Jaclyn Moriarty's 2000 novel Feeling Sorry for Celia was one of the finest, funniest debut YA novels to be published in recent years. I've been looking forward to reading her next novel, and the three year wait has been well worth it. Finding Cassie Crazy is an even more accomplished novel than its predecessor, to which it acts as a sort of companion. Finding Cassie Crazy is set in the same millieu as Celia and uses the same device of the Pen Pal assignment between privileged private Ashbury High and its "scary" public school counterpart Brookfield.

Where Celia focused on Elizabeth Clarry, Finding Cassie Crazy has three protagonists, Emily, Lydia and Cassie, all of whom end up with male penpals from Brookfield. While the reader enjoys the growing relationships — played out in letters — between Emily and Charlie and Lydia and Seb, it's the mystery surrounding Cassie's correspondent, Matthew Dunlop, that drives the novel. It's the fierce and at times uncompromising loyalty the three girls share that provides the novel's emotional core and satisfying pay off.

With letters between three sets of penpals, plus Lydia's writing journal and Cassie's diary, Finding Cassie Crazy is a more complex novel than Feeling Sorry for Celia, but Moriarty keeps all the balls confidently in the air. The reader never loses track of the multiple characters, and Moriarty manages to maintain suspense and mystery — and humour — around all the relationships. She also manages to sketch in the minor characters with great skill (Elizabeth Clarry and her Celia penpal Christina make a small but memorable appearance, and keep your eye on Bindy Mackenzie). The parents of the three girls are also important and interesting in their own right, even though they are nearly always "off stage" of the main action.

Back to the mystery around Matthew Dunlop (Cassie's penpal) for a moment. My only quibble with the novel is that the motivations for his actions remain, if not unexplained exactly, then perhaps a little unsatisfactory. It's difficult to say more without giving anything away! However, a little more insight into this character would have made the novel entirely, rather than just mostly satisfying. I also found myself prepared to be annoyed by a pivotal scene at the end of the novel, a public mock trial of our three heroines which could simply never happen in "real life" (I frequently find myself annoyed at children's and YA books that seem to have no idea at all what can actually happen within a school setting), but Moriarty pulls it off with such aplomb, and it's just so damn FUNNY, that she entirely defeated all my reservations.

My sister-in-law Pauline rang me tonight, on her way out the door to her book group. "It's my turn to recommend a book!" she said. "Any ideas? What about The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants?" "Nope. Finding Cassie Crazy" I said, and gave her a quick run down. She liked the sound of it. I recommend it unreservedly to Misrule readers too.

P.S. Might I just say what terrific YA novels Pan Macmillan Australia are publishing at the moment. Other great Pan novels I've read recently; The Messenger by Markus Zusak and Charlotte Calder's Cupid Painted Blind, in which a YA cyber-romance meets Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Kudos to Pan's children's publisher Anna McFarlane.

P.P.S. I read recently that Pan have signed up a novel by another Moriarty, one of Jaclyn's sister. Talented family.

P.P.P.S. Finding Cassie Crazy will be published by Art Asylum in the US in February 2004 as The Year of Secret Assignments. (According to Amazon.com)