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An Unconscious Choice of Chaos
252 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 1, 2026
About the author
Tessa Kinsela
2 books6 followersTessa Kinsela is an Australian author, educator, wife and mother of two boys, based in Queensland’s Scenic Rim.
A lifelong lover of books, she is drawn to stories that explore the messy, complicated realities of life—particularly contemporary and coming-of-age fiction, though she’ll always be a sucker for a good historical novel.
When she isn’t writing, Tessa can usually be found reading just one more chapter, talking about books, or adding far too many titles to her ever-growing TBR.
A lifelong lover of books, she is drawn to stories that explore the messy, complicated realities of life—particularly contemporary and coming-of-age fiction, though she’ll always be a sucker for a good historical novel.
When she isn’t writing, Tessa can usually be found reading just one more chapter, talking about books, or adding far too many titles to her ever-growing TBR.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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August 9, 2026RTC
September 9, 2026
Tessa Kinsela’s An Unconscious Choice of Chaos is a coming-of-age novel about the speed with which an apparently ordinary adolescence can spin beyond anyone’s control. Ashley Kelly begins Year 9 as a thoughtful, bookish Australian teenager who believes deeply in chaos theory. She understands the butterfly effect to mean that even the smallest action can produce enormous consequences. It is an appealing philosophy for someone who likes order, rectangles, carefully arranged colors, and a place for everything. What Ashley has not yet learned is that consequences are much easier to trace afterward than predict beforehand.
At first, Ashley’s world appears enviably secure. She lives in a loving Queensland home with her parents, younger sister Lacey, and the family Doberman, Callie. Her closest friends—Maddy, Gabby, and Amber—gather beneath a Weeping Lilly Pilly tree at Landon State High School. Their concerns involve classes, periods, clothes, parties, gossip, and first romances. Kinsela gives these routines considerable space, establishing the safety and familiarity Ashley will gradually lose.
Ashley’s emotional life changes dramatically when she meets Tanner, an intelligent and considerate new student. Previously uninterested in boys, she is overwhelmed by her attraction to him. Tanner gives her a flower, becomes her first boyfriend, and responds to her emotional turmoil with patience and understanding. His arrival also brings Maddy’s unspoken feelings to the surface. Ashley’s best friend fears that everyone else is moving forward while she remains behind, but her distress has another source: she wants a relationship with Ashley that extends beyond friendship.
Ashley’s simultaneous attraction to Tanner and Maddy begins the novel’s most interesting exploration. Kinsela does not treat adolescent sexuality as tidy, instantly understood, or easily labeled. Ashley’s encounters with Maddy are affectionate and consensual, but concealing them from Tanner leaves her increasingly divided. After her parents return Callie to the dog’s breeder and Tanner repeatedly slows the progression of their physical relationship, Ashley begins chasing intensity for its own sake. Drinking, smoking, lying to her parents, and secretly meeting the older Bray allow her to imagine that she is becoming independent. In reality, each supposedly liberating choice makes her increasingly reliant upon the next emotional high.
The novel takes a harrowing turn when Ashley is sexually assaulted at a party. Kinsela portrays the aftermath with sensitivity, with Ashley blaming herself because she had been drinking and behaving recklessly beforehand. Cruel rumors at school deepen her shame, while self-harm becomes a desperate means of converting emotional anguish into physical pain she can control. The novel remains clear, however, that Ashley’s earlier choices do not make her responsible for the violence committed against her.
The title is especially apropos. Ashley repeatedly describes impulsive decisions as though they simply happened, but the “unconscious choice” is often a refusal to stop and confront what she already knows. Chaos becomes both her explanation and her excuse. Yet the novel also recognizes that cause and blame are not interchangeable.
Kinsela, a Queensland educator, clearly understands teenage social life and the emotional magnitude of experiences adults may dismiss as temporary drama. Ashley’s relationship with Lacey is especially affecting. Lacey represents neither naïveté nor a magical solution, but the ordinary human connection that reminds Ashley she is still needed. Tanner is also unusually well drawn. His refusal to exploit Ashley when she is intoxicated demonstrates that restraint, rather than conquest, is evidence of genuine desire.
Kinsela’s determination to capture every turn in Ashley’s emotional life occasionally results in repetition, and some descriptions and passages of interior monologue could be tightened. Yet the novel’s patient attention to Ashley’s changing state of mind also gives weight to its compassionate treatment of adolescent sexuality, consent, self-harm, shame, and recovery.
An Unconscious Choice of Chaos does not offer the comforting fiction that one revelation or therapeutic breakthrough can restore the person who existed before trauma. Instead, Ashley must gradually build a new understanding of herself from innocence, experience, responsibility, and wounds. That is a more difficult conclusion, but also a more honest and hopeful one. Kinsela’s thoughtful debut may be especially meaningful to young readers experiencing similar confusion, helping them recognize that their worst moments do not define them and that recovery does not require returning to the person they once were.
At first, Ashley’s world appears enviably secure. She lives in a loving Queensland home with her parents, younger sister Lacey, and the family Doberman, Callie. Her closest friends—Maddy, Gabby, and Amber—gather beneath a Weeping Lilly Pilly tree at Landon State High School. Their concerns involve classes, periods, clothes, parties, gossip, and first romances. Kinsela gives these routines considerable space, establishing the safety and familiarity Ashley will gradually lose.
Ashley’s emotional life changes dramatically when she meets Tanner, an intelligent and considerate new student. Previously uninterested in boys, she is overwhelmed by her attraction to him. Tanner gives her a flower, becomes her first boyfriend, and responds to her emotional turmoil with patience and understanding. His arrival also brings Maddy’s unspoken feelings to the surface. Ashley’s best friend fears that everyone else is moving forward while she remains behind, but her distress has another source: she wants a relationship with Ashley that extends beyond friendship.
Ashley’s simultaneous attraction to Tanner and Maddy begins the novel’s most interesting exploration. Kinsela does not treat adolescent sexuality as tidy, instantly understood, or easily labeled. Ashley’s encounters with Maddy are affectionate and consensual, but concealing them from Tanner leaves her increasingly divided. After her parents return Callie to the dog’s breeder and Tanner repeatedly slows the progression of their physical relationship, Ashley begins chasing intensity for its own sake. Drinking, smoking, lying to her parents, and secretly meeting the older Bray allow her to imagine that she is becoming independent. In reality, each supposedly liberating choice makes her increasingly reliant upon the next emotional high.
The novel takes a harrowing turn when Ashley is sexually assaulted at a party. Kinsela portrays the aftermath with sensitivity, with Ashley blaming herself because she had been drinking and behaving recklessly beforehand. Cruel rumors at school deepen her shame, while self-harm becomes a desperate means of converting emotional anguish into physical pain she can control. The novel remains clear, however, that Ashley’s earlier choices do not make her responsible for the violence committed against her.
The title is especially apropos. Ashley repeatedly describes impulsive decisions as though they simply happened, but the “unconscious choice” is often a refusal to stop and confront what she already knows. Chaos becomes both her explanation and her excuse. Yet the novel also recognizes that cause and blame are not interchangeable.
Kinsela, a Queensland educator, clearly understands teenage social life and the emotional magnitude of experiences adults may dismiss as temporary drama. Ashley’s relationship with Lacey is especially affecting. Lacey represents neither naïveté nor a magical solution, but the ordinary human connection that reminds Ashley she is still needed. Tanner is also unusually well drawn. His refusal to exploit Ashley when she is intoxicated demonstrates that restraint, rather than conquest, is evidence of genuine desire.
Kinsela’s determination to capture every turn in Ashley’s emotional life occasionally results in repetition, and some descriptions and passages of interior monologue could be tightened. Yet the novel’s patient attention to Ashley’s changing state of mind also gives weight to its compassionate treatment of adolescent sexuality, consent, self-harm, shame, and recovery.
An Unconscious Choice of Chaos does not offer the comforting fiction that one revelation or therapeutic breakthrough can restore the person who existed before trauma. Instead, Ashley must gradually build a new understanding of herself from innocence, experience, responsibility, and wounds. That is a more difficult conclusion, but also a more honest and hopeful one. Kinsela’s thoughtful debut may be especially meaningful to young readers experiencing similar confusion, helping them recognize that their worst moments do not define them and that recovery does not require returning to the person they once were.
September 11, 2026
Tessa Kinsela’s An Unscious Choice of Chaos is an emotionally candid coming-of-age novel about how quickly adolescence can outrun a young person’s ability to understand it. Ashley begins Year 9 believing that careful thought can keep life orderly. Then friendship, desire, grief, alcohol, secrecy, and trauma begin exerting their own momentum. Kinsela makes the butterfly effect more than a recurring image. It becomes the book’s emotional structure, with each seemingly small choice altering the shape of everything that follows.
Ashley’s voice is intelligent, observant, funny, and intensely analytical. Her attention to bedroom colours, family rituals, school timetables, books, trees, and food gives the novel a vivid everyday texture, while the Queensland heat and bushland make its setting feel lived in. That domestic detail matters because it establishes the warmth surrounding Ashley before her inner world starts to fracture. The chapter titles, from “Anticipation” and “Exposure” through “Shame,” “Resilience,” and “Equilibrium,” create a thoughtful map of that psychological journey.
The novel’s most affecting quality is its willingness to remain close to Ashley when her reasoning becomes tangled. Her relationships with Tanner, Maddy, and Bray reveal different forms of intimacy, but the emotional heart of the book lies in her bonds with her family, especially Lacey. Kinsela handles consent, sexual assault, self-harm, substance use, and emotional distress with seriousness and compassion. The story also captures how shame can distort responsibility, leaving a person convinced that every harm they’ve suffered began with some earlier mistake of their own.
This is a confronting read, but it’s also a deeply humane one. Ashley’s recovery arrives through honesty, professional care, familiar places, books, and the quiet presence of people who keep loving her. The ending feels earned because healing is presented as an ongoing practice. Tessa Kinsela captures the terrible velocity of one small choice becoming a storm, then shows how tenderness can teach a life to hold steady again.
Ashley’s voice is intelligent, observant, funny, and intensely analytical. Her attention to bedroom colours, family rituals, school timetables, books, trees, and food gives the novel a vivid everyday texture, while the Queensland heat and bushland make its setting feel lived in. That domestic detail matters because it establishes the warmth surrounding Ashley before her inner world starts to fracture. The chapter titles, from “Anticipation” and “Exposure” through “Shame,” “Resilience,” and “Equilibrium,” create a thoughtful map of that psychological journey.
The novel’s most affecting quality is its willingness to remain close to Ashley when her reasoning becomes tangled. Her relationships with Tanner, Maddy, and Bray reveal different forms of intimacy, but the emotional heart of the book lies in her bonds with her family, especially Lacey. Kinsela handles consent, sexual assault, self-harm, substance use, and emotional distress with seriousness and compassion. The story also captures how shame can distort responsibility, leaving a person convinced that every harm they’ve suffered began with some earlier mistake of their own.
This is a confronting read, but it’s also a deeply humane one. Ashley’s recovery arrives through honesty, professional care, familiar places, books, and the quiet presence of people who keep loving her. The ending feels earned because healing is presented as an ongoing practice. Tessa Kinsela captures the terrible velocity of one small choice becoming a storm, then shows how tenderness can teach a life to hold steady again.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Thank you to the author for the eARC. All opinions are my own.
Wow! What can I even say? I absolutely loved this book!!! It was honestly one of my favorite reads of the year, and by the end I was sitting there feeling emotional, nostalgic, and not quite ready to let the characters go.
Kinsela’s writing is absolutely beautiful. It’s whimsical without ever feeling overdone. I finished the book in just two days because I was so invested in Ashley’s story and needed to see where it would go. I found her incredibly relatable and saw my own experiences reflected in hers.
What stayed with me most was how honestly it captured being a teenager. That strange in-between stage where you’re still a child in so many ways, but desperately want to be treated like an adult. The emotions feel so much bigger, you’re trying to figure out who you are, you’re carrying grief and confusion you don’t even have the words for yet, and you’re testing boundaries while just wanting someone to understand you. This book portrayed that so authentically that it brought me right back to those years and I actually teared up a few times while reading.
If you love coming-of-age stories with gorgeous prose, unforgettable characters, and an emotional depth that stays with you long after you’ve finished, I can’t recommend this enough. It’s heartbreaking, hopeful, and wonderfully powerful all at once. Very impressive for a debut and I can’t wait to see what Kinsela does next! Five stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Wow! What can I even say? I absolutely loved this book!!! It was honestly one of my favorite reads of the year, and by the end I was sitting there feeling emotional, nostalgic, and not quite ready to let the characters go.
Kinsela’s writing is absolutely beautiful. It’s whimsical without ever feeling overdone. I finished the book in just two days because I was so invested in Ashley’s story and needed to see where it would go. I found her incredibly relatable and saw my own experiences reflected in hers.
What stayed with me most was how honestly it captured being a teenager. That strange in-between stage where you’re still a child in so many ways, but desperately want to be treated like an adult. The emotions feel so much bigger, you’re trying to figure out who you are, you’re carrying grief and confusion you don’t even have the words for yet, and you’re testing boundaries while just wanting someone to understand you. This book portrayed that so authentically that it brought me right back to those years and I actually teared up a few times while reading.
If you love coming-of-age stories with gorgeous prose, unforgettable characters, and an emotional depth that stays with you long after you’ve finished, I can’t recommend this enough. It’s heartbreaking, hopeful, and wonderfully powerful all at once. Very impressive for a debut and I can’t wait to see what Kinsela does next! Five stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review of advance copy received from Author
Review of eARC from the author.
Oh gosh, let me just start by saying Ashley was so relatable, almost painfully relatable at times. The story focused on her navigating that awkward stage of not a teenager but not yet a young adult, and all of the moments that come with it. Kinsela's writing beautifully captured those feelings of making choices, and believing those choices are the right path, and then going through the learning that comes with realising they might not have been the best decision.
I really felt for Ashley throughout the book; I loved her descriptions of finding her way in the world and I loved her justifications of why she was doing what she was not. I absolutely could have had more of her friend group though, I adored Gabby, Amber, and Maddy. Their distinct personalities reflected off of Ashley as the main character perfectly. I absolutely did not love Luke or Bray, but you'll have to read the book to find out why!
An Unconscious Choice of Chaos is out on the 1st of September, and this is definitely one to add to your reading list immediately if you're into beautiful coming of ages stories, that can tug on your heartstrings 🌟
Thank you to the author for the eARC 🌟
Oh gosh, let me just start by saying Ashley was so relatable, almost painfully relatable at times. The story focused on her navigating that awkward stage of not a teenager but not yet a young adult, and all of the moments that come with it. Kinsela's writing beautifully captured those feelings of making choices, and believing those choices are the right path, and then going through the learning that comes with realising they might not have been the best decision.
I really felt for Ashley throughout the book; I loved her descriptions of finding her way in the world and I loved her justifications of why she was doing what she was not. I absolutely could have had more of her friend group though, I adored Gabby, Amber, and Maddy. Their distinct personalities reflected off of Ashley as the main character perfectly. I absolutely did not love Luke or Bray, but you'll have to read the book to find out why!
An Unconscious Choice of Chaos is out on the 1st of September, and this is definitely one to add to your reading list immediately if you're into beautiful coming of ages stories, that can tug on your heartstrings 🌟
Thank you to the author for the eARC 🌟
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September 29, 2026If you are looking for a book that captures the emotional whirlwind of teenagers while also being a bit of ‘day-in-the-life’, this could be a good book for you. It really paints a picture that any teenager can be a bad decision away from spiraling, which is simultaneously heart breaking and terrifying.
This is a character-driven book, as the reader follows 15year old Ashley. With descriptive writing, a picture is painted of a seemingly well off teenager - she does well in school, gets along with her family, and has a core group of supportive friends. But as the story unravels, so too does Ashley’s life. With each new thing, Ashley struggles to process her emotions in healthy ways, and instead, ultimately makes a series of self-destructive decisions that snowball out of control.
While ultimately not for me (I didn’t realize how sad and helpless I would feel reading this), it could be good for younger audiences looking to balance seeing people their age in books dealing with grittier topics.
Thanks to Tess Kinsela for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is a character-driven book, as the reader follows 15year old Ashley. With descriptive writing, a picture is painted of a seemingly well off teenager - she does well in school, gets along with her family, and has a core group of supportive friends. But as the story unravels, so too does Ashley’s life. With each new thing, Ashley struggles to process her emotions in healthy ways, and instead, ultimately makes a series of self-destructive decisions that snowball out of control.
While ultimately not for me (I didn’t realize how sad and helpless I would feel reading this), it could be good for younger audiences looking to balance seeing people their age in books dealing with grittier topics.
Thanks to Tess Kinsela for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
October 5, 2026
ARC Review:
I’m confused about how to feel. The prose was a little jarring and formal for a teenager. The actions, while some may explain it away to teenage hormones, were so random and escalated exponentially.
I don’t like that idea of finding oneself means abandoning all morals and doing whatever for the sake of it. Teenagers don’t have the best self control, but they have some. Ashley being angry or lost doesn’t mean she does whatever to express that. Also, the fact that something brutal happened to her as a consequence of her playing around is not a cautionary tale, it’s punishment.
I don’t know. I just felt like it was great pacing the first 100 pages (hence the 3 stars), and then went spiraled and went warp-speed the last 150.
Maybe I just don’t understand this book.
I’m confused about how to feel. The prose was a little jarring and formal for a teenager. The actions, while some may explain it away to teenage hormones, were so random and escalated exponentially.
I don’t like that idea of finding oneself means abandoning all morals and doing whatever for the sake of it. Teenagers don’t have the best self control, but they have some. Ashley being angry or lost doesn’t mean she does whatever to express that. Also, the fact that something brutal happened to her as a consequence of her playing around is not a cautionary tale, it’s punishment.
I don’t know. I just felt like it was great pacing the first 100 pages (hence the 3 stars), and then went spiraled and went warp-speed the last 150.
Maybe I just don’t understand this book.
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