‘West Girls shows us a sordid, self-regarding, and shiny world of schoolgirls and supermodels, and in any other lesser writer's hands this would be straight parody, but Woollett's extraordinary talent is to make the “real” more grotesque than the satire, and to infuse every sentence with her poet's vision and every character with a true melancholy and flawed humanity.’

‘The beginning teases us with fast-paced, colourful snapshots of culturally diverse characters and scenes: mother–daughter adventures, unconventional family models, teen politics, and preoccupation with appearances. As we read further, however, the story gets more unsettling. West Girls dissects the idea of beauty — Indah, as the protagonist’s stepmother’s name suggests — at the intersection of power, privilege, and exploitation: who’s exploiting and who’s being exploited? Woollett takes the theme of ‘becoming’ to the darker side; whilst subverting assumptions of fixed identities, she poses uneasy questions around cultural appropriation, racially and sexually structured gaze under capitalism, and disciplined bodies.’