea of writing a book for your past self or something you would have loved. And in that sense, relationships, as we've discussed, are very predominant theme in this novel. What do you hope readers take away from this discussion with the falling out more than just having friends there?

SPEAKER_02 10:01

I just I guess my feeling is that I think it's important to talk, to not bottle everything up as a teenager and a young adult moving into my 20s. I kept everything inside for a really long time. And I just would like, I just think it's important to to share with someone, you know, be it a friend, a family member. Uh, you know, struggles really shouldn't be something that you are dealing with on your own. And I know some people maybe don't have that luxury, but yeah, I just think communication is really important. And now as an adult um who's had therapy and everything, I'm a big oversharer because I like to think maybe me oversharing about something, a struggle I've had might help the person listening in some way. Or um, yeah, you never know, like by sharing and reaching out, what can sort of come from that.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah, definitely. Coming back to the imagery in this book, as we've discussed with the different activities, it's all very lush and very descriptive, and that's something I I mean, as I mentioned, stuck out to me and really struck me. What was your intention with this language?

SPEAKER_02 11:24

I really wanted to write a fun, kind of beachy small town story. A lot of YA, especially in the early days of YA in Australia, they were all sort of set in Melbourne, or occasionally Sydney, but it seemed to be Melbourne a lot. And I grew up in a small beach town and I love Melbourne, but I couldn't relate to growing up and catching trams to school. So I did really want to write a book s about teenagers living in a small beach town, and you know, I live in a small beach town, so it is really a lot of it is just really just pulled from reality, truly. That's just like, yeah, where I live. And um Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

I did grow up in Melbourne, but I I I enjoy reading books that have this sort of I mean for me it's almost like a fantasy land of growing up in a little beach town, but it is like this really it makes it funner. I think that is and what Kara was saying about it having that like vibe, it m adds to obviously this is a very intense book with the grief and the relationships, but it lightens up that way and creates a situation that can still be enjoyed and fun to read. And with the activities as well, like with running and cooking, is that also drawn from real life as well?

SPEAKER_02 12:53

My boss, who's a runner, uh, when she read Golden, she was like, When did you used to run? And I said, Oh, I've never been a runner. And she's like, You got it so spot on that I assume that you had like the secret life as a runner, but I really am not a runner. Please don't make that assumption about me. I truly have never run in my life. But the smoothies and the cooking is probably I did make a lot of smoothies while I was initially drafting Golden, and they have stuck with me. Um, I do still make smoothies fairly regularly, but yeah, so like that they were sort of pulled from real life, the cooking probably to a degree. Um, but yeah, the running was just like researched, and that's uh that's not me.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Well, it was very well written. Thank you for all those responses. Before we finish, one final question for Kara. In one sentence, why should someone read this book?

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Um, I would recommend someone to read this book if you like a vivid story that's really immersive and it shows healing. I think it would be a fun read over the summer, and I think that's why someone should read this book.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Thank you to Kara and Jay for joining us today. And thank you for listening to the CBTA Shadow Jackie Funday.