After being expelled, Joey is sent to the country to help an old man. Will it turn his life around or will his past follow him?;

Joey is sent to live with his great-aunt in the country where his phone won’t work and he’ll be far away from his mates. But there isn’t any choice—this is the third school he’s been expelled from for fighting. Which is stupid because he doesn’t fight. It’s an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure, he disrupts every class he attends—a skill he’s proud of. Or at least pretends to be proud of. But he has to disrupt them to keep everyone from realising he can’t read.

It turns out that Auntie Belle is not so old and not so bad, and when she asks him to help a neighbour, Young Harry, who’s recovering from a bad accident, Joey finds a world he can understand. Young Harry is eighty-five years old. He has horses and dogs and a bull, a garden that produces more food than Joey has seen in the city supermarket. He doesn’t have a phone either—or anything else from the 21st century. But even without electricity and the internet, Joey has never felt more at home. He likes the trust Harry has in him, hopes to join the local AFL team and enjoys going for rides with Emily, the girl who looks after Harry’s horses. Joey and Young Harry become good mates —better than the ones he hung out with on the city streets.

But then the break-ins start. Robbie, jealous of Joey’s relationship with Emily, points the finger at Joey and the locals turn against him. And when one of his old city friends is revealed as the culprit, he tries to rope Joey into his break-and-enters. After all, he can’t change who he is, can he? And the locals will never accept him as one of them. Will they?

Last Chance Joey is a coming-of-age story for every kid who struggles to find acceptance and their place in the world. Joey finds not only somewhere that he belongs, but also the courage to stand up for what’s important to him and the people he cares about. 

Book Information
ISBN 9781761112614
Author Meredith Resce
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Rhiza Edge
Publisher Wombat Books