Tight Lines

by Allee Richards

A moving and transformational novel that explores friendship, family, expectation and how one choice can have devastating and far-reaching consequences. 

I never meant to get so drunk. Each time it happened I swore it would be the last time and the next time I had a drink I believed that I could chug it down and it’d somehow end different. Drinking felt like living, which makes little sense. I didn’t even like the taste of beer back then and I usually ended up stumbling around and hurting myself. But, truthfully, cracking a tinnie made me giddy.

Luke, Josh and Matty live for the surfing, fishing, girls at the caravan park and drinking. But, like the wild coast they call home, the tide can change from safe to catastrophic in an instant. Just as adulthood is about to begin, one terrible decision will ruin the lives of all involved. We follow the characters into adulthood as they try to find their way back to the freedom they took for granted when they were young. But life moves on, and they each discover they can never go back to the way things were.

Set against the nostalgic backdrop of small-town coastal life in the 1990s, this novel is funny, moving, confronting and deeply life-affirming. With echoes of Favel Parrett’s Past the Shallows and Tim Winton’s Breath, Tight Lines leaves us with a sense of hard-fought survival and shining hope.  

213 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication June 30, 2026

About the author

Allee Richards' short fiction has been published widely in Australian literary magazines and anthologies, including Kill Your Darlings, The Best Australian Stories, New Australian Fiction, Best Summer Stories, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Australian Book Review. Small Joys of Real Life is her first novel. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers and the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She lives in Melbourne and works as a theatre lighting technician.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review of advance copy received from NetGalley

Richards has created another well-crafted story here. I’m a long-time fan of Richards’ work and eagerly anticipated this new release. I was curious as to why the cover design diverted from her previous two books - those beautifully simple designs - and now I know why! ‘Tight Lines’ is quite different to Richards’ first two books, in protagonists, context and (some) thematic concerns.

Despite my admiration for Richards’ work, unfortunately, that was the main thing that got me through this novel. There were many times where I was tempted to cast this aside, mainly due to my complete lack of interest or connection to the values, lifestyle and culture of the protagonists. I enjoy reading stories that can serve as a window into different lives, but there was something a bit alienating in the way in which these lives were drawn, mainly in the language, but also the characterisation.

I hope that this book will have reach beyond Australia, as I also found a lot of the vernacular, particularly in the first sections of the book, to be very Australian and ‘ocker’, with there not always being enough context cues to understand certain references. Richards has certainly captured place and voice very well, but I wonder how this will be received by those who can’t relate to, or aren’t familiar with, that culture. I fear that some of the content and style will be too isolating for some readers, internationally, but even, sadly, in Australia too.

I give two stars because I like Richards’ writing, despite this particular novel not being entirely for me. I continue to be a fan.

[Daria Ostrowska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading the first chapter after finishing the whole book feels like a gut-punch. Ouch.