Tomorrow Series, by James Marsden

Tomorrow When The War Began
Dead of Night
A Killing Frost
Darkness, Be My Friend
Burning For Revenge
The Night is for Hunting
The Other Side of Dawn

In "Tomorrow When the War Began", we meet a teenager named Ellie, a resident of Australia. She and a number of friends go out into the bush to camp out for a week or so. When they return, their country has been invaded, their families are in a prisoner camp, and soldiers are roaming the streets of their town.

As they become more and more aware of what has happened to their town, they begin to think of trying to strike back, trying to hinder the enemy in at least some small ways. As the books progress, Ellie and the group try more difficult targets, and not always with success. Everyone in the group changes as the war goes on, and everyone finds themselves doing things they never believed they could do.

We never, or at least rarely, forget that these teenagers are fighting in a war. And some of them don't make it.

I don't want to say much more about what happens. It's enough to know that these seven books tell Ellie's story of what happened and what she and her friends did in this war.

The books are tight and well written. They are incredibly realistic. There is nothing in any of the books I found difficult to believe, and there is much I wouldn't have thought about. The group is constantly short on food, for example. While they take supplies (including chickens -- many in the group lived on farms) from their homes early in the series, as time goes on, the original supplies of food run out and they have to find other places to procure food. As might be expected, in most cases those places are in enemy hands.

Members of their group die. They are captured, and killed. In between, friendships and romances flower and vanish, and any relationship is difficult because of the difficult times they live in. And as much as we hope for a wonderful and happy life for Ellie, as the last book ends, we find that, in war, there are no truly happy endings.

"Tomorrow, When the War Began" and it's subsequent sequels are one of the best selling and most critically aclaimed series of books in Australia for young people.

These books are not llight-hearted, but tense, frightening and, at times, difficult, it's a story that shows what war is like in a way that is seldom seen. It doesn't glorify war, and while this group of teenagers -- especially the boys -- may have seen it as exciting, as time goes on they -- and we -- realize that war is hunger and fright and finally, it is doing what you do because it's what you feel you must do.

Highly recommended. Even if it takes time to track down the books so you can read them, it's worth it.