Perhaps for Kostakis it was this frustration with growing up on a diet of reality television shows that inspired his début young adult novel. In Loathing Lola, Courtney Marlow likes to think of herself as a ‘breath of fresh air in a world of promiscuous Parises and bald Britneys’. Unlike her obstreperous peers, such as Katie Watson, who ‘has a sexual history that’d make Paris Hilton blush’, Courtney is intelligent, charming and candid.

When she takes part in a new reality series called Real Teens, she does so cautiously. For Courtney, this programme is a chance to raise awareness about issues that are foreign to teenagers plagued with bourgeois anxieties of self-representation. However, she finds herself caught in a web of lies and deceit: instead of being a positive influence, she is rendered as ‘violent’, a ‘nymphomaniac’ and a ‘self-medicating bipolar mess’.

Kostakis’s hilarious characters, like Courtney’s tackily clad step-mother Lola, are perhaps the most enjoyable feat of this novel. With witty one-liners similar to Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl series, Loathing Lola is a promising début from a young and talented Australian writer.