> Skip to content
  • Published: 31 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9781760141455
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

The Build-Up Season




From the author of CBCA-shortlisted Yellow comes a powerful exploration of family and identity set against the humid build-up to the wet season in Darwin.

Seventeen-year-old Iliad Piper is named after war and angry at the world. Growing up with a violent father and abused mother, she doesn’t know how to do relationships, family or friends. A love-hate friendship with Max turns into a prank war, and she nearly destroys her first true friendship with misfit Mia. She takes off her armour for nobody, until she meets Jared, someone who's as complicated as she is.

  • Published: 31 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9781760141455
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

Megan Jacobson

Megan Jacobson grew up in Darwin and the far north coast of New South Wales, but now lives in Sydney, where she works in TV news production at the ABC. She has a degree in journalism and has worked as a question writer for TV game shows, and as an in-house script storyliner and script editor for several Australian television dramas. Her short stories have been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, aired on ABC radio, appeared in the UTS writers’ anthology I can see my house from here and in the Review of Australian Fiction. Her first novel Yellow was shortlisted in the Older Readers category of the 2017 CBCA Book of the Year Awards.

Also by Megan Jacobson

See all

Praise for The Build-Up Season

Ily Piper is fierce and vulnerable and so authentic. I loved her.

Melina Marchetta

I raced through this book, reading it in great big, wonderful chunks. A ripping story with fabulous characters and an imaginative plot . . . [that] rings with a strong teenage truth . . . A really wonderful teenage story, with just the right amount of grit, adventure and emotion.

The Herald Sun and Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin (review of Yellow)

This. Was. Amazing . . .Yellow is already my favourite book read in 2016 so far. Yellow is an enriching, thought-provoking, powerful book with fantastic characters and beautiful writing.

youngadultatheart.com [review of Yellow]

Awards & recognition

Australian Family Therapists' Award for Children's Literature

Winner  •  2018  •  Older Readers

NSW Premier's Literary Awards

Shortlisted  •  2018  •  Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature

REAL Children's Choice Awards

Shortlisted  •  2019  •  Fiction for Years 7–9