Allee Richards has a gift for capturing the spirit of youth in her characters, shown vibrantly in her 2023 novel, A Light in The Dark. In her latest novel, Tight Lines, she turns her attention to young men and the forces that shape them.
Set in a small coastal town on Victoria’s Gippsland coast, Tight Lines follows three friends navigating the final years of high school. Twins Matty and Josh are yin and yang. Josh is drawn to surfing, chasing waves and freedom; Matty finds solace in fishing and study. Their close friend, Luke, longs for the brotherhood the twins share, becoming entwined in their world.
Luke and Matty become closer, fishing at the pier, saluting one another with the words ‘tight lines’, a greeting for good luck between fisherman.
Tight Lines review – quick links
Lives on the cusp
Around the trio are many versions of masculinity. From their fathers, each modelling different parenting styles and emotional expression, to the salty fisherman Geoff, whom the boys compare to a marlin fish – sturdy and hard to catch.
Then there are the darker examples, with peers like Ian and the lineage of violence passed down from his father.
As the friends move through adolescence, with a mixture of hormones and egos running wild, they begin testing the boundaries of who they are and who they might become while being stuck between small-town beliefs and big dreams.
At 15, they meet Millie, a girl from Melbourne whose confidence and curiosity expose them to a world beyond their coastal bubble. She returns for three summers, and each time the friendship between the four deepens. Together, they experiment with drinking, drugs and sexual desires, unsure whether they are searching for freedom or simply trying to understand what it means to be alive.
Then, on the New Year’s Eve after they’ve just finished their final year of school, tragedy strikes when a car accident changes their lives forever.
Differing perspectives
Richards’ plot and structure is down to a fine art, planting hidden grenades throughout the novel, slowly building suspense and tension until the impact is unavoidable. Even when the reader suspects where the story may be heading, the eventual realisation still hits like a punch in the gut. Tight Lines constantly plays with expectation, making you question whose perspective you can trust.
Parts move between different perspectives, split over the passing of years and the shifts of friendships. Each character carries their own version of events, their own regrets and their own understanding of what happened.
The novel opens with Josh, where Richards merges two scenes together. There’s an immediate emotional connection, and I returned to these opening scenes throughout, drawn back to reconnect with him and reconsider what I knew about his character.
Luke is captured in the peak of youth. He’s quiet, awkward and kind, confused by the hormones running through him and dealing with rawness of adolescence. He’s also heard from later in life, reflecting on those formative years.
‘One bad decision doesn’t have to define a who I am. There’s still a lot more good I can do. Believing is different from understanding, though.’
Millie brings a different energy to the group. Intelligent and curious beyond her years, she references ideas like nepotism and Rasputin, details that highlight the contrast between her upbringing and that of the coastal boys. Yet Richards also explores the loss of Millie’s youthful curiosity as well as the impact of things left unsaid – the conversations that are impossible to have until they’re unavoidable.
Matty stays with you, especially after the tragic event. ‘I arrived on campus bundled in yellow tape labelled FRAGILE,’ he says. His grief for his brother collides with the burden of hiding his sexuality and the expectations placed upon him. When his father says, ‘Mum’s still living our old life. Let’s let her enjoy it a little longer,’ it becomes a heartbreaking reflection of generations of emotional repression, a reminder of how families can bottle things up to protect one another.
A few fragile years
Tight Lines has themes about toxic masculinity and male fragility running throughout. Richards examines how emotional trauma is inherited, passed down through fathers and sons, and disguised as strength. It is this undercurrent that makes the novel so affecting.
The novel verges on a happy ending but character arcs are left unresolved. Tight Lines understands that life rarely offers perfect closure. Sometimes moving forward means accepting that you may never completely move on.
Growing up in a coastal town myself, Tight Lines transported me back to that time of adolescence where hometown feels impossibly small in a gigantic world. When I was 15, I read James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, and it became a cautionary tale that shaped my choices around alcohol and drugs throughout my teenage years.
Tight Lines carries a similar weight. It is a reminder of how fragile those years can be, how one decision can ripple through an entire life, and how the friendships formed in our youth can continue to define us long after we leave the places where they began.
