I play around with the colours for a few minutes, mixing them with the white. The colours I end up with aren’t perfect, but they’ll do. I don’t know why I like pastel colours so much. My life would be easier if I could get into dark colours, but what can I say? My heart is made of pastel confetti.

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 a year 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 you’re training for the town’s annual Mud Run that you’re not even sure you want to enter. When you’re drawn to colours and pencils and paint, but you’re not an artist. When the new guy in town, the one who makes you feel you’re charged with electricity, seems to want to hang out with you.

When it comes time to let your friends back in.

Jade Timms lives in a small town on the southern New South Wales coast. Golden, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Text Prize.