Trent Dalton has written a superb novel which is somehow both a gritty, startlingly real deep-dive into Brisbane’s suburban criminal underworld, and an achingly beautiful, magical story of love, art and chasing your dreams. It’s a coming-of-age, a thriller, a story of poverty, gang violence, and missed opportunities. It’s a story about bringing ‘invisible’ people out from the shadows and it has quite possibly the most romantic scenes I have ever read (move over Jane Austen!). Lola in the Mirror is about a girl and her mother who have been on the run for sixteen years. The girl has no name because names are dangerous. But the girl dreams of a life as an artist and she hopes the girl called Lola she sees in the mirror can help her to get there. A must read.