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'Fifty Shades Freed' INTERNATIONAL eBook give-away!

2012-01-31T08:28:00.003+11:00

I have really enjoyed E.L. James’s debut series, ‘Fifty Shades’. I stumbled across this series and have been recommending it to all my book-blogging buddies! I am doubly excited at the prospect of seeing Christian Grey on the big screen (fingers are firmly crossed for that one!).

A big thank-you to ‘The Writer's Coffee Shop’ for giving me an advanced copy of third book ‘Fifty Shades Freed’, and also for giving me one eBook of ‘Freed’ to give-away to my lovely readers!

Below are the details for how to enter and win one eBook copy of ‘Fifty Shades Freed’. This is an INTERNATIONAL give-away!

How to enter:

♥ Become a follower of my blog (if you aren't already)

♥ Leave a comment on this blog post, answering the question;
“Who would you like to see play Christian Grey in a movie adaptation of 'Fifty Shades'?”

♥ Include a way to contact you (e-mail addy is fine)

♥ One post per entrant

♥ This is an INTERNATIONAL give-away!

♥ Contest closes February 29th
I will announce the lucky winner on March 2nd

'Fifty Shades Freed' Fifty Shades #3 by E.L. James

2012-01-31T01:00:00.001+11:00

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

When unworldly student Ana Steele first encountered the driven, damaged young entrepreneur Christian Grey it sparked a sensual affair that changed both their lives irrevocably. Shocked, intrigued, and ultimately repelled by Christian’s singular sexual tastes, Ana demanded a deeper commitment; determined to keep her, Christian agreed.

Now, together, they have more – love, passion, intimacy, and a world of infinite possibilities. But Ana always knew that loving her Fifty Shades would not be easy, and being together poses challenges neither of them ever anticipated. Ana must somehow learn to share Christian’s opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own integrity, identity or independence; Christian must somehow overcome his compulsion to control, and lay to rest the horrors that blighted his past and haunt his present.

Just when it seems that together their love can conquer any obstacle, misfortune, malice and fate combine to make Ana’s worst nightmares come true. Alone and desperate, she must face down the poisoned legacy of Christian’s past.

Wunderkind and infamous CEO, Christian Grey, only knew Anastasia ‘Ana’ Steele for a few weeks when they married. Now the happy couple are spending their honeymoon in Europe, aboard a luxury boat and dreading their return to work, home renovations and the paparazzi.

But Christian has even more reason to delay their return to reality … after confirming that a machine malfunction on his beloved Charlie Tango helicopter was deliberate, more and more accidents and disturbing information is coming to light and plaguing the newlyweds.

An arson attack, a disgruntled former employee with a score to settle and lurking dark-tinted cars have got Christian jumpy and putting extra security detail on his nearest and dearest, especially his new bride.

‘Fifty Shades Freed’ is the third and final book in E.L. James’s surprise-hit trilogy. The first book was ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, the second ‘Fifty Shades Darker’.

E.L. James’s debut romance erotica series, ‘Fifty Shades’, was a 2011 smash-hit. Little was known about the books when they started gaining fan momentum on Goodreads and Amazon. The books were bizarrely labelled as Twilight adult fan-fiction (minus supernatural aspects and coy metaphoric vampiric lust). The dark blue covers started popping up on book blogs and there were reverent whispers about a mysterious Christian Grey from smitten reviewers.

‘Fifty Shades Freed’ is, without a doubt, one of the most anticipated books of 2012 … and trust me, this finale is worth getting giddy about.

Ana and Christian entered into a whirlwind romance that saw them set to wed at the end of ‘Fifty Shades Darker’. When we revisit them in ‘Fifty Shades Freed’ they are enjoying their honeymoon, cavorting around Europe and dodging paparazzi. Whirlwind or not, Ana and Christian’s romance has proven to be epic and cathartic – a healing balm for megalomaniac Christian whose traumatic childhood had left him a haphophobia (fearing touch) and deeply distrusting of affection. In Ana, however, Christian has found salvation. He craves her touch and revels in her acceptance of his disturbing quirks, she soothes his self-doubt.

‘Fifty Shades Darker’ was a really wonderful second installment in this series, and in some ways it felt like the end. It finished on a high, with secrets revealed and romantic declarations made. But E.L. James is really offering up something special with ‘Fifty Shades Freed’ – she’s writing what comes after happily-ever-after, when the hero and heroine have sailed off into the sunset and all seems right with the world.

Ana still has a long way to go with Christian, as she discovers on their honeymoon. Even with a ring on her finger, Christian’s dead mother still looms large in his head, and his feelings of abandonment will not be cured overnight. Christian is still, well and truly, fifty shades of fucked up;

I reach up and caress his face. “And you’re precious to me, too. You do know that, don’t you?”
He stills, looking lost.
Oh, Christian … my sweet Fifty.
“Believe me,” I whisper.
“It’s not easy.” His voice is almost inaudible.
“Try. Try hard, because it’s true.” I stroke his face once more, my fingers brushing against his sideburns. He gazes at me, eyes wide, gray oceans of loss and hurt and pain. I want to climb into his body and hold him. Anything to stop that look. When will he realize that he means the world to me? That he’s more than worthy of my love, the love of his parents – his siblings? I have told him over and over, and yet here we are as Christian gives me his lost, abandoned look. Time. It will just take time.

‘Fifty Shades Freed’ feels much more psychological than the first two books. Book’s one and two really dealt with Ana and Christian’s relationship hurdles – Ana asking herself if she could accept Christian’s many ‘terms and conditions’, and Christian slowly realizing that he wanted Ana more than he wanted his lifestyle. With ‘Freed’, Ana and Christian are pretty much a given. They tried being apart and it nearly destroyed them both – so even with Christian’s looming doubts, his and Ana’s relationship is the constant. What James is exploring in ‘Freed’ is Christian’s dormant feelings of self-worth and self-loathing, all inherently linked to his dead mother.

This finale sees the series turned up a notch. Everything is heightened; with looming danger from a psychotic ex-employee, Ana combating her husband’s mercurial mood swings and dealing with his now defunct ‘sub-club’ … so many dramas and personal struggles equate to a lot of intense, smouldering sex, fraught confrontations and lover’s quarrels. Christian is still hotly volatile and utterly endearing, but now with Ana as his wife his feelings of territoriality and his need to protect are off-the-charts. Christian’s temper isn’t helped by arson attacks and high-speed car chases sending him into the overprotected stratosphere.

Now, at this point everyone is familiar with the Twilight-linked back-story of how the ‘Fifty Shades’ series was conceived. With ‘Breaking Dawn’ in mind, some twists and turns won’t come as such a huge surprise to savvy readers … but I was still impressed by how James managed to throw a few curve-balls and keep me on my toes, despite having a round-about idea of how ‘Freed’ would shape up.

The ending is catastrophically brilliant, maybe because it doesn’t feel like the end. We’re left with a sense that these characters still have lives to live and their story will keep playing out … and I, for one, would love a little follow-up. Either with a novella, short story or fourth book entirely. I think Christian still has a long way to go, and I’d love to revisit him down the track and check-in to see how he’s coping (especially since there is a lovely hint to some kinky fuckery in the epilogue that had me in giggling curiosity!).

E.L. James’s debut erotic romance trilogy has collectively swept readers off their feet. Christian Grey deserves all his rumored reverence from smitten reviewers, and the ‘Fifty Shades’ series has most certainly heralded a new romance author to watch in E.L. James. I’m sad to see this series end, but when the finale is as delicious as ‘Fifty Shades Freed’, it takes some of the sting out of goodbye. I do hope we revisit the Grey’s again, but in the meantime I intend to automatically-buy whatever E.L. James writes next!

5/5

'Glory in Death' In Death #2 by J.D. Robb

2012-01-29T21:41:00.002+11:00

From the BLURB:

It is 2058, New York City. In a world where technology can reveal the darkest of secrets, there's only one place to hide a crime of passion-in the heart.

Even in the mid-twenty-first century, during a time when genetic testing usually weeds out any violent hereditary traits before they can take over, murder still happens. The first victim is found lying on a sidewalk in the rain. The second is murdered in her own apartment building. Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas has no problem finding connections between the two crimes. Both victims were beautiful and highly successful women. Their glamorous lives and loves were the talk of the city. And their intimate relations with men of great power and wealth provide Eve with a long list of suspects-including her own lover, Roarke.

After an intense murder investigation that put them on a collision course, Eve has finally succumbed to entrepreneurial play-boy Roarke’s affections. They have been quietly dating, trying to avoid the spotlight (for Eve’s recent popularity with her successful murder investigation, and Roarke’s notoriety as a prominent NYC businessman).

But Eve is struggling with Roarke’s demanding affections. He wants everything from Eve, her love and her commitment. But Eve has demons in her past, old hurts and traumas that make loving and trusting nearly impossible.

Eve’s line of work doesn’t help. And when a murder investigation of a prominent New York business woman leads back to her wealthy family, Eve thinks she has found more evidence of why human beings aren’t made for trust.

‘Glory in Death’ is the second book in J.D. Robb’s futuristic ‘In Death’ murder series.

I really enjoyed the first book in this (mammoth) series, ‘Naked in Death’. We met Eve Dallas, a prickly young lieutenant whose childhood as a forgotten orphan with traumatic memories continues to influence her stern outlook on justice. And Roarke (just ‘Roarke’) a prominent NYC businessman who has a playboy past and a tabloid-splashed life . . . Roarke got caught up in Eve’s murder investigation, and upon being deemed innocent, he also became caught up with Eve romantically.

When ‘Glory’ begins, Eve and Roarke are still in deep. Though not as deep as Roarke would like. Eve is holding back; because of her haunting childhood memories, bleak job and ingrained trust issues. Throughout ‘Glory’ Eve and Roarke are at loggerheads – Eve is trying to take little steps with Roarke, but he wants grand romance and to sweep her off her feet. If only Eve would let him.

A murder investigation into two dead women doesn’t help matters . . . especially not when one of the dead used to have a sexual relationship with Roarke, once upon a time.

I did like ‘Glory in Death’. In this book we delve deeper into Eve’s damaged psyche, while still only skimming the surface of her deeper hurts. This novel is more about her building trust with Roarke, and Roarke’s frustrations when things between him and Eve don’t move quickly enough. Eve and Roarke are the big draw-cards of this series. For Robb to be 34-books deep into this series, in which the romance is firmly established in book one is fairly incredible . . . and I can see why the relationship is kept fresh. Because Eve is her own roadblock, haunted by the past that is now affecting her trust in Roarke makes for plenty of tensions and explorations.

I should also mention that the secondary characters keep this series fresh. There’s Summerset, Roarke’s mysterious and cantankerous butler who has it in for Eve. And Eve’s best friend Mavis, someone she busted years ago but who is now a dear friend. Mavis is especially fantastic, she sings like a dying cat and dresses like Lady Gaga. What’s not to love?

She stepped out of a torrential spring downpour, handing a speechless Summerset her transparent cloak strung with tiny lights, and turned three circles. More, Eve thought, in awe of the hallway than to show off her skin-hugging red body suit.

Once again, the murder investigation isn’t exactly top-notch. It’s definitely not Robb’s strong point, which is odd in a murder series spanning 34 books. The real point of interest comes from Robb delving into Eve’s personality and memory, picking apart the reasons she does what she does with such ferocity;

Calmer, with the twist of her earlier words unravelling in his gut, he slowed, glanced at her. “How many homicide victims have you stood for in your illustrious career, Lieutenant?”
“Stood for? That’s an odd way of putting it.” She moved her shoulders, trying to focus her mind on a man in a long, dark coat with a shiny new car. “I don’t know. Hundreds. Murder never goes out of style.”

I did enjoy this second book, not as much as the first in the series, but I did like it. I’m mostly enjoying the up’s and down’s of Eve and Roarke’s tender new romance, and piecing together the puzzle that is Eve Dallas. I’m still reading, even though I’m still daunted by the many, many books to come . . .

3.5/5

'Butterfly Tattoo' by Deidre Knight

2012-01-27T01:36:00.001+11:00

From the BLURB:

Michael Warner has been drifting in a numb haze since the death of his lover, who was killed by a drunk driver. As the anniversary of the wreck approaches, Michael's grief grows more suffocating. Yet he must find a way through the maze of pain and secrets to live for their troubled young daughter. Out of the darkness comes a voice, a lifeline he never expected to find—Rebecca O'Neill, a development executive in the studio where he works as an electrician.

Rebecca, a former celebrity left scarred from a crazed fan's attack, has retreated from the limelight, certain no man can ever get past her disfigurement. The instant sparks between her and Michael come as a complete surprise—and so does her almost mystical bond with his daughter. For the first time, all three feel compelled to examine their scars in the light of love. But trust is hard to come by, especially when you're not sure what to believe when you look in the mirror. The scars? Or the truth?

Michael Warner’s daughter, Andrea, doesn’t call him ‘daddy’ anymore. That name is reserved for her dead father, Alex. The father she was in a car crash with, that left her with a scar running down her leg and recurring nightmares.

Michael takes Andrea to family counseling, where he is told to be patient and wait for her to start treating him like her father again . . . as opposed to the ‘left-over’ parent, the substitute.

Rebecca O’Neill is moving up in the film business. She is about to close a big novel adaptation deal that is already generating Oscar-buzz. And she has just received some good news; her parents are moving back to Georgia after staying in California for three years and nursing (coddling) Rebecca back to health. Rebecca is grateful for all they’ve done, since the stalker-attack that left her with a scarred face and prematurely destroyed her acting career.

Michael and Rebecca meet on the Hollywood lot, where Michael works as an electrician and first glimpses Rebecca in the dark . . . but they both feel the attraction.

But their heat and chemistry is a burden for both. Rebecca, because she can’t imagine someone as beautiful as Michael being attracted to her damaged self. And Michael because he was in a committed relationship for many years . . . with a man.

Rebecca and Michael can’t deny their attraction for long, though. And things become especially complicated when Michael’s daughter, Andrea, starts to open up to Rebecca about her scars and the car crash that killed her daddy. Forces are pulling Michael and Rebecca together, and all that stands in the way is their own doubts.

‘Butterfly Tattoo’ was the 2009 contemporary romance from Deidre Knight.

I admit, I was a little skeptical going into this book . . . I am an avid reader of M/M romances, and there was a small part of me that read the ‘Butterfly Tattoo’ blurb and worried this would be a book about a gay man miraculously falling for a woman (with a few not-so-subtle connotations about choosing your sexuality etc, etc). Oh, how very, very wrong I was . . .

When we meet him, Michael is barely back on his feet since his husband died one year ago. Michael is left with their young daughter, Andrea, who refuses to call him ‘daddy’ and does not talk about the accident, ever. Strained relations with Alex’s family in the wake of his death, and Michael’s own estranged father (a minister, who didn’t take kindly to Alex) mean that for the last year, Michael has felt fairly isolated in his grief. He has relied on the kindness of his and Alex’s friends, but he knows that it’s time to start returning to the living, at least for Andrea’s sake. . .

Rebecca O’Neill, meanwhile, is a lesson in slow-to-recover. It has been years since the attack that ended her career and left her face scarred . . . and in that time Rebecca hasn’t dated, she still jumps at every little noise and is wary of her TV fan-base. She is convinced that no one will want her, the way she is now.

Enter Michael, and Andrea. Michael is the local electrician on the Hollywood lot where Andrea works, and one day a black-out has them crossing paths. Michael brings Andrea along to his last-minute job, and the young girl is fascinated by Rebecca’s obvious scars, which can’t be hidden, not like Andrea’s. The two of them strike up an unlikely friendship, and Michael is awed (and even a little bit jealous). But Rebecca’s connection with Andrea is a good excuse, because Michael wants to see Rebecca again. Even though that’s nuts. He was with Alex for years, and despite his dead husband’s protests that he’s bi-sexual as opposed to homosexual, Michael is still reeling at his attraction to Rebecca.

‘Butterfly Tattoo’ is a gorgeous and sensual romance, telling the tender-tale of loving blindly and healing slowly.

What made me skeptical in the blurb is actually a rather beautiful and logical love story woven by Deidre Knight. Michael has a romantic track-record of loving the person, not their gender or their looks. This explains his and Alex’s relationship, which evolved from friendship, to confusion, and finally into a happy marriage full of love. And this explains his attraction to Rebecca – who he finds beautiful, despite her scars, and who sparks life in him after a year of drowning in grief.

And let me just say, there is a lot of grief in this book. Despite falling for Rebecca, Michael still misses and loves Alex, and Knight spends a good portion of the book examining grief and longing;

Andrea and I've spent the past year steadily erasing Alex’s fingerprint from this place. Bedroom shoes, eyeglasses, razor, toothbrush, these are the things that mark a home as belonging to someone distinct, and so long as that person is alive, you take every balled-up athletic sock, every discarded tissues and half-finished Coke for granted. It’s only afterward, when you wander through each room, that you’re spooked by the illusion that your lover might simply waltz through the ether into your bedroom, slip on those eyeglasses, and finish the novel he left cocked open bedside.

I really, really appreciated the fact that Michael didn’t stop longing for Alex after meeting Rebecca. As he is slow to realize, there will be no ‘getting over’ Alex. The pain of losing him, the joy of loving him, will remain with Michael, always. That’s a tough lesson to learn, in conjunction with falling for someone new (who is painfully aware of the hole in his life, left by his dead husband). Add onto that the fact that Michael is also battling his attraction to a woman, after being married to a man for so long . . . it sounds like it should be a soap-opera, but Deidre Knight reigns in the outlandish and focuses on the tender heartbreak inherent in the story.

‘Butterfly Tattoo’ is a gorgeous and tender novel that looks at love, from all sides, and examines the process of healing (but not forgetting). I owe a big thank-you to Mandi of Smexy Books for recommending this novel to me. I absolutely balled my eyes out through a lot of this book . . . but days after I finished reading the characters are still with me, the story lingers and definitely imprints on the heart. Sublime.

5/5

'Salvage the Bones' by Jesmyn Ward

2012-01-25T09:53:00.000+11:00

From the BLURB:

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.

As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family---motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce---pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

China is birthing puppies and people are battering down the hatches, expecting a big storm. Esch is feeling morning sickness, in the early stages of her pregnancy to one of the many boys she lays down with. Her brother, Skeetah, is preoccupied with China’s pups and wellbeing. Esch’s father is prone to drink since their Mama died giving birth to Junior, and fourteen-year-old Esch keeps looking at Manny out of the corner of her eye…

These are the twelve days leading up to Hurricane Katrina – the days ‘before’, when nobody was prepared for the destruction about to befall them all.

‘Salvage the Bones’ was the 2011 National Book Award winner by Jesmyn Ward.

Ward’s novel is by no means a comfortable read. It’s partly that there’s a pervading sense of grim foreboding throughout the novel, as readers wade through the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. We know of the destruction to come, but as was the true-to-life case in 2005, the characters in ‘Salvage’ have no foresight, and are utterly unprepared for the Hurricane that will kill 1,833 people and decimate areas already burdened by poverty. But the book is also uncomfortable because Ward puts those areas under a microscope – observing the rural poor, and examining the many ways that their lives were already shambolic before the Hurricane hit.

Esch, our narrator, is fourteen and pregnant. She’s a bright young girl, who reads plenty and makes keen observations about her family and friends. But she is mother-less, and from a young age has sought comfort and gratification with local boys and her brother’s friends. Her reactions and thoughts on ‘laying’ with these boys are cringe-worthy for their innocence – when she thinks that she can’t say no, because it’s now expected of her. Or when she muses that she always thought local boy ‘Big Henry’ (who is in his 20’s) would one day come calling for her, like all the other boys, she’s surprised that he hasn’t already.

Esch’s thoughts are disarming and horrifying, mostly because Ward presents them so calmly and with a matter-of-fact innocence that wrenches the heart. It’s doubly heart-breaking because Esch is brilliant and intelligent, some of her observations are wonderfully perceptive;

“Junior, stop being orner.” It’s what Mama used to say to us when we were little, and I say it to Junior out of habit. Daddy used to say it sometimes, too, until he said it to Randall one day and Randall started giggling, and then Daddy figured out Randall was laughing because it sounded like ‘horny’. About a year ago I figured out what it was supposed to be after coming across its parent on the vocabulary list for my English class with Miss Dedeaux: ‘ornery’. It made me wonder if there were other words Mama mashed like that. They used to pop up in my head sometime when I was doing the stupidest things: ‘tetrified’ when I was sweeping the kitchen and Daddy came in dripping beer and kicking chairs. ‘Belove’ when Manny was curling pleasure from me with his fingers in mid-swim in the pit. ‘Freegid’ when I was laying in bed in November, curled to the wall like I was going to burrow into another cover or I was making room for a body to lay behind me to make me warm.

It did take me a while to finish this book, because there is a lot of sadness to wade through. Not to mention a feeling of hopeless uselessness – as you read these people prepare for a storm that is going to rip their lives asunder. But I was surprised that as the story progressed there was a lot of heart to be found in Esch’s family saga. There’s a feeling that in the aftermath of Katrina this family, no matter their flaws, will band together and find each other in the rubble.

No wonder Ward won the prestigious ‘National Book Award’ for ‘Salvage the Bones’. She writes a raw and honest portrayal of life before destruction – in an unflinching examination of what life is like for a good portion of the under-privileged population. Her words are disarmingly beautiful, and Esch is one character who stays with you long after the last page.

5/5

'Playing Beatie Bow' by Ruth Park

2012-01-23T14:59:00.011+11:00

From the BLURB:

The game is called Beatie Bow and the children play it for the thrill of scaring themselves. But when Abigail is drawn in, the game is quickly transformed into an extraordinary, sometimes horrifying, adventure as she finds herself transported to a place that is foreign yet strangely familiar . . .

Abigail Kirk’s life is about to be upended – in more ways than one. Her mother has just announced that she has been seeing Abigail’s father again, the man who left the family for another woman four years ago. Abigail and her mother reside in Mitchell, the high-rise tower Abigail’s architect father helped create, in an affluent part of Sydney called ‘The Rocks’. Even worse than the news of her mother’s rekindled romance, is her announcement that they are moving to Norway with her father while he studies at a prominent university over there.

Abigail is disgusted and ashamed at her mother’s eagerness to take her husband back. But Abigail is also scared – scared to love her father again, after hating him for so long. And she’s terrified by the idea that her mother might just choose to leave Abigail in Sydney, with her despicable grandmother, while she follows ‘true love’ all the way to Norway. Needing a distraction from fighting with her mother and thinking about her father, Abigail offers to babysit two children who also live in the Mitchell tower.

While at the playground with young Natalie and Vincent, Abigail observes the children playing a peculiarly gruesome chanting game, which culminates in the giggled shout – ‘It’s Beatie Bow, risen from the dead!’ Also watching this odd game is a child who Natalie refers to as ‘the furry girl’, for her shaved head. The child watches the others play, but doesn’t join in. And when Abigail tries to approach her, she scampers off down the laneways … so, Abigail follows. She chases her down the crooked cobbled streets that make up The Rocks, and then Abigail finds herself staring down a horse-drawn carriage and knocked on her backside by a burly man waving a sword about.

When Abigail wakes from unconsciousness she finds herself transported to a very different Sydney. There is no Harbour Bridge, and no familiar curved Opera House on the horizon. The people here speak in an odd broken English, and believe Abigail to be a lady for her lily-white skin and perfectly soft hands. There’s Granny tending to Abigail’s twisted ankle, a sweet-faced woman called Dovey and cousin Judah, a rugged sea-man. And then there’s Beatie Bow ('furry girl'), who begs Abigail not to tell Granny where she came from – because Beatie Bow does not wish to be cursed with the Gift.

It is the Gift of time, for Abigail wakes up in her beloved home town of Sydney, but not as she has ever known it … for this is the colony of New South Wales, in the year 1873.

Ruth Park’s ‘Playing Beatie Bow’, originally published in 1980, is an Australian classic. It won the 1981 ‘Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award’, as well as the ‘Boston Globe Horn Book Award’, and continues to be a staple of many English reading lists and a recurring favourite amongst Australian children. It was also adapted into a 1986 movie starring Peter Phelps (which, if you can get your hands on a copy, is worth watching for Phelp's mega-sideburns, and a psychedelic keyboard soundtrack).

‘Playing Beatie Bow’ is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favourite books, ever. I read this back in year six, and it was for English class so I was understandably hesitant. Reading the blurb I thought for sure that the book would be a history lesson, masquerading as fiction… but, oh, how wrong I was!

That first year I discovered ‘Beatie Bow’, I re-read it about 20 times, but haven’t really cracked it open since. Recently I was feeling nostalgic for one of my most dog-eared ‘keeper shelf’ lovelies, and so much time has passed since I last read ‘Beatie Bow’ that it deserved a trip down memory lane …

Ruth Park’s novel has, ironically enough, stood the test of time. The book has a bit of everything, without ever being cloying or over-the-top. There’s teen angst in the form of Abigail’s absentee father. A superb fantasy time-travel plot to make H. G. Wells proud, lovely little romantic asides, and plenty of action, along with stinging sadness. And to top it all off, the book is also thoroughly Australian and set against an iconic and fascinating backdrop.

The book hinges on its Sydney-setting. It’s intricate to the plot, but also makes for some wonderful imagery and atmosphere. When Abigail first wakes up in 1873, it’s the lack of iconic Sydney landmarks that triggers her dawning realization… and even re-reading this scene some twelve years later, I still felt goose-bumps at the big reveal;

‘The Bridge has gone, too,’ she whispered. No broad lighted deck strode across the little peninsula, no great arch with its winkling ruby at the highest point – nothing. The flower-like outline of the Opera House was missing.

From there the novel follows Abigail as she takes up residence with Beatie Bow’s immigrated Scottish family. Her drunkard Da, cousin Dovey, brother Judah, and her beloved Granny. They are a peculiar but welcoming bunch. Granny and Beatie Bow speak often about the ‘Gift’, which allows Beatie to travel forwards in time… and Abigail is anxious for Beatie to weave her odd magic to get her back to modern-day Sydney and home.

But while stuck with Beatie Bow’s family, Abigail develops strong feelings for her older brother, Judah, and becomes reluctant to leave him behind. He is promised to Dovey, but Abigail can’t help the pull she feels towards him, marking the first time in her life that she has felt a connection to someone enough to let them see behind her armour;

She jumped and blushed.
‘What’s the matter, Abby? For you seem sad today.’
‘I think – I think –’ She swallowed. Surely she wasn’t going to cry? She looked away. ‘I think this is my last day.’
‘Did Granny say so?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then?’
Abigail managed a smile. ‘I have gifts of my own, you know.’
‘Ah, Abby love, don’t go! Not to that grievous world you’ve described. Stay here with us.’
His arms were around her. Her hat fell off into the water and floated away. His cheek rubbed against hers, and she put up her hand and stroked his face.
‘Why, Abby, dinna weep, you must not, what’s there to weep about on this bright day?’
But she couldn’t stop. A huge shameful gulping hiccup came out of her. Judah grinned.
‘Don’t laugh at me, damn you!’ cried Abigail.
‘Why, Abby –’ he said, as though astonished. ‘My little one, my Abby.’

I remember that Abigail and Judah’s romance was one of the first I read, and actually enjoyed as a young adult. In the past I treated romance storylines the same way that Fred Savage’s character does in ‘The Princess Bride’ movie (“is this a kissing book?”). But Ruth Park wrote a really innocently sweet love story between Judah and Abigail, that does sort of sneak up on you (the same way it does for Abigail). There is a lesson for Abigail to learn, in her feelings for Judah (when he’s promised to Dovey) that translates to her mother’s predicament with her father back in present-day. But Ruth Park is never heavy-handed with this lesson, and as a result Abigail and readers come to the inevitable conclusion with a sense of deep meaning and quiet appreciation.

‘Playing Beatie Bow’ is a deserving Australian classic, which has stood the test of time. Ruth Park’s novel is cunning and delightful, weaving fantasy elements with colonial history, while putting a family saga front-and-centre amidst a teenage girl’s first lessons in love and loss. A wonderful novel, and upon re-reading I am happily reminded why it’s still a favourite of mine.

5/5

'Envy' Novel of the Fallen Angels #3 by J.R. WARD

2012-01-22T09:03:00.002+11:00

From the BLURB:

Seven deadly sins. Seven souls to save. And a man and a woman treading the lines of danger, desire and deliverance . . .

As the son of a serial killer, homicide detective Thomas 'Veck' DelVecchio, Jr, grew up in the shadow of evil. Now, on the knife-edge between civic duty and blind retribution, he atones for the sins of his father - while fighting his inner demons.

Assigned to monitor Veck is Internal Affairs officer Sophia Reilly, whose interest in him is both professional and arousingly personal. And Veck and Sophia have another link: Jim Heron, a mysterious stranger with too many answers . . . to questions that are deadly. When Veck and Sophia are drawn into the ultimate battle between good and evil, their fallen angel saviour is the only thing that stands between them and eternal damnation.

Thomas DelVecchio Jr is a household name, for all the wrong reasons. He made headlines as a teenager, when he discovered his mother’s murdered body … she was also, consequently, his father’s thirteenth murder victim.

Thomas DelVecchio ‘Veck’ Jr could have chosen the same path as his father… he has often felt the push and pull of evil within him. Instead, he joined the police force. He may not always be the most upstanding member of society (what with a quick temper and easy lusts) but he does believe in truth and justice.

But now Veck is questioning everything he stands for. He has just found himself hovering over the bloodied body of a serial killer – but Veck can’t remember anything. No signs point to his stabbing the victim, but Veck isn’t so sure. Enter Internal Affairs officer, Sophia Reilly. She knows Veck is dangerous and lethal, but she doesn’t think he’s a cold-blooded killer either, no matter his family history suggesting otherwise.

While Veck and his new (tempting) partner, Reilly, are assigned to a new case looking for a missing girl called Cecilia ‘Sissy’ Barten, a war rages up above.

Angel Jim Heron is down by one in the battle for souls. Evil demon-bitch, Devina, isn’t playing fair and Jim doesn’t know how to bring the game back in his favour. Not even his angel buddies, Adrian and Eddie, are much help to Jim. Even worse though, he’s consumed and obsessed with saving an innocent lost soul he found in Devina’s hellish dungeon … a nineteen-year-old girl called Cecilia ‘Sissy’ Barten.

‘Envy’ is the third book in J.R. Ward’s ‘Fallen Angels’ paranormal series.

Hold the phone. Check the skies for swine, and get ready to ice-skate in the underworld … because I just read a ‘Fallen Angels’ book, and I liked it! I have made my feelings clear about the Warden’s Caldwell-based angel series, and the first two outings of ‘Covet’ and ‘Crave’ were not at all to my liking. But with ‘Envy’, I am starting to change my tune…

First up, I really loved the character of Veck. He’s an interesting conundrum –a good cop with a strong moral compass (even if it swings towards a quick temper sometimes) but who feels like he’s fooling everyone. Because Veck’s father was ‘evil’ – a serial killer who is now sitting on death row, whose last victim was Veck’s mother. Understandably, Veck is confused about his standing in the world – is he his father’s son, putting on a good show for everyone? Or does evil skip a generation? Veck’s concerns are bought to the fore when he is found standing over the bloodied body of a killer … Veck doesn’t remember attacking, and the physical evidence says he didn’t. But Veck believes, deep down, that his blood runs bad.

Veck was brilliant. I loved him – I loved his struggle and his Brother-esque attitude (more believable in this human cop than any other ‘saved soul’ we’ve met so far). And I especially loved how his battle of wills was heightened when he met Sophia Reilly – another cop who makes his blood run hot. Reilly and Veck were great, and I think part of the reason I liked them was that the focus was primarily on Veck. We learn a little about Reilly’s childhood, which was hardly idyllic, but for the most part the focus of ‘Envy’ is on Veck’s redemption (something I was thankful for after the calamity HEA of Marie-Terese in ‘Covet’). And the Warden has written some great conflict between Reilly and Veck – with her as Internal Affairs investigating Veck’s potential attack on a murder suspect. There’s enough tension within their professional life and unethical attraction that Reilly didn’t need to get bogged down in back-story. Less is more.

Of course, the battle for souls still rages. Devina is nastier than ever, and going particularly loony since becoming ‘intimate’ with Jim in ‘Crave’. Devina is sinking her claws into all the angel boys, and the consequences are dire;

“You know, Adrian, you ever get bored with being a Goody Two-shoes, you could come over to my side.”
“Because you have cookies, right.”
Those black eyes returned to his own. “And so much more.”
“Well, I’m on a diet. Sorry—but thanks for the invite.”

I have said it from the start, that Devina is one hell of a bad-guy in this series. Ironically enough, she was the only redeeming feature of both ‘Covet’ and ‘Crave’ for me – a truly terrible villain is often hard to find, but Devina fits the bill. In ‘Envy’ her crazy knows no bounds as she sets her sights on a ‘romantic’ relationship with Jim (*gag!*).

But the real stand-out storyline for me in ‘Envy’ was that of Jim and lost-soul Sissy Barten. I said I liked this in ‘Crave’, and I was over-the-moon to discover that a good portion of ‘Envy’ is focused on Jim getting side-tracked by Sissy’s missing-persons case, and saving her from Devina’s wall of the damned. I can see why some people aren’t too keen on this apparent Jim/Sissy pairing (I think it’s all but confirmed in ‘Envy’ that they are each other’s HEA) but I like it. I like that Jim and Sissy are arcing over several books, and I love their grandiose epic love story, which is in itself a battle of Good VS. Evil.

I also really liked Adrian and Eddie in ‘Envy’. In the previous two books I could pretty much take them or leave them, but in ‘Envy’ we get more of Adrian’s backstory with Devina… but more importantly, we get a better sense of what Eddie and Adrian mean to each other.

One thing that still isn’t working for me (no matter how much the Warden dresses it up with M/M) is the portrayal of heaven and the angels Nigel and Colin. Yeah. I’m still not buying heaven as being full of foppish croquet players who sit around munching on scones all day. It’s just a little … ‘meh’ for me. Unfortunately Nigel and Colin take up quite a bit of page-time in ‘Envy’, and all signs point to a recurring storyline, unfortunately.

Overall I was pleasantly (okay, shockingly) surprised by how much I enjoyed ‘Envy’. Maybe it’s that I’m going into this series with slightly lowered expectations now, but I really think the Warden is hitting her stride. I look forward to the continuing Jim/Sissy saga, and more devilish cra-cra from everyone’s favourite she-bitch, Devina.

4/5

'Bigger Than a Bread Box' by Laurel Snyder

2012-01-21T11:38:00.000+11:00

From the BLURB:

A magical breadbox that delivers whatever you wish for—as long as it fits inside? It's too good to be true! Twelve-year-old Rebecca is struggling with her parents' separation, as well as a sudden move to her Gran's house in another state. For a while, the magic bread box, discovered in the attic, makes life away from home a little easier. Then suddenly it starts to make things much, much more difficult, and Rebecca is forced to decide not just where, but who she really wants to be. Laurel Snyder's most thought-provoking book yet.

One night during a black out Rebecca’s life changes forever. Her parents have been fighting ever since her dad crashed the taxi and began ‘job hunting’ (from the comfort of the couch). But until that black out, everything seemed to be staying pretty much the same, just with louder fights. But after that night Rebecca’s dad takes to sleeping on the couch. There are fewer angry words exchanged, and more silences. And then one day Rebecca returns home from school to find her mother and a pile of suitcases. They’re going ‘home’, mum says. Home means Atlanta and Gran’s house. And they’re not coming back until things feel right, whenever that may be. And dad’s not coming.

So Rebecca, her mum and two-year-old Lew get in the family car and drive to Atlanta. Rebecca cannot forgive her mum for just packing up and leaving, taking her and Lew away from Baltimore and dad, dancing to Bruce Springsteen in the living room and playing with Mary Kate at school.

So Rebecca takes to her Gran’s attic … and up there she finds a breadbox. But not any ordinary breadbox, a magic breadbox. Close the lid and make a wish for something, reopen and that something magically appears. A little bit of magic might go a long way to curing Rebecca’s hatred of her new school, new nickname and missing her dad. Maybe.

‘Bigger Than a Bread Box’ was the 2011 US middle-grade novel from Laurel Snyder.

I unabashedly loved this novel. I had no idea from that quirky title and even quirkier magic source that Snyder’s book would have so much depth and be so full of heart.

I’ll have to borrow Snyder’s own words – from the novel’s ‘acknowledgements’ page (I love reading those things!) – when she thanked her agents for persevering with her rather wacky story idea, which she pitched as;

a “middle-grade book about Bruce Springsteen songs and seagulls and divorce and a magical bread box.”

And that’s exactly what this book comes down to, well, superficially at least.

Rebecca is caught in the middle of her parent’s breaking-point. She knows that they’ve been fighting a lot since her dad crashed his taxi and lost his job. She knows that her mother, a nurse, is exhausted by her day job and the feeling of ungratefulness she gets at home as wife and mother. But Rebecca doesn’t understand why her parents can’t talk instead of yell, or why her mother feels the need to flee to Gran’s house for an unspecified period of time.

Snyder borrows heavily from her own childhood, remembering her parent’s divorce, to articulate this sad and awkward time through twelve-year-old Rebecca. She wants things to remain the same, but doesn’t know how to do that. And when a magical bread box appears, she thinks that all her wishes will be answered…

The bread box delivers an iPod, television, clothes, an old spoon, chocolates, bus tickets and seagulls (to remind her of Baltimore). What the bread box doesn’t give is a way to fix her parent’s marriage. Rebecca has to find that out on her own, through a series of misguided bread box wishes and a damning discovery of just where all this magic comes from.

Along the way Rebecca will learn the truth behind Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Heavy Heart’ lyrics (nowhere near as cheery as the beat);

Nobody said anything else for a bit, and I stared at the road, at the back of my silent father. I wondered what he was thinking. Mom switched on the radio.
Then, because sometimes crazy things happen, because the world is big and small and full of magic, or coincidence, the song came on. Out little car filled with that familiar voice, full of gravel and ache.

Rebecca will also discover that her little brother, Lew, is a wonderful companion, her gran is rather wise, and that ‘followers’ are not the same as ‘friends’. But Rebecca’s biggest lesson of all is simply that some problems are bigger than they first appear, and the answers to them won’t necessarily fit inside a bread box.

A wonderful, charming and gently complex coming-of-age novel.

5/5

'I'll Be There' by Holly Goldberg Sloan

2012-01-19T21:26:00.001+11:00

From the BLURB:

Raised by an unstable father who keeps the family constantly on the move, Sam Border hasn't been in a classroom since the second grade. He's always been the rock for his younger brother Riddle, who stopped speaking long ago and instead makes sense of the world through his strange and intricate drawings. It's said that the two boys speak with one voice--and that voice is Sam's.

Then, Sam meets Emily Bell, and everything changes. The two share an immediate and intense attraction, and soon Sam and Riddle find themselves welcomed into the Bell's home. Faced with normalcy for the first time, they know it's too good to last.

Told from multiple perspectives, Holly Goldberg Sloan's debut novel offers readers fresh voices and a gripping story, with vivid glimpses into the lives of many unique characters. Beautifully written and emotionally profound, I'll Be There is a story about connections both big and small, and deftly explores the many ways that our lives are woven together.

Sam Border has never settled down in one place. His father, Clarence Border, hears voices in his head, voices that tell him to run and never look back. So that’s what the Border’s have been doing – running, and hiding and never looking back.

It’s Sam’s job to take care of himself and his little brother, Riddle: because Clarence isn’t exactly the nurturing type. Sam and Riddle scavenge for food in bins and dumpsters. Riddle sketches the inside of things, speaks through his older brother and tries to avoid Clarence’s wrath.

Sam keeps a battered old guitar with him, the one constant in his sixteen-years of travel. He received the guitar from a blind man, and taught himself to play. Because for Sam, music is God. No matter where he goes, what town he ends up in or running away from, Sam seeks out music at Sunday sermons.

But one Sunday is different from all the others. Because this Sunday, Emily Bell is (reluctantly) singing – to him. To Sam she sings a song that triggers a series of catastrophically brilliant events that winds them ever closer …

I'll reach out my hand to you
I'll have faith in all you do.
Just call my name and I'll be there.

‘Ill Be There’ was the 2011 young adult novel from debut author Holly Goldberg Sloan.

Told from an omniscient third-person narrator, ‘I’ll Be There’ is the twisted journey of lost boys, Sam and Riddle Border – and how they imprinted on the lives of a little town that couldn’t let them go.

It all begins when Emily Bell spies Sam in the back pew of her family church, while she sings a terrible rendition of a Jackson 5 number;

She could not really sing.
That was just a fact.
But it was also a fact that she was riveting. She was raw and exposed and not really hitting the notes right. But she was singing to him.
Why him?
He wasn't imagining it.
The girl with the long brown hair had her small hands held tight at her sides and, maybe because of how bad she was, or because she was staring right at him and seemed to be singing right to him, he couldn't look away.
She was saying she'd be there.
But no one was ever there. That's the way it was. Who was she to tell him such a thing?
It was intimate and suddenly painful.
Not just for her.
But now for him.
Very painful.

Emily and Sam share a connection – while she warbles and he watches, their lives become entwined, for better or worse. Emily searches for the illusive boy all over her town, to no avail. The Border’s have been taught to lay low and avoid notice. They are squatting in an abandoned rental property, and Clarence is partaking of petty thieving for some extra cash. But Clarence also sleeps in their truck every night, with a loaded shotgun, saltine crackers and a barrel of vodka – ready to escape if the voices warn him of impending doom.

A local ad for cheap haircuts throws Sam back in Emily’s path… as does a chance encounter during Emily’s bad date with classmate Bobby Ellis. Sam and Emily embark on a doomed relationship – Sam, unable to keep up with Emily’s conversations (he doesn’t have a mobile, email or Facebook, for starters) and Emily’s mother and father are wary of Sam’s odd behaviour and reluctance to admit much about himself.

Bobby Ellis is also curious about Sam, and how his appearance in town coincides with a slew of robberies. The more curious Bobby becomes of Emily Bell and her mystery boy, the more he wants Emily for himself … and luckily Bobby has the resources to do some snooping – thanks to his parents, a lawyer and detective respectively.

Slowly, the Bell’s come to accept and care for the Border boys. Sam is a musical prodigy, and should be enrolling in Tim Bell’s university music program. And Debbie Bell is determined to nurse and care for little Riddle, who suffers from Asthma and appears to have never had a doctor check-up.

But just when things start to settle for the Borders, when Sam starts to fall in love with Emily and the Bell family become smitten with Riddle … the voices warn Clarence to escape.

‘I’ll Be There’ is a superb debut from Goldberg Sloan. The novel has a perpetual feeling of doom – as we move back and forth between Sam’s history ‘on the run’ with his unstable father, to the present and how Clarence is becoming increasingly suspicious of his boy’s behaviour. We know that this push-and-pull between Sam and Clarence’s ‘fight or flight’ will not end well. But, despite this foreboding, Goldberg Sloan has also imbued the novel with a lot of heart and warmth.

Sam and Riddle are gorgeous. Sam is simply delectable – a caring and sweet young man, unencumbered by pop-culture ideas of masculinity and ‘norms’; being in perpetual motion with his crazy father has made Sam, unwittingly, into a rather charming and kind young man. Totally different from his teenage adolescent male contemporaries. Sam only wants to protect his little brother, be near the girl he likes and play his music. He’s utterly charming.

Riddle, likewise, is a darling. He wheezes when he breathes, speaks through his brother and looks at things from the inside-out, or bottom-up. He is a bright and curious child, who makes you want to reach into the book and wrap him in a warm hug.

The plot is beautifully crafted – and even though I thought I knew where the book was going, I was surprised to find the story being carried into the wilderness … For all the sense of menace and foreboding, the heart of ‘I’ll Be There’ comes from the Border boys being wanted. When the inevitable happens and Clarence insists on fleeing, Emily’s presence in Sam’s life makes a difference – suddenly he and Riddle are not so easily let go. It’s a heart-warming lesson in the centre of a story so full of craziness.

I will say that ‘I’ll Be There’ reminded me a lot of the (brilliant) 1988 River Phoenix film ‘Running on Empty’ – about an activist family on the run from the FBI. The book and movie have similarities in the brotherly bond, a girl that makes the runaway want to stay, but especially for the music connection … the one big difference being that, in the movie, family is a safe harbour and hard to let go of. In ‘I’ll Be There’ Clarence is a confused villain – living on the whims of his mental illness, he is a brilliant ‘baddie’ for his unpredictability.

I loved 'I'll Be There', and fully intend to read whatever else Holly Goldberg Sloan writes. Sam Border is a real treasure, and this novel will not be easily forgotten.

5/5

Extract from 'The Reluctant Hallelujah' by Gabrielle Williams

2012-01-18T17:54:00.001+11:00

Enron helped me move the couch. We pushed all four of Grandma’s tables to one side. Enron hoisted the coffee table off the floor with one hand and left it on the couch with all the cushions. Something Mum would definitely not approve of.

‘Last thing,’ Minty said, nodding down at the Persian rug that took up a large chunk of the lounge room floor. Enron took one corner, Minty took the other and I went to the middle and we peeled it back, like the pastry lid of a pie dish.

In the middle of the carpet was a neatly cut square, slotting perfectly into the pattern so you might miss it if you weren’t looking, but easy enough to find if you knew what to search for.

We stepped back from it a moment. Instinctively I looked towards the front windows, even though the shutters were closed.

We lifted the square of carpet, and there it was.

A solid iron trapdoor. With a lock. An ornate, old-fashioned lock that would fit an ornate, old-fashioned iron key perfectly.

I’d seen enough NCIS to know that two missing parents and one locked trapdoor is a combination for great TV but not so great in real life.

I slung a glance at Minty. She was watching me carefully, ready to sweep me up in case I fell to pieces.

And at that moment, we heard another key in the front door. Turning in the lock.

We looked to see who it was. More than anything, I wanted it to be my mum. I wanted it to all be some ridiculous misunderstanding. I didn’t care what was in the basement. I didn’t care that we had a lock in the middle of our lounge room floor. Mum could tell me it didn’t involve me, and I’d be fine with that. Better than fine. Great. I would never peel that Persian rug back again. We could put that ornate old key back on the mantelpiece and forget about it. We’d put the couch back. Take the coffee table off the furniture. Put everything back the way it was.

Including my life.

The front door clicked shut. Not so quietly this time.

Coco walked down the hallway, heading for the kitchen. Eyes down, headphones in, texting as if everything was good with the world. As if everything was fine. No problems here, thanks for asking.

I felt like smacking her.

‘Are you right there?’ I said, feeling furious that she didn’t even care less whether Mum and Dad were okay or not. ‘You right? Texting like everything’s tickety-boo.’

She looked at the furniture all butted up against each other, and peeled her headphones out of her ears.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Mum and Dad still aren’t home.’

She faltered for a moment, looked over at Minty and Jools and Enron, the white cord of her iPod dangling from her hand, and I could see her brain starting to grasp the fact that something was wrong, but struggling with what that could mean. She plunged her iPod into the side pocket of her school dress and zipped the pocket up, an instinctive reaction. I could feel myself getting teary again.

They say you can take the measure of a man by how he deals with stress. Well, here was my measure. I was a basket case.

I couldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t my problem anymore. Coco was going to have to deal with it. It wasn’t fair that just because I was two years older I was supposed to take control. Didn’t mean I was two years better at coping with stuff. In fact, being older made it worse, because I felt more pressure. If something happened, I was expected to deal with it.

I wasn’t up to it.

‘Dodie,’ Coco said, dragging my hands away from my face to look me square in the eye. ‘Have you called Mum and Dad? Have you tried to ring?’

‘There’s something down there,’ I said, and nodded towards the trapdoor. ‘Once we’ve got rid of it, we’re calling the police.’

Coco didn’t say anything. It was as if she didn’t trust her mouth to come up with any kind of response.

‘They were looking after something,’ Enron was saying, his voice soothing and deep. Calm. ‘I’ll get it. You don’t need to come down, and once I’m gone you can call the police.’

I looked across at Coco to see how she was reacting. She was frowning at him, not saying a word.

And then Enron knelt down and put the old key that was still in his hand into the lock in our floor.

☼

Publication date: 22 February 2012

'Saving June' by Hannah Harrington

2012-01-17T08:54:00.001+11:00

Received from NetGalley

From the BLURB:

Harper Scott’s older sister has always been the perfect one so when June takes her own life a week before her high school graduation, sixteen-year-old Harper is devastated. Everyone’s sorry, but no one can explain why.

When her divorcing parents decide to split her sister’s ashes into his-and-her urns, Harper takes matters into her own hands. She’ll steal the ashes and drive cross-country with her best friend, Laney, to the one place June always dreamed of going California.

Enter Jake Tolan. He’s a boy with a bad attitude, a classic-rock obsession and nothing in common with Harper’s sister. But Jake had a connection with June, and when he insists on joining them, Harper’s just desperate enough to let him. With his alternately charming and infuriating demeanour and his belief that music can see you through anything, he might be exactly what she needs.

Except June wasn’t the only one hiding something. Jake’s keeping a secret that has the power to turn Harper’s life upside down again.

June is dead and only her sister, Harper, remains. There are no answers to June’s suicide – no warning, no note, no explanation. Suffocating in the house where her overbearing aunt is overseeing the Scott family’s grief, Harper is stuck in the aftermath of tragedy. Her mother cries all the time, and her absentee father is continuing to pretend like his first family was just a false start.

Harper’s best friend, Laney, offers some comfort. But Laney has secrets and problems of her own to deal with, in the wake of June’s suicide.

Then there’s the boy … the mysterious, dishevelled beautiful boy who made a cameo appearance at June’s funeral. His name is Jake Tolan. He and his brother work at a music shop in town. But he's not anyone that Harper can imagine June hanging out with … except they did. Jake gave June a mix-tape. She tutored him. They have history. But Harper doesn’t know the first thing about Jake Tolan or what he meant to her sister. But she’s about to.

June is dead but she still has wishes to be carried out – like getting to California. Which is exactly what Harper, Laney and Jake are going to do – take June’s ashes and get her the hell out of dodge, and fulfilling her final wish.

‘Saving June’ was the 2011 debut contemporary YA novel from Hannah Harrington.

To be fair, I put off reading this novel for a long time because I thought I had read it before. It’s just a sucky coincidence that 2010-11 were a big two years for deaths in young adult fiction. Jandy Nelson’s ‘The Sky is Everywhere’, ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’ by A.S. King. ‘Sing Me To Sleep’ by Angela Morrison. And many, many others. I sort of thought that ‘Saving June’ was a little bit ‘been-there-read-that’. Regardless, credible reviewers kept recommending this one to me and I eventually caved … and I’m glad I did.

The novel begins at June’s funeral. She committed suicide and her sister Harper muses on the perceived ‘ripple effect’ suicides seem to have on a small town – people are keeping their eye on Harper, especially, lest she follow her sister’s fate. While at the funeral a mysterious and cute boy drops by and exchanges some cryptically non-sympathetic words with Harper.

Harper is stuck in her grief. June left no suicide note, so part of Harper’s stagnation is merely in asking herself ‘why?’. There are no answers to June’s seemingly senseless death, no clue to her state of mind or breaking point. It’s a particularly maddening sort of grief when there is no closure offered. But in the wake of her sadness Harper finds evidence of June’s last true wish – to move to California. So, come hell or high water, Harper is going to get her sister to California whatever it takes.

From here the novel turns into not-your-average road-trip saga. Along for the ride is Harper’s steadfast friend, Laney, a boisterous, curvaceous girl and loyal friend who will do anything to help Harper get closure.

Also coming along for the adventure is Jake Tolan, the mysterious boy from June’s funeral. Turns out, June tutored Jake and helped him graduate. Jake owes June a debt of gratitude – and since he has the van (affectionately named ‘Joplin’) – the girls agree to him tagging along.

The road to California is paved with good tunes, messy company and hard truths.

‘Saving June’ is a grief road-trip. Armed with June’s ashes Harper, Laney and Jake set out along the coast. They meet up with some of Jake’s old activist friends. They learn secrets about one another and listen to good tunes and guilty pleasures (ABBA, I’m looking at you).

Music is a big component of this book. Unfortunately it’s also a big aspect of other books that are already similar to ‘Saving June’ (Nelson and Morrison’s books in particular). But in ‘June’ the appreciation comes from listening to good music, as opposed to creating it. Jake is into old rock and punk. He likes vintage tunes and has a little something to say about all the greats – from Janis Joplin to the Kinks and Jimi Hendrix. True, this is the music your dad listens to, but Jake has good taste and a connection to these soulful golden-oldies;

“It's just nice, I guess. Knowing that someone else can put into words what I feel. That there are people who have been through things worse than I have, and they come out on the other side okay. Not only that, but they made some kind of twisted, fucked-up sense of the completely senseless. They made it mean something. These songs tell me I'm not alone. If you look at it at that way, music... music can see you through anything.”

When the trio set out it’s initially all about finding closure for Harper and paying respect to June. But by the end Laney has a secret unearthed and Jake reveals a little about his sad past.

I loved the soundtrack to ‘Saving June’. Tensions boil over, laughs are had and hip-hop debated, all while listening to ‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘Good Vibrations’ and the like.

Something I really loved about ‘Saving June’ was the lack of insight into June’s suicide. For some people this might be frustrating – there are no definite answers or explanations as to why June took her own life. But that felt true. If Harrington makes readers feel frustration from not knowing, I’d say that’s something that speaks volumes about the real-life grief of losing someone to suicide. I feel like Harrington gained more from saying less, and that was a little bit of brilliance.

I can’t lie and say that ‘Saving June’ was a wholly original novel, but it was enjoyable regardless. Death will forever fascinate us, and it’s especially poignant for young people who start encountering the fallout at such an early age. Music as catharsis is also nothing new to the teen scene – even if many readers will be hearing about some of the music in ‘Saving June’ for the first time. But I liked the road-trip aspect of this novel – and the ashes to California was a poignant mission for Harper to accomplish.

5/5

'Lothaire' Immortals After Dark #12 by Kresley Cole

2012-01-15T11:18:00.002+11:00

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

ALL FEAR THE ENEMY OF OLD

Driven by his insatiable need for revenge, Lothaire, the Lore’s most ruthless vampire, plots to seize the Horde’s crown. But bloodlust and torture have left him on the brink of madness—until he finds Elizabeth Peirce, the key to his victory. He captures the unique young mortal, intending to offer up her very soul in exchange for power, yet Elizabeth soothes his tormented mind and awakens within him emotions Lothaire believed he could no longer experience.

A DEADLY FORCE DWELLS WITHIN HER

Growing up in desperate poverty, Ellie Peirce yearned for a better life, never imagining she’d be convicted of murder—or that an evil immortal would abduct her from death row. But Lothaire is no savior, as he himself plans to sacrifice Ellie in one month’s time. And yet the vampire seems to ache for her touch, showering her with wealth and sexual pleasure. In a bid to save her soul, Ellie surrenders her body to the wicked vampire, while vowing to protect her heart.

CENTURIES OF COLD INDIFFERENCE SHATTERED

Elizabeth tempts Lothaire beyond reason, as only his fated mate could. As the month draws to a close, he must choose between a millennia-old blood vendetta and his irresistible prisoner. Will Lothaire succumb to the miseries of his past . . . or risk everything for a future with her?

Lothaire is an exiled heir. Legitimate King to the thrones of two vampire factions – the Horde and Dacia – he has spent centuries trying to take what is rightfully his. Plagued by his mother’s dying wishes for her little prince, Lothaire has gained a name for himself as ‘The Enemy of Old’ – and he earned it well and bloody.

A prophecy foretells that Lothaire can only take the two thrones with a blooded bride by his side. Good thing then, that his initial instincts that a mere mortal girl living in the Appalachia Mountains proved incorrect, she is not his bride . . . instead, Lothaire’s intended is a cursed goddess, who has taken up residence in this girl’s body.

Elizabeth Peirce has a demented goddess living inside her body. Nothing, not exorcism or death by lethal injection, will rid Elizabeth of Soroya’s menace. And when a red-eyed demon swoops down and commands Elizabeth to keep his bride safe, she knows her soul is doomed and her body will be taken from her.

‘Lothaire’ is the twelfth book in Kresley Cole’s ‘Immortals After Dark’ paranormal romance series.

This twelfth book is, without a doubt, the most-anticipated in Cole’s series. Lothaire piqued fan’s interest as the ‘Immortals’ bad-boy du-jour, especially with his appearance in book eleven, ‘Dreams of a Dark Warrior’. Lothaire very much came across as an ‘out for himself’ cruel villain. He doesn’t care a fig for others and is wholly consumed with his own desires – mainly, the crowns of two vampire factions. Lothaire’s special vampiric power comes from gaining memories from those he takes blood from. And he uses his ‘ability’ with great cunning and little sympathy. He was deliciously dark and dangerous, and many fans swooned and drooled at the prospect of his book . . . not least of all because the paranormal romance genre has taught readers that, the more devilish the rogue, the better the HEA. Which might be why ‘Lothaire’ doesn’t quite live up to the hype of fan’s lofty expectations . . .

We learn from the start that Lothaire despises humans. They killed his beloved mother, and ever since then he has treated them as little more than fleas. So when Lothaire felt a draw to the Appalachia Mountains, and a young human child called Elizabeth Peirce, he was convinced there was some sort of mistake. He felt no blooded-bride pull towards her, but regardless kept returning to the Mountains at various times to see her turning from a child to woman. Still, he was disgusted by the mere thought of a human for his bride, and was relieved when he returned one day to find a thousand-years old goddess had taken up residence in Elizabeth’s body. A goddess called Soroya, who kills indiscriminately and is making Elizabeth’s life hell. But she is powerful beyond measure, and far more likely to be Lothaire’s intended life mate. Not least because Lothaire cannot fathom being bonded to a human, let alone a ‘hillbilly’ human’;

“How do you know it’s not me who’s . . . blooded you?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Because fate would not slight me so unspeakably. I'd seek a noon-day sun if I were paired with one such as you.”
“Such as me,” she repeated blandly. She’d been mocked too often over her lifetime to take offense. Her skin was as thick as armour.
“Yes, you. An ignorant, mortal Kmart checkout girl.” He took the sharpest knife from his place setting, absently turning it between his left thumb and forefinger.
“Kmart? I should’ve been so lucky. Those jobs were hard to come by. I worked at my uncle’s outfitter shop.”
“Then you’re even worse. You’re an outfitter checkout girl with aspirations for Kmart.”

Now all Lothaire needs is a magic ring to kill Elizabeth’s soul, make Soroya a vampire and keep her preserved in Elizabeth’s body forever. No problem. Except that an evil mummified she-villain is hot on their tail and he has one month to blood his bride . . . all while resisting the annoying allure of the human, Elizabeth Peirce. No problem.

I think one of the down-falls of this particular ‘Immortals’ book, is the lack of secondary characters. I think the last time an ‘Immortals’ book was focused primarily on just two characters was in the second instalment, ‘A Hunger Like No Other’, which also had a kidnap/hostage storyline. But the problem with doing a similar story in this twelfth book is simply that, as a reader, you miss that cast of hilarious and unique secondary characters we’ve come to know and love. We have become so used to a cache of Valkyries, Berserkers, Witches and Lycans that to read a book in which they make minimal appearances (mere paragraphs in some cases) feels lacking somehow. And when Lothaire is such an anti-hero, the book felt doubly claustrophobic because his hatred of Elizabeth and humanity becomes a little too all-encompassing and dreary. I think the book only started to pick up for me towards the end, when Elizabeth starts hanging out more with Lothaire’s resident oracle, a poison-skinned Immortal called ‘Hag’. And when Thaddeus (the Eagle Scout/Quarterback and half-vampire of book eleven) makes a delightful reappearance, acting as Lothaire’s only best-buddy. When these other characters were thrown into the mix, the story started to feel more like an ‘Immortals’ instalment, when Lothaire and Elizabeth had these other people to bounce repartee off of, things got funny and a little more light-hearted.

As it is, because much of the book is just Lothaire and Elizabeth, the progression of their relationship also came across as a hellacious case of Stockholm Syndrome. Lothaire really makes it hard for Elizabeth to fall for him – what with his total degradation of her humanity, family, socio-economic standing etc, etc, etc. And I also had a problem with the fact that pretty much the only thing that draws these two together is good looks. Lothaire laments that Elizabeth is so beautiful, because it makes resisting her that much harder. And when Elizabeth can find nothing redeeming in Lothaire, she still falls for him (presumably because he’s pretty on the outside, regardless of being ugly on the inside). It’s not a great message to send out – all looks, no substance – and it’s disappointing because Cole’s characters are usually deliciously witty and crass, laugh-out-loud funny and with a certain verve that makes them irresistible, despite otherwise prickly demeanours.

Still, the book did pick up towards the end . . . when Lothaire starts interacting with other vampires and Elizabeth meets the Valkyrie. When surrounded with these secondary characters we have come to know and love, the book’s pace picks up and careens us towards a most fulfilling and interesting end. Not to mention things just get a heck of a lot funnier when more Immortals are added into the mix;

Then, to the sounds of a shocked chorus of Valkyries . . .
— “Oh, come on, the vamp won’t actually do – DUDE! She fucking did it!”
— “Ellie’s my best friend.”
— “I liked her before I even met her – you hate her compared to how much I like her.”

And I was over-the-moon with the ending, because it hints at more Lothaire appearances in book thirteen in a truly cunning twist of fate. And I do think that Lothaire’s character transformation at the end of this book will make him easier to swallow in upcoming ‘Immortals’ appearances . . . as it is, Lothaire is a bit too much of the evil anti-hero throughout a lot of this book. Perhaps we needed him diluted with a bit more humour (even of the mocking variety), but for me the much-anticipated ‘Lothaire’ instalment was a wee bit underwhelming.

3/5

'Dreams of a Dark Warrior' Immortals After Dark #11 by Kresley Cole

2012-01-13T17:34:00.005+11:00

From the BLURB:

HE VOWED HE’D COME FOR HER . . .

Murdered before he could wed Regin the Radiant, warlord Aidan the Fierce seeks his beloved through eternity, reborn again and again into new identities, yet with no memory of his past lives.

SHE AWAITS HIS RETURN . . .

When Regin encounters Declan Chase, a brutal Celtic soldier, she recognizes her proud warlord reincarnated. But Declan takes her captive, intending retribution against all immortals—unaware that he belongs to their world.

TO SATE A DESIRE MORE POWERFUL THAN DEATH . . .

Yet every reincarnation comes with a price, for Aidan is doomed to die when he remembers his past. To save herself from Declan’s torments, will Regin rekindle memories of the passion they once shared—even if it means once again losing the only man she could ever love?

Regin is cursed to love one man, and lose him, over and over and over again. . .

The Valkyrie first met mortal man Aidan the Fierce when she was twelve years old. Nine years later they became lovers, until the night that Aidan was brutally murdered before her eyes. But he vowed he would come back for her, would never be kept from his beloved Reginleit, his Radiant One.

Over the centuries Aidan came back, again and again, always a warrior. Regin found and loved Aidan in four different reincarnations. And each time he dies right after remembering who he is, and what Regin means to him.

Now Aidan is back, this time as Declan Chase – ‘magister’ and hunter of immortals. He’s tasked with finding the infamous Valkyrie, Regin, and locking her in a cell to be experimented on and cracked open.

But when Chase inevitably remembers who he is, and how much Regin means to him, will he be able to live with what he has done to her as the Magister?

‘Dreams of a Dark Warrior’ is the eleventh book in Kresley Cole’s ‘Immortals After Dark’ paranormal romance series.

I love Cole’s series. Eleven books in and I still come into each new novel with giddy anticipation, and I’m very rarely disappointed with her heady mix of action, humour and romance. But I have to admit that with ‘Dreams’ I was a little underwhelmed.

In keeping with Coles’s usual timeline overlap, the eleventh book retraces over the storyline of ‘Demon from the Dark’. That book was also set in the immortals holding facility, but told from Carrow’s captured perspective. This time around we get the view from both imprisoned Regin, and her captor, Declan Chase.

I am a little bit over the prison-setting at this point. The twelfth book in the series is ‘Lothaire’, and I have a feeling that we might just be going back to the prison (for a little while at least) because a bit of Lothaire’s background takes place during his confinement. I do understand that this is Cole’s MO – she looks at the same events, from a different character perspective and lends new plot dimensions to ground that readers have already tread. But usually her settings are grandiose and exotic – she has taken us to the Scottish Highlands, picturesque New Orleans and even an Amazonian jungle. And if she’s not taking readers off the continent, she at least sets a good portion of her books in the always fun Val Hall – sorority home of the Valkyrie’s. So, by comparison, the immortals prison is just a little ho-hum.

I did like Regin and Chase/Aidan’s romance. It’s fraught with tension and drama, of the star-crossed, doomed-love variety. I thought Aidan and Regin had a wonderfully epic back story. But as the novel progresses we come to realize that Regin didn’t really, truly love Aidan . . . and that didn’t ring quite ring true for me. I admit, I thought it would be tricky for Chase to accept that Regin could love him, while remembering Aidan – but I also thought it was a minor cop-out to say that this beautiful, grand romance she had with Aidan wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be.

Of course this is ‘Immortals After Dark’, and Ms Cole brings the funny. Regina is a total crack-up, as is her prison cellmate, the fey Natalya. It’s always the case that the funniest moments intermingle with the high-drama, and that’s once again true in ‘Dreams’;

Regin cocked her brow at a dead guard’s machine gun. She hooked her foot under it, hiking it up to catch it.
Natalya said, “Have you ever fired one of those?”
Lorekind scorned them. The weapons were so tackily human. “Look, I've seen Terminator. How difficult can it be? Now, let’s go find Tiger!”

One thing I really liked about this book was introduction of a new Immortal call Thad. He’s a seventeen-year-old cellmate of Regin and Natalya’s, who has only just realized he is part-vampire when some storm-trooper-wannabes dragged him into the prison. To say he’s not coping well is an understatement. But underneath it all Thad is still a Texan quarterback and Eagle Scout, and some hilarity ensues when Natalya very nearly makes him her jailbait. I loved Thad, and I hope his appearance hints that he’ll get his own book one day soon.

All in all, ‘Dreams of a Dark Warrior’ kind of paled in comparison to bigger and better ‘After Dark’ books. I have high-hopes that Lothaire’s book will bring the series back on a high, because his story (and questionable sexuality) were very amusing in this eleventh book.

3/5

'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Green

2012-01-12T01:00:00.001+11:00

From the BLURB:

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

Hazel Grace has cancer of the terminal variety. There is no cure, no getting better and no chance of survival. But a drug called Phalanxifor is helping to prolong her fight, even if it isn’t curing the build-up of fluid that creaks her lungs.

Hazel’s mum and dad know what a blessing it is to have her with them for just a little while longer. But her lengthened life won’t mean much if she doesn’t get up off her butt and do something with it. So they send her into the Literal Heart of Jesus (architecturally speaking) – to a cancer support group where people talk and cry, praise the battle-weary cancer kids and repeat stories about losing their testicles to the big-C. It’s a hoot.

And then one day, while sitting around discussing a cancer survivor’s current state of ball-lessness, Augustus Waters walks in, and everything changes.

Augustus Waters is currently in remission, minus one leg courtesy of the cancer monster. Augustus has stared death in the face, and laughed heartily . . . and now he continues to chortle. He sticks cigarettes in his mouth but doesn’t smoke them. He is a terrible driver. His best friend is about to be blind, and he falls irrevocably and stupidly in love with Hazel pretty much at first sight.

But Hazel is reluctant. Augustus has already lost so much to cancer, and she doesn’t want to be another grenade in his life (sure to wound) . . . so she tries to resist his crooked smile and general hotness. Just friends, okay?

‘The Fault in Our Stars’ is the new contemporary YA book from astronomically popular Edgar & Printz winning author, John Green.

Brace yourselves. John Green’s newest book is a love story starring two cancer-ridden teenagers. Yes, it’s sad. Yes, it’s actually so sad you will blubber while reading and be all snotty by the last page. Expect great big gulping, hiccupping tears. The embarrassing kind. The kind you don’t want to shed on public transport. You have been warned.

That being said . . . this is a John Green novel, so it’s totally worth your crying, blubbering, hiccupping, snotting tears. Truth be told, ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ is down-right magnificent.

Our narrator is Hazel Grace Lancaster – terminally ill ‘cancer kid’ whose mortal coil has been somewhat lengthened thanks to a (minor) miracle drug. But Hazel has been sick for so long that she doesn’t exactly know how to be normal and just live. She’s only sixteen but attending college, having surpassed her classmates studying by herself while being cooped up indoors. She’s a quick-witted firecracker of a girl who has side-stepped the brink of death only to become a terminal couch-potato (addicted to ‘America’s Next Top Model’). Her mother, and full-time carer, wants to see Hazel interact with the world. Hence, Cancer Support Group in the Literal Heart of Jesus. Hence, meeting Augustus Waters. Hence inconveniently falling for a cancer survivor who she is bound to hurt and maim when the death-knock sounds for her.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Hazel and Augustus grow closer (despite her reservations) when she shares an important part of herself with him in the form of her favourite book, Peter Van Houten’s ‘An Imperial Affliction’. A book famous for ending abruptly, and somewhat incompletely, about a cancer girl and her glass-eyed mother who falls for a rich Tulip Man. But the abrupt ending plagues Hazel, and then Augustus. Peter Van Houten has not written another word in seven years, and has no plans of writing a sequel or answering fan-mail.

I loved the story behind ‘An Imperial Affliction’, mainly because it felt like Green putting a little tiny bit of himself in his book – a bit of life imitating art. John Green’s first novel was ‘Looking for Alaska’ – a Printz-award winning book that beguiled and surely frustrated many teen readers. Frustrated, because there’s a rather crushing death in the book that is never fully explained. No definitive reason is given for a beloved character’s passing, and I have read reviews in which people cursed and lamented the lack of resolution at the end of ‘Alaska’ (despite the fact that there’s truth in the not knowing). In ‘Fault’, Hazel and Augustus wrack their brains over the abrupt mid-sentence ending of ‘An Imperial Affliction’ – which hints at the protagonist’s death, but never confirms it. They become obsessed with the idea of getting the answers from the author, Van Houten himself.

I loved this story-within-a-story. It feels like John Green speaking rather directly and affectionately to his readers (but it should be noted that Green couldn’t be further from the Van Houten character). Through Hazel’s obsession with ‘An Imperial Affliction’, Green assures readers that he understands how important fictional characters can be . . . that they have a life of their own within reader’s hearts and minds, and that the author has a certain ‘contract’ to fulfil with the reader by letting them walk into our lives and consume us for a little while. And consume us they do, such is the case with Hazel and Augustus . . .

These characters will get to you. You’ll wish that they are real people you can hang out with, talk to them and try to keep up with their whip-quick comebacks and banter. You will love them. Augustus is sweet and earnest, a perpetual optimist who goes after Hazel with everything he has. He and Hazel are a riot together – bouncing off each other beautifully, able to sway between deep metaphorical musings and laugh-out-loud repartee. They’re both a little bit brilliant. Which is why reading their doomed star-crossed love hurts so much (and will induce aforementioned snotty blubbering);

I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can’t make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn’t see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.

Something I especially love about John Green novels is the abundance of quotable quotes. I come away from a Green reading with many curious thoughts and ideas to turn over in my mind. And since the themes and topics in ‘Fault’ are so expansive - hopeful and morbid, set on epic life-or-death scales - the book is full of heartfelt reflections and pin-point accuracies.

It seemed like forever ago, like we’d had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ is simply sublime (as we all knew it would be). John Green is exploring a deathly disease with gallows humour and infinite tenderness. It’s a total cliché, but you will laugh and you will cry. And by the end of the book you’ll feel a little bit bruised and battered, tender and exposed. But Hazel and Augustus will stay with you for a long while after reading, John Green having fulfilled his promise to the reader that these characters matter; they have weight and substance, and they will not be easily forgotten. You will feel lucky for having read about them.

5/5

'When You Reach Me' by Rebecca Stead

2012-01-11T14:34:00.004+11:00

From the BLURB:

Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.

By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

Miranda is writing a letter. She doesn’t know to whom. She doesn’t know why. But someone has asked her the location of the spare key. And to explain the day that her best friend, Sal, stopped wanting to hang out with her. Someone wants Miranda to write it all down … so she is, slowly.

‘When You Reach Me’ by Rebecca Stead was the winner of the 2010 John Newbery Medal.

‘When You Reach Me’ is sort of like the Georges Seurat painting, "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte". Up close it’s just a bunch of tiny, tiny dots – indecipherable and meaningless. But when you stand back, you get the whole picture… and it’s kind of magnificent.

Stead’s novel is set in 1981, and is in part a recollection of her own childhood as a ‘key kid’ in New York. She delves into the curiosities and concerns of many sixth-graders – like losing friends, getting somersault-belly when a cute boy walks past, and facing fears. For Miranda, her biggest fear is the laughing man on the corner street, the man she passes everyday on her way to and from school. He yells out insanities – “bookbag, pocketshoe” – he calls her new friend an ‘Angel’ and Miranda a ‘Smartkid’.

Miranda’s other consuming fear though, is that she’s losing her best friend, Sal. They have stopped hanging out, upon Sal’s request. A run-in with a bully called Marcus has sent Sal into a sort of hibernation, and Miranda doesn’t know what to do about missing him.

But Stead’s novel is bigger than the sum of its parts, and interspersed with Miranda’s narrative about cute boy Colin, and working at Jimmy’s sandwich shop, are curious asides to an unknown person who has tasked Miranda with writing a letter. This person wants to know the location of the key to Miranda’s apartment. They leave notes for Miranda, foretelling of a Christmas present and her mother’s appearance on Dick Clark’s $20,000 Pyramid game show. This person also warns Miranda that when they meet, they will not look the same …

And therein lies the true brilliance of ‘When You Reach Me’. On the surface Stead’s novel is an enjoyable recollection of a NYC sixth-grader navigating the torrential waters of growing up and moving on. But there’s more … oh! There’s so much more. To reveal would be to ruin a wonderfully plotted semi-mystery.

What I liked best about Stead’s novel is that it was intended for a middle-grade audience, but also appeals to a crowd much older than that. Through Miranda, Stead explores big ideas through tactful and succinct sixth-grade musings, and it’s a delight to get Miranda’s view of the world;

Mom says each of us has a veil between ourselves and the rest of the world, like a bride wears on her wedding day, except this kind of veil is invisible. We walk around happily with these invisible veils hanging down over our faces. The world is kind of blurry, and we like it that way. But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there's a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. But mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don't have to depend on the wind anymore.

‘When You Reach Me’ is nothing short of incredible. When you read it through once, you’ll want to go back and read it again – hold the book up in a new light and appreciate the delicacy and interwoven complexity. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

5/5

'Everybody Sees the Ants' by A.S. King

2012-01-10T16:34:00.005+11:00

From the BLURB:

Lucky Linderman didn't ask for his life. He didn't ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn't ask for a father who never got over it. He didn't ask for a mother who keeps pretending their family is fine. And he certainly didn't ask to be the recipient of Nadar McMillan's relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far.

Lucky has a secret—one that helps him wade through the daily dysfunction of his life. Grandad Harry, trapped in the jungles of Laos, has been visiting Lucky in his dreams—and the dreams just might be real: an alternate reality where he can be whoever he wants to be and his life might still be worth living. But how long can Lucky remain in hiding there before reality forces its way inside?

Lucky Linderman’s Granny Janice died when he was seven. But before she passed she tasked him with an impossible mission – to bring his granddad home. But Lucky’s granddad can’t come home – he was drafted in the Vietnam war and became one of the thousands of missing soldiers, going on the long list of POW/MIA and irrevocably ruining the Linderman family.

Granny Janice’s final breaths smelled like week-old oysters. She was pretty high on morphine and talking to herself. I didn’t know what to say, so I held her hand tightly and said, “Good-bye, Granny. I love you.”
Her fluttering eyelids lurched open, and she grabbed my forearm so hard that it left a red mark that outlived her. She said, “Lucky, you have to rescue my Harry! He’s still in the jungle being tortured by those damn gooks!”
“Gooks?” I asked.
“It’s the medicine, Lucky,” Mom whispered to me.
“You have to find him and bring him back! You need a father!” Granny blurted.
Then she died.
My mother sent me out of the room, which was fine by me, but she couldn’t erase those words from my memory. If Granny Janice needed me to do something, then I'd do it, even if I didn’t quite understand her orders.

Lucky’s dad never got over not having a dad. He grew up altered by the loss, and now Lucky likens him to a turtle – hard shell exterior, always retreating into his own world.

But if Lucky’s dad is a turtle, then his mom is a squid. She swims 200 laps every day in the local pool; she swims to escape, to forget that she says ‘yes’ to everything and stands up for nothing, not even Lucky.

But Lucky needs someone to stand up for him. Nader McMillan has been bullying Lucky ever since he peed on his shoes in a restaurant bathroom when he was seven-years-old. Now that they’re fifteen-years-old and Nader is a lifeguard at the local swimming pool, the bullying is getting worse. And it’s not just Lucky who Nader picks on. Everyone is scared of Nader and his quick-to-sue lawyer father. Girls are especially terrified of Nader and his torments. But nobody does anything.

A particularly horrific act of bullying sends Lucky’s mother into hiding. She packs up and takes Lucky to Arizona, to stay with her brother, Dave, and his overweight, pill-popping wife, Jodi.

Lucky has a scab the exact shape of Ohio on his face, to remind him of Nader McMillan and a childhood worth of hurt. At night he dreams of rescuing his limb-less grandfather from a Vietnam jungle prison. But even states away from his problems back home, Lucky starts to realize that he doesn’t want to be another turtle, like his father.

‘Everybody Sees the Ants’ was the 2011 young adult book by Printz Honor recipient, A.S. King.

I fell under King’s spell with her magical realist/literary YA fiction novel ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’. I vowed to consume everything King writes, and ‘Everybody Sees the Ants’ is more brilliance to convince me of her writing prowess.

The book covers a landscape of teen problems, without ever being preachy. A huge focus of the novel is on Lucky being bullied by one Nader McMillan. Everybody had a Nader in their school life, or at least watched one from a distance as he picked on other kids (secretly relieved to avoid his wrath). A.S. King has perfectly captured the menacing awfulness of this Nader character, who is so senselessly cruel that he substitutes for any reader’s personal bully from their childhood.

Nader is on the wrestling team, his father is a lawyer who is quick to cry foul on all complaints made about his son. Nader is a mindless and gutless bully – with a cache of followers who are too scared to stand up to him, so follow him blindly in his cruelty. Girls are particular targets of Nader’s – and he orchestrates ‘group gropes’ against unsuspecting girls. Lucky knows about this because of school rumours, and a survey question that keeps him finding notes in his locker. The survey was for social studies, and asked his classmates the question ‘if you were going to commit suicide, how would you do it?’ One girl, Charlotte, keeps leaving answers to the anonymous question in Lucky’s locker – her curled writing always admitting that she’d take Nader down with her.

After a particularly awful incident with Nader, Lucky’s mother puts her foot down and insists that something be done to stop the torment. She leaves this mission in the utterly incapable hands of Lucky’s father, and whisks herself and Lucky off to Arizona to stay with her brother and his wife.

While away, Lucky continues to dream, as he has his whole life, about rescuing his grandfather from a Viet Cong prison. In this departure from reality (something A.S. King is fond of doing – a sprinkling of magical realism, if you will) Lucky learns about the impotence of violence, and the importance of survival. Lucky also learns about the man his father missed out on in his life . . . and, slowly, Lucky starts to understand some of his father’s problems. About how you can miss someone you never even knew.

‘Everybody Sees the Ants’ is a dark and gritty young adult read, one that hurts so much because it speaks a lot of truth. Lucky is a gorgeous and kind young man, navigating his way to adulthood amidst the violence of Nader McMillan and the brutality he witnesses in his dreams, of his captured grandfather. A.S. King has written another brilliant young adult read; on the surface ‘Everybody Sees the Ants’ may seem to be talking a lot about violence, but as the novel progresses Lucky learns that sometimes violence is not the answer. Sometimes it’s more powerful to just stand up, speak your mind and not retreat into the comfort and safety of your shell. Brilliant.

5/5

'Halfway to Good' by Kirsten Murphy

2012-01-09T01:00:00.002+11:00

From the BLURB:

It's the first day of Term One, and Luke and Anna are on opposite sides of the student-teacher divide. School is the last thing Luke feels like - how can he feel halfway to good when his father is sick, his mother is sad and his older brother is painfully present?

Anna's life still revolves around love, friendship and homework, but she's a graduate teacher now. Can she cope with a bullying co-worker, a persistent ex-boyfriend and a class of unforgiving Year Elevens, and still find time to help Luke?

Luke’s dad is dying and Luke isn’t coping well. He can’t tear apart his old hatred from his current fears, and so he winds up having panic attacks. They come and squeeze his heart, constrict his throat and leave Luke shaken.

Anna finds herself in a toilet cubicle on her first day at her new job. It’s not the idea of facing a grade of glaze-eyed year eleven’s, or even the fact that this is her first teaching job fresh out of Uni. It’s that Tom is back. Tom, who broke her heart (twice) and left for London is now back in town, living in his parent’s house just down the street from Anna and her brother, Ben.

Luke’s girlfriend and best friend are suspicious of his odd behaviour, and are trying to figure out how they can help him. His new English teacher has found out about the panic attacks, and is encouraging him to seek help. Luke’s brother, Oliver, is trying to be a supportive and constant presence in Luke’s life during this hard time. He has even invited him round to have dinner with him and his girlfriend, Georgie, and her family.

Anna has survived the first week of her new teaching job. She has a mentor she envisions could be a great friend, but she’s also unknowingly made an enemy of a seasoned teacher. Now she has to get through dinner with her perpetually-flaky sister, Georgie, and her new boyfriend. Not to mention the fact that her darling brother, Ben, has invited his best friend, Tom, around too. Could this night get any worse?

And then Oliver and his brother, Luke, walk through the door. . . Oliver is Georgie’s new boyfriend, and Luke is Anna’s brilliant but struggling pupil.

‘Halfway to Good’ was the 2009 contemporary YA novel from Australian author, Kirsten Murphy.

I read Murphy’s debut ‘Raincheck on Timbuktu’ way back in 2001, when I was fourteen. I completely related to perpetual couch-potato, and anti-social climber Lucy. The book remains a particular Aussie YA favourite, and so I decided it was high-time I revisited the wonderful works of Ms Murphy.

‘Halfway to Good’ is split between two omniscient narratives – Luke and Anna’s. At first they are ships passing in the night, Anna is the cool, young, new English teacher at Luke’s school. But Luke isn’t going to school – he has decided to ditch until he feels absolutely certain he can get through the day without doubling-over in a panic attack. They have their own issues to deal with – for Anna it’s starting a new job and trying to be nonchalant about the reappearance of her ex. For Luke, it’s coping with his father’s cancer and imminent death. But eventually the Gods of fate cross Luke and Anna’s paths, in the form of Luke’s brother and Anna’s sister.

On the surface, this book has all the elements to make a wonderful YA. But there was just a niggling disconnect that I couldn’t quite shake throughout my reading. I really liked the dual perspectives of Anna and Luke – I thought it was particularly ingenious to have Anna as his teacher. Anna is twenty-two and fresh out of Uni, and utterly none the wiser about love or life in general. Luke is in year eleven, coping for the first time with death and finding himself completely unable to deal.

I liked that Murphy was ‘humanizing’ teachers in this book. Quite a few of my friends and family have entered into the teaching profession recently, and it boggles the mind to think of them running a classroom – but what really niggles is the thought that many of my primary/secondary school teachers were just as young as my friends are now when they taught me. You definitely have a warped view of teachers when you’re sitting in front of them – so I quite liked getting some additional perspective on the student/teacher dynamic through Anna and Luke.

The disconnect and issues, for me, stemmed from Anna and Luke’s personal lives. Well, more Anna’s thank Luke’s. Early on in the book we are given the low-down on Tom. That he was a family friend whose sister was Anna’s best friend, and they lived in the house down the street from Anna and her family. Tom is best friends with Anna’s brother. A few years ago (unbeknownst to either of their families) and while Anna was still in Uni, Tom ended his relationship with his long-term girlfriend and started seeing Anna. Then he went running back to the long-term girlfriend. Anna was crushed. Tom once again ended his relationship, and rekindled things with Anna . . . only to flee the scene once again, claiming he wasn’t right for her. He left for London, and left Anna a shell of herself.

Years later Anna was on track to mending her broken heart . . . and then Tom comes home, and wants Anna back in his life. Ready for round three?

I really liked the messiness of Anna’s love life, and thought there was plenty of juicy tension between her and Tom. Even better is Anna’s confession that she hasn’t spoken to Tom’s sister, and her best friend, since Tom left for London. But Murphy only offers us a pittance handful of scenes between Anna and Tom. And Tom’s sister (Anna’s supposed ex-bestie) never even appears in the book! Most of the drama in Anna’s life stems from her teaching shenanigans and coping with a bullying co-worker.

Yes, the teaching aspect is somewhat amusing. But as Anna dissects the various nasty, cold-shoulders of her co-worker, my eyes glazed. Office politics is boring, especially when Murphy dangled the far juicier Tom story before readers’ eyes. I wish that Anna’s teaching life didn’t so completely and detrimentally eclipse her far more interesting personal life.

By comparison, Luke’s home life had me feeling for him. His panic attacks are nerve-racking and always lingering;

'Not now,' he sighed. 'Please not now.' He put the toilet lid down and sat, resting his head in his hands, concentrating on his breathing. This had happened a couple of times now, but he had been all right. He reminded himself of this as he closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind of everything, thinking only of getting enough air into his lungs and making the stars he was seeing disappear. But hearing the inconsistent rhythm of his breathing only made him more anxious. His short, sharp intakes of oxygen were somehow not registering, and much as he tried, he couldn't make them longer or deeper. He wondered whether it was possible to drown on land. Or maybe he was having a heart attack at the age of seventeen. That must have happened to someone somewhere before. He unzipped his hoodie and took off his long-sleeved T-shirt, leaving only his singlet. But it was still too warm, suffocating. He hugged his knees to his chest and waited, hoping that the awful feeling would pass as quickly as it had come.

On the one hand, I loved that Kirsten Murphy offered up a young adult novel with a high school teacher as one of the protagonists, alongside one of her students. On the other hand, I wish the teaching-aspect had been watered down a bit in favour of Anna’s messier (and more interesting) love life. I think this book was bursting with potential, and it was met with Luke’s internal struggles with his dying father and concerned friends. But Anna’s concurrent story brings this book down a notch, if only because there was so much emphasis placed on her being a ‘teacher’, that she lost interest as a character.

3/5

'The First Part Last' Heaven #2 by Angela Johnson

2012-01-07T12:14:00.002+11:00

From the BLURB:

Bobby's a classic urban teenager. He's restless. He's impulsive. But the thing that makes him different is this: He's going to be a father. His girlfriend, Nia, is pregnant, and their lives are about to change forever. Instead of spending time with friends, they'll be spending time with doctors, and next, diapers. They have options: keeping the baby, adoption. They want to do the right thing.

If only it was clear what the right thing was.

Bobby has Feather and Feather means everything to him. Even if she wasn’t planned. Even if the plan was for him and Nia to give Feather up for adoption. Even if Bobby was just sixteen when Nia handed him a balloon and changed his whole life. None of that matters, because either way you cut it – between now and then – Feather means everything to her daddy.

‘The First Part Last’ was the 2003 Printz-winning book from Angela Johnson.

It took me a one-way train trip to read this 131-page book. One train trip to read the book, but the story is staying with me for a lot longer than that.

Angela Johnson writes first chapters better than some authors write entire novels;

I've been thinking about it. Everything. And when Feather opens her eyes and looks up at me, I already know there’s change. But I figure if the world were really right, humans would live life backward and do the first part last. They’d be all knowing in the beginning and innocent in the end.
Then everybody could end their life on their momma or daddy’s stomach in a warm room, waiting for the soft morning light.

So begins Bobby’s first person narrative, between ‘now’ and ‘then’.

Now, Bobby is tired and worrying – he has little Feather depending on him, but some nights he just feels like curling up in his mother’s bed and being the kid taken care of, instead of daddy to his baby girl. He loves Feather – her sweet smell and pudgy baby hands. But sometimes he misses who he was before she was born.

Then, Nia and Bobby had to sit down with their parents and feel the burden of their mistake. Bobby had to watch Mrs Wilkins smile because she couldn’t deal. He had to watch his own mother bite her lip so hard that blood ran down. And Bobby has to get used to the idea of being a father – no shooting hoops with K-Boy and J.L. whenever he feels like it. No asking grandpa to babysit whenever he can’t deal. He has to start taking responsibility and getting ready for the baby. He has to get Nia tacos when she’s craving, and rub her feet when she’s aching.

Angela Johnson’s story is sublime. If you think she can’t pack a punch in 131-pages, you will be startlingly mistaken. Johnson’s novel is beautiful and thoughtful, gut-wrenching and eloquent. But what makes the story even better is that she does it all in so few pages. It takes a true maestro to move a reader to tears with a word-count that some authors spend on first chapters alone. It’s like fitting a symphony into a pop-song, and I am awed by her prowess.

5/5

'Cinder' The Lunar Chronicles #1 by Marissa Meyer

2012-01-06T11:52:00.007+11:00

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

A forbidden romance.
A deadly plague.
Earth's fate hinges on one girl . . .

CINDER, a gifted mechanic in New Beijing, is also a cyborg. She's reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister's sudden illness. But when her life becomes entwined with the handsome Prince Kai's, she finds herself at the centre of a violent struggle between the desires of an evil queen - and a dangerous temptation.

Cinder is caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal. Now she must uncover secrets about her mysterious past in order to protect Earth's future.

New Beijing is under threat. The King is lying on his deathbed, his Queen already dead and his son, Prince Kai, feeling utterly unprepared for what the next few days could bring … because plague is ravaging earth. A plague called Leutmosis, with a high mortality rate and no known cure.

Above the earth, the Lunar planet looms large and foreboding, and Queen Levana has her sights set on Prince Kai for a political marriage. And as part of her bargaining, Levana is dangling a cure to Leutmosis before Kai’s eyes.

Down in the dregs of society works Cinder, New Beijing’s most talented mechanic. Cinder is also a Cyborg – a hated faction in this world, where the human/machine hybrids are considered monstrous and given few rights. And while the plague ravages the city, Cyborg’s are being drawn like a lottery for cure ‘experiments’, whether they like it or not.

Cinder is owned by wealthy woman, Adri, whose husband bought Cinder and then left her in his family’s care when he tragically succumbed to Leutmosis. Adri has two girls, the egotistical Pearl and lovable little Peony. They are not sisters, but Cinder loves Peony like she’s family.

Cinder works to pay Adri’s bills and clothe Pearl in pretty dresses. But when Prince Kai arrives at her mechanic stall one day, she is tasked with a new job that will have repercussions for everyone around her …

‘Cinder’ is the debut sci-fi Fairytale from Marissa Meyer, putting a new-world spin on the old ‘Cinderella’ story …

I have been looking forward to this book, ever since I fell in love with new ABC show ‘Once Upon a Time’, which puts old Fairytales in a kooky modern small-town setting. If vampires were 2009, angels so 2010 and zombie passé by 2011, then Fairytales is definitely the new theme du-jour of the paranormal/sci-fi scene. And Marissa Meyer’s ‘Cinder’ is jus the book to scratch this new itch!

As the title suggests, ‘Cinder’ is a reimagining of the old ‘Cinderella’ Fairytale. Except that out princess is a Cyborg, plague is ravaging the kingdom and the closest thing you’ll get to a fairy godmother is an adorable little android called Iko. A few footnotes of the traditional fable remain the same (if a little futuristically skewed), like Cinder’s ‘stepmother’ being her owner. A glass slipper is more likely to be a new detachable mechanical foot. And the pumpkin carriage is actually a (vintage) gasoline car!

Meyer has done wonders with twisting and modernizing the old ‘Cinderella’ tale, and with each modification and story adjustment comes new delights. Cyborg Cinder is ingenious – not only is she the downtrodden worker to her owner, Adri, but she is apart of a detested segment of society. I loved the ramifications this has on the story, Cinder as a minority in New Beijng, whose Cyborg ‘race’ is so discriminated against that a lottery has even been created to force them to be guinea pigs for cures against Leutmosis.

The setting of ‘Cinder’ is a future one not dissimilar to Joss Whedon’s TV series ‘Firefly’, in which the future had heavy oriental-influence (presumably because China and the like had become the new world power). Androids are servants, and Cyborgs are discriminated against. Above the Earth looms the Lunar planet, inhabited by beautiful people and ruled by an insane, vain, mind-bending Queen.

And since Meyer is sticking to a few Fairytale conventions, there is still a handsome prince (phew!). Kai is still reeling from his mother’s plague-death, and is now looking at a similar fate for his father … which would make Kai king. The crown holds even less appeal since Queen Levana set her sights on Kai as her husband. Levana has a particularly horrible history – there are rumours that she murdered her husband, scarred younger (prettier) female royals and organized an arson attack against her baby niece.

But when Kai requires mechanical assistance from Cinder, their crossed-paths has ramifications on the kingdom that neither of them could have ever imagined;

'I'm looking for a Linh Cinder,' said the prince. 'Is he around?'
Cinder dared to lift one stabilizing hand from the table, using it to tug the hem of her glove higher on her wrist. Staring at the prince's chest, she stammered, 'I-I'm Linh Cinder.'
Her eyes followed his hand as he planted it on top of the android's bulbous head.
'You're Linh Cinder?'
'Yes, Your High--' She bit down on her lip.
'The mechanic?'
She nodded. 'How can I help you?'
Instead of answering, the prince bent down, craning his neck so that she had no choice but to meet his eyes, and dashed a grin at her. Her heart winced.
The prince straightened, forcing her gaze to follow him.
'You're not quite what I was expecting.'

I did really enjoy ‘Cinder’. It’s a dusting off of an old Fairytale, and Meyer has customized her new imagining with much-needed updates. Like how Cinder is less ‘woe is me’ and more stubborn, take-charge. I would even say that the ‘evil’ stepmother is given a bit of heart in this new tale, and she’s all the more interesting for not being so black and white.

There are a few things that didn’t work for me in this book, and they have been touched on by other reviewers. Meyer isn’t great at in-depth scene setting – I got the ‘Firefly’ reference from other readers, and it’s only because I’m a devoted Browncoat that I was able to flesh out this futuristic oriental city in my mind. I would have liked more atmospheric writing on the city of New Beijing, beyond Meyer simply offering up the ‘Beijing’ name and expecting readers to add flying cars and androids to the City as we know it. I also think there were a few missed moments between Cinder and her ‘family’, particularly Adri and Pearl, the traditional ‘villains’. True, in Meyer’s new version the step-family aren’t the focus of evil, that’s much more Queen Levana, but I still think it would have been nice if Meyer had delved more into Cinder’s home life. Pearl, the rotten sister, is awful but doesn’t get much page-time and comes across as a little one-dimensional because of it. Adri, on the other hand, started out typically-villainous, but towards the end I wanted to spend more time with her since grief and circumstance fleshed her out with new dimensions…

But there are minor complaints about an otherwise breathtaking story. I was a little surprised by the ending, only because I thought ‘Cinder’ would be a stand-alone novel (I was under the impression that Meyer would be updating all the Fairytale princesses – ‘The Little Android’? ‘Beauty and the Robot’?). But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that ‘Cinder’ will be a continuing saga … and it makes sense, since so much of this first book is about building political upheaval and winding a royal mystery.

‘Cinder’ is a delightfully modernized spin on the old ‘Cinderella’ story. Marissa Meyer’s new Fairytale is a dark delight – about a plague-ravaged kingdom, a royal conspiracy and the Cyborg mechanic at the heart of it all. Brilliant!

4/5

'May Gibbs: More than a Fairy Tale' by Robert Holden and Jane Brummitt

2012-01-04T17:35:00.011+11:00

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

May Gibbs became one of Australia's most well-known and loved illustrators. Her gum-nut babies have been adored by generations of children. For the first time her early life and artistic career are explored in detail. She travelled to England in a quest to develop as an artist and became an early supporter of the suffragettes. Her early paintings of wildflowers led her to discover the limitations of being a woman artist and she discovered that working hard to develop a sustaining commercial career in art was not going to be easy. One of the few women to become a commercial success, she did so by turning to fantasy and children's illustration. This is a fascinating illustrated biography of a talented artist, complete with beautiful reproductions of May Gibbs' work throughout.

‘May Gibbs: More than a Fairytale’ is the illustrated autobiography of one of Australia’s most successful and beloved illustrators. Gibbs was creator of Australia’s cherished children’s ‘gumnut babies’ series.

I, like many other Australian children, grew up on the stories of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. I have a big, gorgeous hardback gumnut babies novel that enjoyed pride-of-place on my bookshelf as a youngster. The spine is worn and some pages stuck together with miscellaneous foods – a testament to how well read the book was in my younger years. Banksia Men scared the beegesus out of me, but Gibb’s stories certainly made me look at gumtrees differently… So I was absolutely delighted to learn of a book about the woman behind my childhood bedtime stories, and one that is so beautifully crafted.

Written by Robert Holden and Jane Brummitt, ‘More than a Fairytale’ chronicles Gibb’s life and artistic history. Born in England, Gibbs and her family moved to South Australia in the 1800’s, and while the rest of her farming family had a tumultuous time with the harsh landscape, Gibbs became enamoured of the outback and bushland. As a child she would ride her pony around the sprawling family farm, painting and drawing the beautiful bushland as she saw it. Thus, the groundwork for Snugglepot and Cuddlepie was born, along with Banksia Men and wattle babies.

Gibb’s life was fascinating, and even feminist. For a long time she was Australia’s most successful export, and even now her gumnut babies live on and are a staple of any Aussie baby’s first library. She was also a true patriot, her works printed on postcards and sent to the boys in the trenches during WWI, a little bit of Australia in the mail for them while they fought overseas.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Gibb’s life-story was her involvement in the suffragette movement. Gibbs frequently returned to England, for her art and family, and it was during those visits that she became heavily influenced by the women’s social and political movement. And it’s no wonder that Gibbs was so deeply affected by the cause – she was herself a woman of her own making, who turned fantasy into successful children’s literature and became one of Australia’s first ‘celebrities’.

Robert Holden and Jane Brummitt have done a wonderful job of delving into Gibb’s history and influences, enriching the backstory to her creations. But the real beauty of this biography is simply in Gibb’s illustrations. She was a wonderfully creative storyteller – blending fantasy and nature to create a beautifully Australian fairytale that will never die, but be passed on for generations to come.

This book is absolutely incredible. It’s a gorgeous hardback with full-colour pages, and some hidden Gibbs gems have been lovingly reprinted for the first time in many, many years. Anyone who ever read or had gumnut babies read to them will love this book. It’s a nice reminiscence, but also a stunning tribute to one of Australia’s finest female writers and illustrators.

5/5

'The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots' by Loretta Hill

2012-01-03T10:03:00.003+11:00

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Lena Todd is a city girl who thrives on cocktails and cappuccinos. So when her boss announces he’s sending her to the outback to join a construction team, her world is turned upside down.

Lena’s new accommodation will be an aluminium box called a dongar.

Her new social network: three hundred and fifty men.

Her daily foot attire: steel-capped boots.

Unfortunately, Lena can’t refuse. Mistakes of the past are choking her confidence. She needs to do something to right those wrongs and prove herself. Going into a remote community might just be the place to do that, if only tall, dark and obnoxious Dan didn’t seem so determined to stand in her way ...

Lena Todd has landed her dream job, as a graduate engineer for a major firm. After years of struggling through her Uni degree, she has come out the other side with a strong work ethic and a thirst for knowledge. But Lena has a lot to prove, to herself, a certain awful ex-boyfriend and her new company. So when she’s given the option of continuing desk work in the big city, or tackling a hard, on-location job in the outback of Pilbara, Lena decides to take the road less travelled …

Pilbara is unlike anything Lena has ever experienced. Red dust coats everything, kangaroos are hopping kamikaze and the residential accommodations are converted shipping-containers called ‘dongars’ (which barely house Lena’s three suitcases of clothing!).

But worse of all is the female-t0-male ratio. For the 350 male workers, there are only five females on site. And Lena is the only engineer (at first mistakenly thought to be the new cleaning lady by some of the men).

Sexual harassment if rife and varied – from gentle ribbing about being ‘Madame Engineer’, to wolf-whistles and leery old men.

But Lena will take it all on the chin for a chance to contribute to the Pilbara project – a massive wharf that cuts into the ocean and is a construction marvel.

But if the sexual harassment and on-site gossip isn’t bad enough, there’s also a bitter rivalry between the construction crew and the project’s commissioner – Daniel ‘Bulldog’ Hullog. Lena understands the crew’s wariness of Bulldog … sure, he’s handsome and rugged, with an interesting secret under his hard-hat … but he’s also a perfectionist, rude and keeping Lena up at night.

‘The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots’ is the new contemporary fiction novel from Australian author, Loretta Hill.

I loved this book! ‘The Girl in Steep-Capped Boots’ introduces us to Lena Todd – a woman full of contradictions. She’s young, in her early-twenties, but already with a chip on her shoulder and a point to prove. Admittedly she was a party girl at University, and nearly whittled away her degree until she decided to curb her wild ways. Lena owes a good deal of her final year success to her ex-boyfriend, also a professor at her university. But his parting words upon break-up have shaken Lena’s career confidence, and when she arrives in Pilbara she has a point to prove to herself, and her ex. I loved that Hill has written Lena as a bit of an enigma, to the point that even readers will be making assumptions about her that they find themselves backtracking on as the story progresses. Lena is a beautiful woman; which works against her at Pilbara where the men see her as a pretty face and not much else. Everyone is skeptical of her engineering abilities (even Lena herself!). But as the story progresses we read Lena’s guts and determination, her fight-fire-with-fire attitude and determination. It was as much fun to have my initial opinion of Lena turned around, as it was to read the men change their ways and treatment of her.

‘You’ve been a disaster zone since you got here.’
It was true on all fronts, including her engineering.
She tapped a pencil on her notepad. What she needed was some firm goals – a road map she could use to avoid the personal traps laid for her by Mike and Gavin … and Dan. Something that would prove her worth, not by getting Dan’s approval or even Carl’s but something tangible that she could hold up and say, ‘That’s what I did and that’s why I’m good.’

Hill’s novel is peppered with some wonderful secondary characters. There’s Sharon, the shy female bus-driver who becomes Lena’s friend and ally on the male-dominated site. Sharon is crushing on a ridge worker, while blinded to unrequited love from an unlikely source. Carl is Lena’s boss, a burly man who drops the f-bomb as much as he blinks, but has a heart of gold underneath his caveman exterior. Gavin is the young gun eager to impress, and there are any number of lovable nicknamed wharf workers like Leg, Fish and Radar who come to form a tight friendship unit for Lena.

And then there’s Dan ‘Bulldog’ Hullog – the site’s commissioner in charge of bossing everyone about and demanding that work be sped up. Dan is handsome and prickly. He insists on living on-site with the men (despite how much they all hate him) and refuses to take his R&R week-off for unknown reasons. I loved Dan! He’s a typical man’s man, but hiding a heartbreaking secret that explains some of his boorishness. He and Lena butt heads, repeatedly and hilariously, throughout the book. But when their opposites-attract heat turns into something more, they become gossip fodder for the site.

The real star of Loretta Hill’s novel is Pilbara. Hill is writing about a very unusual setting that fosters camaraderie and temporary family in a harsh environment and claustrophobic working conditions. The Pilbara site will be home to the 350 men for the better part of a year (if not longer) and they form tight bonds of friendship with one another. They’re away from home and far from family – living and working in the outback with its harsh terrain and red landscape. At first readers will be like Lena, mortified and horrified at the schoolboy antics of the workers and unimpressed by the remote location that is the antithesis to urban city life. But as the novel progresses something strange and wonderful happens, for Lena and readers alike … Pilbara becomes home.

Sharon grinned. ‘You’ve got the Pilbara under your skin.’

As the story progresses Pilbara becomes an interesting microcosm of home, friendship and family. Lena forms bonds with her teammates and work crew, and you read how this remote work location changes the people who live there. What’s really amazing though, is to think that after living and working there for six months everyone will eventually just leave. Disband and never see each other again – after living in one another’s pockets they’ll just walk away, probably onto another site where they’ll start all over again. Loretta Hill is definitely tapping into an interesting location that has fascinating ramifications on our protagonist’s state of mind and interactions.

‘The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots’ is a fabulous Aussie read. Loretta Hill has set her love story in an unconventional and barren location that is wholly original for its hilarious social effects. Lena is a surprising protagonist with a lot to prove, and her romance with Dan ‘Bulldog’ is fiery and forbidden. The secondary characters make this novel unforgettable (including aforementioned kamikaze kanga’s). This is summer reading du-jour and a guaranteed home-grown pleaser.

5/5

GIVE-AWAY: Australian Women Writers 2012

2012-01-01T01:00:00.003+11:00

Hello Darling Readers,

I thought I'd start 2012 off with a BANG, and a lovely little book give-away!

To start the New Year off right, I am giving away a prize pack of SIX books to one lucky person! But this is an Australian resident’s only competition, I’m afraid.

Let’s see what’s up for grabs . . .

Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

For as long as Josephine Alibrandi can remember, it’s just been her, her mom, and her grandmother. Now it’s her final year at a wealthy Catholic high school. The nuns couldn’t be any stricter—but that doesn’t seem to stop all kinds of men from coming into her life.

Caught between the old-world values of her Italian grandmother, the nononsense wisdom of her mom, and the boys who continue to mystify her, Josephine is on the ride of her life. This will be the year she falls in love, the year she discovers the secrets of her family’s past—and the year she sets herself free.

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Taylor Markham is not a popular choice. She is erratic, has no people skills and never turns up to meetings. Not to mention the incident when she ran off in search of her mother and only got halfway there. But she's lived at Jellicoe School most of her life and as leader of the boarders that's her greatest asset. Especially now the cadets, led by the infamous Jonah Griggs, have arrived. The territory wars between the boarders, townies and cadets are about to recommence.
But Taylor has other things on her mind: a prayer tree, the hermit who whispered in her ear, and a vaguely familiar drawing in the local police station. Taylor wants to understand the mystery of her own past. But Hannah, the woman who found her, has suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but an unfinished manuscript about five kids whose lives entwined twenty years ago on the Jellicoe Road . . .

The Gorgon in the Gully by Melina Marchetta

Beyond the basketball courts and classrooms of St Raph's is a gully where everything disappears forever. Danny Griggs has heard stories about a creature that lives down there. So why does he volunteer to face the Gorgon when he's been petrified of everything all his life?
A gentle story about overcoming fear and looking at things from all angles, from best-selling author Melina Marchetta.

Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta

Blood sings to blood, Froi . . .
Those born last will make the first . . .
For Charyn will be barren no more.

Three years after the curse on Lumatere was lifted, Froi has found his home - or so he believes.

Fiercely loyal to the Queen and Finnikin, Froi has been trained roughly and lovingly by the Guard sworn to protect the royal family, and has learned to control his quick temper. But when he is sent on a secretive mission to the kingdom of Charyn, nothing could have prepared him for what he finds. Here he encounters a damaged people who are not who they seem, and must unravel both the dark bonds of kinship and the mysteries of a half-mad Princess.

And in this barren and mysterious place, he will discover that there is a song sleeping in his blood, and though Froi would rather not, the time has come to listen.

Burn Bright by Marianne de Pierres

In Ixion music and party are our only beliefs. Darkness is our comfort. We have few rules but they are absolute . . .

Retra doesn’t want to go to Ixion, the island of ever-night, ever-youth and never-sleep. Retra is a Seal – sealed minds, sealed community. She doesn’t crave parties and pleasure, experience and freedom.

But her brother Joel left for Ixion two years ago, and Retra is determined to find him. Braving the intense pain of her obedience strip to escape the only home she’s ever known, Retra stows away on the barge that will take her to her brother.

When she can’t find Joel, Retra finds herself drawn deeper into the intoxicating world of Ixion. Come to me, whispers a voice in her head. Who are the Ripers, the mysterious guardians of Ixion? What are the Night Creatures Retra can see in the shadows? And what happens to those who grow too old for Ixion?

Retra will find that Ixion has its pleasures, but its secrets are deadly. Will friendship, and the creation of an eternal bond with a Riper, be enough to save her from the darkness?

Beatle Meets Destiny by Gabrielle Williams

Imagine your name is John Lennon, only everyone calls you Beatle.

And then you meet your Dream girl and her name is Destiny McCartney.

But what if you're already with the perfect girl?

A novel about change, chance and everybody doing the wrong thing.

☼

This isn’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, books-up-for-grabs comp. If you’ll kindly notice, all of the books in the prize pack have a few things in common. One is that they are all young adult books. Two, is that they are written by Australian women! Which leads me on to my ulterior motive with this little give-away . . . the ‘Australian Women Writers 2012: National Year of Reading Challenge!’

I blogged about this earlier in December, that there is a great initiative going on in Australia throughout 2012 – and that is to promote Australian Women Writers. In case you’ve forgotten, here is the reasoning behind the year-long event;

Objective: This challenge hopes to help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women's writing. (See the page on gender bias for recent discussions; also this page for the rationale behind the challenge.)

Readers should approach this challenge with a spirit of willingness. There are no failures, just personal goals. Reviews can be long or short, favourable or "this book is not for me". Hopefully, along the way, we'll all discover some future classics and perhaps a few surprises among genres we're not familiar with. The main aim is to have fun.

I am already participating in the challenge (with two reviews to come!) but I thought a little book give-away would be a great way to encourage people to get reading and support the cause.

This is an Australian resident’s only competition, I’m afraid. And I do have one teeny-tiny request of the winner (whoever that may be). And that is that whoever wins, I'd love it if they could review one of the books in the prize pack. If the winner has their own blog, it would be fantastic if they could post their review there. Or if they are blog-less, I'd be happy to let them borrow mine and I’ll post their review as a ‘guest post’ (never before done on ALPHA reader!). The prospective winner shouldn’t panic about the review though, as the challenge stipulates: ‘Reviews can be long or short, favourable or "this book is not for me".’

So that’s the give-away. Now how to enter . . .

How to enter:

☼ Become a follower of my blog (if you aren't already)

☼ Leave a comment on this blog post, answering the question; “Who is your favourite Australian female author?”

☼ Include a way to contact you (e-mail addy is fine)

☼ One post per entrant

☼ This is a giveaway for AUSTRALIAN resident’s only!

☼ Contest closes January 31st
I will announce the lucky winner on February 2nd

P.S. - Happy New Year!
I hope 2012 treats you all fabulously!

'Shadow Heir' Dark Swan #4 by Richelle Mead

2011-12-30T18:22:00.007+11:00

From the BLURB:

Shaman-for-hire Eugenie Markham strives to keep the mortal realm safe from trespassing entities. But as the Thorn Land's prophecy-haunted queen, there's no refuge for her and her soon-to-be-born-children when a mysterious blight begins to devastate the Otherworld...

The spell-driven source of the blight isn't the only challenge to Eugenie's instincts. Fairy king Dorian is sacrificing everything to help, but Eugenie can't trust the synergy drawing them back together. The uneasy truce between her and her shape shifter ex-lover Kiyo is endangered by secrets he can't--or won't--reveal. And as a formidable force rises to also threaten the human world, Eugenie must use her own cursed fate as a weapon--and risk the ultimate sacrifice...

It’s not many people that can say they hold the fate of the world in their hands. But for Eugenie Markham such proclamations would be true . . . except the fate of humanity rests in her womb.

Eugenie is daughter of the Storm King. Ancient Otherworld prophecies predict that Eugenie’s first-born son will bring the human race to its knees and raise the Otherworld atop of the food chain once again.

Five months pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, Eugenie is starting to feel the weight (figuratively and literally) of her decision to keep the babies. Their father, kitsune Kiyo, is hell-bent on killing his son before he is born. Maiwenn, queen of an Otherworld province, has raised an army to hunt Eugenie down and kill her before her babies are born. And Fairy King Dorian has pledged allegiance to her unborn and will sacrifice anything to see Eugenie and her babies safe.

With assassination attempts and increasing violence plaguing her kingdom, Eugenie makes a difficult decision. To leave the Otherworld and her kingdom behind, and take her chances in the human realm . . .

‘Shadow Heir’ is the fourth and final book (for the foreseeable future, at least) in Richelle Mead’s urban fantasy ‘Dark Swan’ series.

I have been most excited for the conclusion of the ‘Dark Swan’ series for quite some time. Richelle Mead excels at cliff-hangers and nail-biting twists, and that was especially true of her third book ‘Iron Crowned’. Gauntlets were thrown down, fate kicked into gear and Eugenie’s story became intensely twisted. This year has been a big one for Ms Mead, with her ‘Georgina Kincaid’ series coming to a definite conclusion, and her first ‘Vampire Academy’ spin-off book whetting reader’s appetites (and, oh yeah, she had a kid to top it all off . . .) so ‘Shadow Heir’ feels like a fitting finale to a fine year.

I must admit, early on in ‘Shadow Heir’ I found myself biting my lip and worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this ending ... Because very early on in the book, Eugenie leaves the Otherworld in favour of human medicine and the safety of anonymity to have her children. Eugenie’s departure was especially frustrating because it meant few scenes with King Dorian. Now, I have been a BIG Dorian fan since the beginning of ‘Dark Swan’. He’s an egotistical, beautiful red-headed Fairy King who’s quick with the one-liners and wickedly deceptive. I love him. But he and Eugenie have had a rocky relationship from the start . . . which was put on permanent hiatus when he tricked her into taking the Iron Crown (and all but beginning the Storm King prophecy!).

At the end of ‘Iron Crowned’, tensions between Dorian and Eugenie were electric. For starters, she is carrying her ex-boyfriend (Kiyo’s) children after she ran back into his arms upon learning of Dorian’s deception. Kiyo turned out to be an infanticide freak who would do anything to kill his and Eugenie’s babies if it meant stopping the Storm King prophecy, which marks Eugenie’s first-born son as the destroyer of humanity. Still, Dorian persevered and pledged allegiance to Eugenie and her unborn babies – he even wanted to be a prominent fixture in their lives, regardless of who their natural father is. When ‘Shadow Heir’ begins there is still plenty of crackling chemistry between Eugenie and Dorian, tempered by Eugenie’s lingering mistrust and awkward pregnancy situation . . .

A bizarre thought came over me, one that made my heart stop for a moment. All this time, I'd assumed Dorian just found me entertaining in his usual perverse way, that he’d liked my attentions and the prestige of being connected to my children. But I'd figured any romantic attachment had died after the Irown Crown. Now . . . now I knew I was wrong.
“Dorian . . . are you upset because. . . ” The words came out awkwardly as I found the courage to speak them. “Are you upset just because you won’t see me? Because . . . you’ll miss me?” It was a pathetic way to phrase it, but we both knew what I meant.
He glanced back at me over his shoulder, a smile on his face but sadness in his eyes. “Eugenie, do you know what I love about you?” I waited expectedly since Dorian used that rhetorical question in nearly every conversation we had, and his answer was always different. His smile grew, as did the sadness. “I love that that is the absolute last conclusion you came to.”

I will say that I shouldn’t have worried about a potential lack of Dorian in this finale. Sure, he’s physically absent for the first half of the book, but he’s never far from Eugenie’s thoughts. And in the second-half, a very Narnia-like occurrence in the Otherworld means he and Eugenie have to join forces once again. And when they do, Mead gives readers what we have all been hoping for – romantic tension, epic declarations of love and Dorian’s signature wit (Thundro – Ha ha!).

This is a Richelle Mead book, and even at the end she likes to pull punches and swipe the rug out from under reader’s feet. There is a HUGE double-twist towards the end of the book . . . HUGE, and clever. I didn’t see it coming (I mean, I’d hoped . . . but I didn’t know how it would work). Richelle Mead handles this curveball with utter aplomb, making the race to the finish a complete, surprising pleasure.

Now, as to the ending . . . I will say that I was a little bit frustrated. But I think a lot of how the book ends has to do with Eugenie’s new outlook as a mother. And, fair enough, that’s not necessarily something I can completely comprehend (except in an abstract, round-about kind of way). For some people that ending will dampen the rest of the book, but for me I liked the open-endedness of the end. Because Ms Mead has said she isn't entirely sure of how many books will be in the ‘Dark Swan’ series, only that the likely number is four. And, to be honest, now that she has a baby of her own (art imitating life indeed!) I would think her big priority would be on family and the new Vampire Academy spin-off series (admittedly, her real money-maker). And that’s fine. I actually think it might be nice to revisit Eugenie & co. in a few years time, to make the events and character progress authentic.

5/5

'The King's Pleasure' by Kitty Thomas

2011-12-29T13:51:00.003+11:00

Received from the Author

From the BLURB:

In the kingdom of Himeros, Abigail is despised for her gypsy heritage. Pushed to the fringes of society, she’s forced to break the law in order to help feed her family. When a castle guard catches her stealing bread, he intends to cut off her hand for the offense.

Niall has just taken the throne and is determined to prove he isn’t a monster like his father. Awakened by the cries of a gypsy, he spares her from the guard’s blade and takes her as his slave instead. When he learns she doesn’t understand the kingdom’s carnal ways, he becomes determined to strip her of all inhibitions until her every desire is in service to the king’s pleasure.

Abigail has just been spared, upon mercy of the King. Caught stealing bread from within the palace walls, punishment should be swift and merciless, an eye for an eye. Abigail’s punishment should be especially severe, since she is part-gypsy. But King Niall has intervened, desperate to show his people he’s not the tyrant his father was.

But Niall has big plans for Abigail. Because he’s not sparing her life for nothing; he intends to make her his slave – the first (and quite possibly only) woman in his harem. With Abigail by his side, Niall intends to mend the discrimination against gypsies and set the kingdom of Himeros on a new, peaceful, course.

‘The King’s Pleasure’ is the new novella from literary erotica author, Kitty Thomas.

The novella is set in an alternate world that is at once like ours, but with a skewed history. There is limited technology, a feudal system and very different outlooks on sexuality. In the kingdom of Himeros to be one of the King’s slaves is a great honour. Women are groomed for the harem from birth. But the new king, Niall, is uneasy with the customs of the harem. The women are robotic and calculating, they play at love and lust like a masterful game of chess, and Niall can’t help but feel more like the pawn than the king.

And then he meets Abigail, in the most unusual of circumstances. True, when Niall first discovers Abigail, stealing from the palace kitchen, he is quick to spare a beggar girl an unnecessarily cruel punishment. But when Niall discovers that she is also part gypsy, an idea forms in his head . . .

When she looked up, her long, raven locks fell away from her face. The king almost took a step back in reaction to the brilliant green of her eyes and the trembling in her full lips. Tears tracked down her face, and he was already lost.

The Himeros elite expect Niall to treat Abigail and the other gypsies the same way as his father, the former King, did. But although Niall is an expert warrior, he has no wish for such unnecessary cruelty in his kingdom. Through Abigail he has found a way to mend the wrongs of the past, and set his kingdom on a peaceful path. But Niall gets more than he bargained for when he starts to feel for Abigail as more than a political ploy. . .

As with all of Kitty Thomas’s erotica novellas, ‘The King’s Pleasure’ is a world unto itself and a succulent little slice of story. There’s so much packed into this little novella; politics, love, romance and a beautifully erotic tale between a king and his ‘slave’ (whose love turns a kingdom on its head). Beautiful, as always, I can’t wait for Thomas’s next novel, ‘The Last Girl’, coming early in 2012.

5/5

Coming in 2012

‘Slice: Juicy Moments From My Impossible Life’ by Steven Herrick

2011-12-28T16:44:00.002+11:00

From the BLURB:

Darcy can cope with parents, parties and punch-ups. He can handle his infatuation with the beautiful Audrey, spending quality chess-time with his nerdy friend, Noah, even the misadventures of kayaking on a school excursion. He's a teenage boy, he can deal with it. If only he'd learn to keep his mouth closed.

Meet sixteen-year-old Darcy; he can’t play soccer to save himself, he runs his mouth off and he spies on his next-door-neighbour (and love of his life), Audrey while she does yoga in her backyard.

‘Slice: Juicy Moments From My Impossible Life’ was the 2010 contemporary YA novel from Australian author Steven Herrick.

I really loved this book. Darcy is a lovable and sweet protagonist; navigating the pitfalls of having a barrister for a mother (he gets away with nothing, and never gets a fair trial) and his embarrassing soccer-obsessed father (who is looking for an outlet from his ho-hum accounting job). Darcy has to learn not to run his mouth off at school, because it can occasionally land him in a canteen-line punching match.

I'm sixteen years old and my mouth runs ahead of my brain. Our friend Pete would describe it as - ahem - premature enunciation. Mum say I talk without thinking. She's wrong. I mean what I say, I just shouldn’t say it aloud.

He also has to learn finesse when it comes to comforting his chess-playing friend, Noah, who divulges some truths about his tough family life in the wake of his father’s stroke. And then there’s Audrey – the beautiful (yet attainable) next-door-neighbour who Darcy would do anything to make his girlfriend.

If it sounds like there isn’t much actual plot in ‘Slice’, then that would be because there isn’t. ‘Slice’ is definitely character-driven, and as the title suggests, it is just moments of wacky hilarity from Darcy’s ‘Impossible Life’. There’s no triggering event powering the story, nor is there much character-arc. This book is more of a lark than a well-rounded book with character motive & journey. And that’s okay, it just took me a little while to figure it out and let Darcy’s voice overtake the lack of story.

Once I allowed Darcy’s personality to be the driving force of ‘Slice’, I found myself settling into a wonderful little Aussie YA book. Herrick’s book is full of fresh and witty humour, narrated by a charming and well-meaning young man as he navigates love, life and the art of kayaking.

4/5

'The Necklace in 2D' by Danielle Binks for the Sydney Morning Herald

2011-12-27T13:31:00.010+11:00

The Necklace in 2D

"Graffiti girl's yellow necklace is dribbling down her bricked neck..."

☼

I wrote a short story for the Sydney Morning Herald's crowd-sourced novel, 'The Necklace'. My story doesn't quite fit into the official chapter timeline of the ongoing online novel, but the SMH editor's were kind enough to include my magical realism anyway. And I quite like that my piece is called a 'tangent'.

Surry Hills, Sydney.

'Magic Gifts' Kate Daniels #5.4 novella by Ilona Andrews

2011-12-25T22:38:00.011+11:00

From the BLURB:

A dinner date after a hard day at work sounds heavenly. Of course, when that date is between the Beast Lord and Kate Daniels, things don’t go as planned. Before you know it, undead are running amok, heads are being chopped off, lawyers are deployed and used with extreme prejudice, and drunk vikings are calling people out.

Read at your own risk.

Life in Atlanta just got a whole lot more complicated for Kate Daniels and her mate, Curran. The Pack’s Chief of Security, Jim Shrapshire, is close to quitting when his workload becomes overrun by Kate’s procrastination. Kate is dreading having to break a stalemate in the recently leader-less Mercenary Guild. And to top matters off, Kate and Curran have just been witness to a curious murder by necklace. Now they are running against time to save a child from strangulation-by-jewellery . . . their rescue mission will require deer sacrifices, drunken Vikings and Ghastek the blood-sucker.

‘Magic Gifts’ is a super-sweet treat from beloved urban fantasy authors, Ilona Andrews. It is available to download from Ilona Andrews’ website for 2 weeks from Christmas Day. The novella is approximately 35,000 words long, and takes place right after the fifth Kate Daniels book, ‘Magic Slays’. But this novella is also super-special because it is set at the same time as Andrea Nash’s spin-off book, ‘Gunmetal Magic’, which will be released in the summer of 2012. In other words, ‘Magic Gifts’ is pretty much required-reading for devoted Kate Daniels fans.

This isn’t your typical Christmas novella, not at all. ‘Magic Gifts’ is full of vital information in the set-up for the events in Andrea’s ‘Gunmetal Magic’. It’s not imperative that fans of the series read this novella in order to understand the back-story behind ‘Gunmetal Magic’ (especially since the timeline of both stories runs concurrently, so events will be explained again in Andrea’s version). However, ‘Magic Gifts’ certainly gives fans an idea of what Andrea will be up against in her new (and much-anticipated) spin-off series. . .

One story focus of ‘Magic Gifts’ concerns the leader-less Mercenary Guild. Kate has been tasked with listening to the nomination spiel of both an individual mercenary who wants to lead the guild, and a group who want to lead by committee. The outcome of this decision hints that the future of the Guild will be a very different one from the organization that Kate left, and which kicked Andrea out (for being beastskin). In other words, watch this space.

There is actually a rather action-packed, helter-skelter plot at the heart of ‘Magic Gifts’, concerning Norse runes and a cursed necklace strangling an innocent boy. Kate and Curran are working to beat the clock and save a child’s life before it’s too late. Throw in some drunk Vikings and vampire diplomacy, and this is a compact but adrenaline-fuelled novella.

And, of course, since this is a super-sexy Christmas gift from the lovely Ilona Andrews, there’s also plenty of “Awwww!” moments between newly-mated Kate and Curran. Proving, once again, that marriage has not dimmed their sexy repartee or smouldering chemistry;

“Don’t,” I warned him.
“Mmmm, Kate, Chief of Security. Sexy. Who better to guard my body than the woman who owns it?”
“Curran, I will punch you.”
“Rough play.” Curran pretended to shiver in excitement.

Ghastek is a big player in this novella, and I've got to say I have never liked him more. I found myself chuckling at quite a few of his scenes, and a certain encounter with a boorish and soused Viking was particularly entertaining. I've never really rated Ghastek as a secondary character before, but after his turn in ‘Magic Gifts’, he has certainly grown on me (like a fungus);

The vamp’s red eyes bulged, struggling to mirror Ghastek’s expression.
“Kate, perhaps you need to explain to your significant other that he is in no position to give me orders. Last time I checked, his title was Beast Lord, which is a gentle euphemism for a man who strips nude at night and runs around through the woods hunting small woodland creatures. I’m a premier Master of the Dead. I will go where I please.”

The big draw-card of ‘Magic Gifts’ is the hints it provides for Andrea’s book. Andrea has long been a secondary character, and close friend of Kate’s, who has captivated fans and stolen her fair share of scenes. Andrea has a tragic past mired in her bouda-upbringing; she saw her mother repeatedly raped and beaten, and was herself a victim of childhood cruelty and violence. Andrea went on to become a member of the Mercenary Guild, but only because she acted human and hid her beastskin nature. For a little while, however, Andrea’s prickly temperament and self-loathing was soothed and on-the-mend thanks to bouda prince and reformed Lothario, Raphael. He and Andrea had a particularly lovely and steamy short story in the anthology ‘Must Love Hellhounds’.

However, In recent books Andrea has been kicked out of the organization she dedicated her life to, and abandoned her nearest and dearest in favour of slinking off to lick her wounds. She and Raphael have not spoken since book four, ‘Magic Bleeds’, and he was noticeably absent from ‘Magic Slays’. Well, let me warn you that readers will find out the reason for Raphael’s disappearance (well, part of the reason at least) . . . and Raphael/Andrea fans should prepare themselves. This is about to get messy. Catastrophically heart-breaking, even. I’m just saying, if we thought Kate & Curran had a lot to overcome in their relationship, just wait till you read what’s in store for Andrea and Raphael!

Ilona Andrews have certainly treated their readers to a delicious Christmas treat! I have been anticipating Andrea’s spin-off for months now. And now that I have read the tempting teaser that is ‘Magic Gifts’, I've got to say I’m now even more excited. Ilona Andrews have set up some interesting new Guild politics, and even more fascinating (if heartbreaking) personal hurdles for Andrea Nash to overcome. Look out for ‘Gunmetal Magic’, which can’t get here quick enough for Summer 2012 . . . but in the mean time, get excited by reading ‘Magic Gifts’ (but don’t worry if you miss out on the novella freebie, apparently it will appear as a bonus at the back of ‘Gunmetal Magic’).

5/5

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T01:01:00.001+11:00

Hello Darling Readers,

I have absolutely, positively no idea where 2011 has gone. All of a sudden car antlers are everywhere and my ears are bleeding to the dulcet tones of Justin Bieber ft. Mariah Carey. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m glad Christmas is here . . . now it’s time to crack open the Rekorderlig Winter Cider, nestle in for the Doctor Who Christmas episode (and the Downton Abbey special too, though I have an inkling it won’t be anywhere near as cheery) and let the good times roll!

And once the discarded wrapping is cleaned away, & the left-over Pavlova eaten, then it will nearly be time to ring in the New Year. I’ll be finishing 2011 on a high, and now I’m looking forward to what 2012 has to offer. There are good books to be read, creative endeavors to explore and the Hunger Games movie cannot get here quick enough!

Stay safe over the holiday break. All the best to you and yours, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Merry Christmas!

'Naked in Death' In Death #1 by J.D. Robb

2011-12-23T13:17:00.001+11:00

From the BLURB:

It is the year 2058, and technology now completely rules the world. But New York City Detective Eve Dallas knows that the irresistible impulses of the human heart are still ruled by just one thing-passion.

When a senator's daughter is killed, the secret life of prostitution she'd been leading is revealed. The high-profile case takes Lieutenant Eve Dallas into the rarefied circles of Washing-ton politics and society. Further complicating matters is Eve's growing attraction to Roarke, who is one of the wealthiest and most influential men on the planet, devilishly handsome... and the leading suspect in the investigation.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas should be on leave. Having just tied up a case that resulted in the death of a child, and Eve shooting the murderer, all she needs now is rest and recuperation. But there’s no such luck for Lieutenant Dallas when a high-profile politician’s granddaughter is murdered. The case is complicated by Sharon DeBlass’s profession – high-class escort – and a note left beneath the body promising ‘ONE OF SIX’.

The case is made all the more baffling for the murder weapon used – an old-fashioned Smith & Wesson gun; an archaic museum piece since the gun-ban was initiated, but also a vital clue since only the wealthiest of collector’s can now afford such a relic.

Eve’s investigations lead her to Rourke, an Irish-born millionaire living in New York who had close ties to Ms DeBlass’s family and an interest in bygone weaponry. But upon meeting the dark-haired, whiskey-tongued Roarke, Eve is convinced he’s no murderer. Or at least, she hopes he’s not – otherwise this attraction and fevered wanting she feels would be a problem for both of them …

‘Naked in Death’ is the first book in Nora Robert’s (writing as JD Robb) ‘In Death’ romantic crime-thriller series, which began in 1995. The series is currently thirty-three books deep, with a 34th book scheduled for 2012, and it’s entirely likely that the series will continue well beyond that …

I really didn’t want to like this book. Oh, sure, I’d had this series recommended to me time and time again and was assured that I’d love them. People would utter the name ‘Roarke’ with almost biblical reverence and be positively horrified if I dared admit to never having read a single one of JD Robb’s books. But still, I really didn’t want to like this book, because liking this book would mean reading the series. A series that, as of 2012, will have 34 books to its credit. I knew if I read one and got hooked, I’d have to read them all (and my to-be-read pile is toppling as is!). So, like I said, I really didn’t want to like this book … but damned if Roarke & Robb didn’t reel me in, hook, line and sinker.

Robb’s ‘In Death’ series is set in the future, in the year 2058. Inter-planetary travel is now possible, food is delivered by AutoChef, books come on discs (paperbacks are now viewed in museums), guns have been banned for a number of years and prostitution is legalized and regulated. These are just a few of the subtle futuristic scene-setters that are casually dropped throughout the book, and I quite liked that the sci-fi aspect was very low-key. Robb doesn’t pull focus to the futuristic setting so much as she integrates it into the story, which I was pleased about since the future-setting had me a little irked when I read it in the blurb. I’m still not 100% sure why the book had to be set in the future, except that things like the antiquity of the murder weapon (a standard issue Smith & Wesson) and legalized prostitution leaked into the murder investigation and put an interesting spin on the crime.

The real draw-card of the book (and I suppose, the series) is the characters of Eve and Roarke. Eve Dallas is a tough cop with a black past. On paper she sounds like a stereotype, but Robb has written Eve with many sides. She’s stubborn and perceptive, tough but feminine. She’s very much a lone wolf, but with inner scars that have her yearning for company and understanding. I liked Eve instantly; when we meet her she’s coming off the tail-end of a child murder which resulted in Eve killing a deranged criminal. She’s in a very fragile state of mind, but the instant she sees Sharon DeBlass’s butchered body, she’s on board this new murder investigation and wholly committed. I liked that she was so dedicated to the dead – Eve really sees this job as showing respect to those victims, and getting them justice in death.

Because of Eve’s rather fragile psyche when the book begins, she is utterly railroaded by murder suspect Roarke. Just ‘Roarke’ – a millionaire enigma with a criminal past but high-society presence. Roarke is painfully handsome, with an Irish lilt and a sharp mind. As much as Eve is amazed at her instant attraction to Roarke, he is even more shocked at his fascination with her. As Roarke admits, he doesn’t have much love for cops, but Eve with her awful shag haircut, whisky hair and sorrowful eyes has him lulled and lustful.

“I want to see you again." He stopped, took her face in his hands. "I need to see you again."
Her pulse jumped, as if it had nothing to do with the rest of her. "Roarke, what's going on here?"
"Lieutenant." He leaned forward, touched his lips to hers. "Indications are we're having a romance.”

As promised, Roarke is incredible. Even better is his and Eve’s instant attraction and coupling. This is, obviously, one of the reasons Robb’s series is so beloved. Unlike practically every other crime series with a dash of romance, Robb’s will-they-or-won’t-they is put to bed early on, instantaneous and highly flammable. The real interest of the series will come from how Eve and Roarke will cope with their sudden and unexpected presence in each others lives.

I know that Nora Roberts’s forte is romance – as evidenced by the dark and dashing Roarke, and his simmering romance with Eve. So I wasn’t overly shocked or too disappointed to read that the criminal side of things in ‘Naked in Death’ aren’t quite on par with other crime books. The ‘whodunit’ mystery is wrapped up in a fairly obvious, if disturbing way. Eve’s investigation is more paint-by-numbers than harrowing thriller. Fair enough, I wasn’t expecting Karin Slaughter-levels of criminality. Clearly the focus of the ‘In Death’ series is the romance between Eve and Roarke, it’s crime-lite romance-centric, and since I knew that going in, I wasn’t baffled or annoyed by the lack.

4/5

Australian Women Writers 2012: National Year of Reading Challenge

2011-12-21T11:16:00.007+11:00

Hello Darling Readers,

I just thought I'd tell you about a little Aussie reading challenge I'll be participating in next year. Australian Women Writers 2012 National Year of Reading Challenge encompasses all genre's and readerships, with just one common factor - Australian female authors.

The objective, as the website states:

Objective: This challenge hopes to help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women's writing. (See the page on gender bias for recent discussions; also this page for the rationale behind the challenge.)

Readers should approach this challenge with a spirit of willingness. There are no failures, just personal goals. Reviews can be long or short, favourable or "this book is not for me". Hopefully, along the way, we'll all discover some future classics and perhaps a few surprises among genres we're not familiar with. The main aim is to have fun.

Next year is an especially great time to get involved in this challenge, because there will be a lot of events going on in preparation for the first Stella Prize in 2013. For those of you who don't know, the Stella Prize will be Australia's first annual literary prize for Australian women's writing. It's a fantastic initiative, and has been a long time coming;

From the Website:

It will raise the profile of women’s writing, and will reward one writer with a $50,000 prize. The shortlisted and winning books will be widely publicised and marketed in order to bring readers to the work of Australian women writers.

In short, the Stella Prize will celebrate and recognise Australian women’s writing, encourage a future generation of women writers, and significantly increase the readership for books by women.

So next year, as apart of my Australian Women Writers challenge, the first two book reviews I post on my blog will be by (and about!) Australian women writers. The first book will be Loretta Hill's new release, 'The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots', a magnificent contemporary outback romance. For my second challenge review, I'll be looking an illustrated biography about one of Australia's first and most successful writer/illustrators, 'May Gibbs: More Than a Fairy Tale' by Robert Holden and Jane Brummitt.

I don't need much incentive to read books by Australian female authors (ALL of my favorite Aussie YA books are by female writers!) but it's nice to take a stand and actively support the cause!

This challenge is going to be really fun, so I hope some of you think about getting on board and promoting those Aussie female writers we love so much!

I intend to be a Stella-Dabbler. Here are the challenge specifics:

Genre challenges:
Purist: one genre only
Dabbler: more than one genre
Devoted eclectic: as many genres as you can find

Challenge levels:
Stella (read 3 and review at least 2 books)
Miles (read 6 and review at least 3* )
Franklin-fantastic (read 10 and review at least 4 books)*
* The higher levels should include at least one substantial length review

'Attachments' by Rainbow Rowell

2011-12-20T20:37:00.005+11:00

From the BLURB;

Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that someone is monitoring their interoffice email …

But they can’t quite bring themselves to take any of it very seriously. Jennifer tells Beth everything she can’t tell her husband about why she doesn’t want to start a family. And Beth tells Jennifer everything, period, especially if she thinks it will get a laugh.

Lincoln O’Neil knows that he should stop reading Beth and Jennifer’s email.

He should just send them a warning. He should have sent it the first time he caught them breaking the company rules. But they both seem so nice… They’re smart and funny and interesting, and he likes them. Especially Beth.

By the time Lincoln realizes how much he feels for Beth, it’s too late to unread all of her personal messages. And it’s way too late to introduce himself. What would he say? “Hi, I’m the guys who reads your email, and, also, I love you …”

But he can’t just do nothing. Falling for Beth makes him realize he’s been doing nothing for far too long.

It’s 1999 and the corporate world is preparing for Y2K. The Courier newspaper is getting behind the new millennium, to a degree. As a part of their recent internet introduction, they have hired twenty-nine-year-old IT guy Lincoln O’Neil to monitor staff emails and ensure there’s no funny business.

This isn’t exactly the job that Lincoln envisioned for himself upon (finally) leaving University. He thought he’d be doing proper security, stopping corporate espionage in its tracks . . . not lurking around the building at night, on the graveyard shift, and sifting through day-worker’s private emails looking for flagged offences. This is the last sort of job Lincoln needed, especially since his private life is so utterly abysmal. Still not over the high-school sweetheart who broke his heart (pummeled ad obliterated would also work) but he has recently moved home with his mother.

The one bright spot in Lincoln’s work life is Jennifer and Beth. Jennifer is a copyeditor, and Beth is her best friend and Courier movie critic. They send each other emails all the time – personal emails that fly in the face of company policy and create numerous red-flags in the WebFence security system. Emails that Lincoln has to read . . . but he never reports them. Because he likes Beth and Jennifer. But Beth especially. He likes reading about Jennifer’s marriage to the perfect guy, which could be hitting a few baby-bumps. And he laughs at Beth’s stories about her guitar-playing boyfriend who won’t take the next step.

And Lincoln especially likes reading about how Beth has labelled him as her cute guy. ‘The Cute Guy’ (TGY), to be precise. Because Lincoln feels the same attraction to her (even if she doesn’t know it), but there’s the little matter of explaining how they first met . . .

‘Attachments’ is the debut contemporary romance from Rainbow Rowell, which came out earlier this year.

I have got to give a big shout-out THANK YOU to Bree of ‘1 Girl 2 Many Books’ infamy. It was Bree’s lovely review which prompted me to read Rowell’s book. And boy oh boy, did I fall hard for Lincoln and this screw-ball, tender romance.

When we meet him, Lincoln is pretty much at rock-bottom. He has been single for more years than he’d wish to admit, never having quite gotten over the bitter ending to his high-school sweetheart and first-love. The only commitment in his life is to a Dungeons & Dragons troupe he meets with every Saturday, and he has just recently moved back home with his mother, a temporary state of affairs until he decides what he really wants to do with his life. He takes the Courier job now quite knowing the details of ‘internet security’, but feeling slightly sleazy when he realizes it entails reading personal emails and sending out warning notifications for improper use of company time. In light of the Murdoch/News of the World scandal, it’s easy to understand Lincoln’s reluctance.

While monitoring the email system, two co-workers keep popping up in Lincoln’s WebFence security – Jennifer & Beth. They bounce emails back and forth between them, discussing everything from Julia Roberts/Tom Cruise conspiracy theories, to Beth’s olive-picking Italian arms. The two best friends also share intimate secrets and personal stories – like Jennifer’s complete reluctance to cave to her husband’s wish for a baby (which doesn’t mean she won’t snap up a Baby Gap bargain when she sees one!) to Beth’s dismay at being the last of her siblings to be unwed (despite having the longest relationship with her boyfriend, Chris, which has been going for nine years now). Lincoln doesn’t send Beth and Jennifer a red-flag warning . . . not with the first email, and eventually not months after the fact. Because as he reads about their lives, inanities and funny frankness, Lincoln comes to care for both of them. And then he starts to really care for Beth . . .

Massive Kudos to Rainbow Rowell – she had two giant hurdles to overcome in ‘Attachments’, two enormous obstacles that are especially gargantuan for this being a romance novel. The first is that we, just like Lincoln, don’t actually get to read any physical scenes between Beth and Jennifer. The second is that Lincoln and Beth don’t actually, technically ever meet (or do they. . .? I won’t spoil it for you!) but they are the romantic focus of this book. Two big hurdles, and Rainbow Rowell absolutely leaps over both of them with finesse and aplomb. . .

Jennifer and Beth’s scenes, for most of the book, are in instant-messenger dialogue format. We read their email exchanges; the rapid-fire back-and-forth between two good friends who are only vaguely aware of a security presence is monitoring their banter. There are only a few pages in which Jennifer and Beth actually become physical presence, beyond just cc-ing dialogue. You would think this lack of character intimacy would create a lag between Lincoln’s infatuations with them, but Rainbow Rowell completely overcomes this through force of character. Beth and Jennifer are so real, so fleshed out, funny and relatable in their candid exchanges that (just like Lincoln) the reader forgets that we haven’t actually ‘met’ these women. Beth is particularly hilarious, quick with pop-culture references and self-deprecating black humour. Her insights come fast and furious, and had me snorting while reading. I particularly liked her bitter wedding musings, as her (younger) sister’s big day looms, Beth becomes scathingly hilarious;

And when she told us her wedding song – of course, they’ve already picked their wedding song, and of course, it’s “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong – I said that choosing that song is the sonic equivalent of buying picture frames and never replacing the photos of the models.

Jennifer and Beth aren’t just funny talking-heads though. Rowell really fleshed them out with personal problems as they share heart-breaking intimacies. Jennifer, in particular, is going through a rough patch when her husband starts her biological clock ticking . . . but, always, both women remain funny and loveable, laughing through their pain and endearing Lincoln (and readers) to them. So many times I found myself whole-heartedly agreeing with Beth & Jennifer’s observations, particularly Beth’s (since I consider myself a bit of a movie/pop-culture junkie) many of Beth’s musings had me sputtering along in utter agreement;

Have you ever seen The Goodbye Girl? Don’t watch it if you still want to enjoy romantic comedies. It makes every movie ever made starring Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock lash itself in shame. Also, don’t watch The Goodbye Girl if it would trouble you to find Richard Dreyfuss wildly attractive for the rest of your life, even when you see him in What About Bob? Or Mr. Holland’s Opus.

If anything I’m a bit peeved with Rainbow Rowell for making Beth & Jennifer so darn loveable. Because when I finished the book, I kinda wished they were real people I could call up and organize a movie-night with. Or meet up for drinks down at the pub. I was like Lincoln who had become addicted to their repartee – I wished them to be real, to inhabit this world. Sappy, I know, but I love when fictional characters make me wish they were real through their sheer awesomeness.

And then there’s Lincoln O’Neil. *Sigh*. This, right here ladies, is one hell of a fella. Lincoln is sensitive and caring, he’s funny and handsome (John Wayne handsome, ‘manly’ handsome of the old-school variety). He was never a cliché, and he made me swoon. He’s the good guy, the one who usually finishes last, but should be first in everybody’s book. When we meet him he’s still nursing a broken heart and cursed with low self-esteem. But through it all he remains a gentleman and gentle giant. My God, I loved him.

Rainbow Rowell proves herself a formidable force in the contemporary romance genre with this debut. It’s brilliant, not least of all because two of the main characters are scene-stealers who don’t actually have scenes, and the main romance involves the guy falling for the girl (without seeing her) and the girl falling for the guy (without knowing who he is . . . while he secretly knows every little thing about her). ‘Attachments’ is incredible, and I cannot wait to read more from Rainbow Rowell; something tells me she’s here to stay, and will be a firm-fixture on my readings lists for many years to come.

5/5

Coming April 12th, 2012

'God is in the Pancakes' by Robin Epstein

2011-12-19T10:14:00.001+11:00

From the BLURB:

Fifteen-year-old Grace Manning is a candy striper in a nursing home, and Mr. Sands is the one patient who makes the job bearable. He keeps up with her sarcasm, teaches her to play poker . . . and one day cheerfully asks her to help him die. At first Grace says no way, but as Mr. Sands's disease progresses, she's not so sure. Grace tries to avoid the wrenching decision by praying for a miracle, stuffing herself with pancakes, and running away from all feelings, including the new ones she has for her best friend Eric. But Mr. Sands is getting worse, and she can't avoid him forever.

Grace Manning isn’t having the best year. In a wholly ironic twist of hypocrisy, her father did not practice what he preached and left the family for a woman he met at bible group. Six months have passed and Grace’s mother swings between blistering hatred for Grace’s deserting father, and constant complaining about her thankless job.

Grace’s older sister, Lolly, continues to date a boneheaded boy called Jake, even though all signs point to heartbreak. And Grace’s best friend, Eric, is rising in the popularity ranks at high school. Ever since Eric became one of two sophomores to join the basketball team, girls have been paying attention to him and Grace isn’t sure how she feels about his divided attention.

The one bright spot in Grace’s anti-social life is Mr. Sands. Mr. Sands, or ‘Frank’ as he insists she call him, was a Korean War vet now suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease in the Hanover House home where Grace works as a candy striper. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s) is a motor neuron disease that will eventually leave him bed-ridden, trapped in his slack body but with a fully functioning mind.

Frank has become a father figure to Grace since her own father abandoned the family. Frank is funny and charming, with a quick-wit and no-nonsense attitude … and when he asks Grace to do a terrible, awful thing to ease his suffering, she can’t refuse him.

‘God is in the Pancakes’ was the 2010 YA contemporary novel from Robin Epstein.

This title has been beckoning me from the TBR pile for months now, but I resisted reading. The blurb hinted at heartache, and I was never in the right mind-set to jump head-first into a, no doubt, compelling but heavy novel. But, finally, it felt like the right time (to borrow a metaphor, this pancake was ready to be flipped). And, oh boy, is this novel sublime!

Told in first-person narration, this is the novel of a dying man’s incredible request to an already mixed-up girl. Grace Manning already has enough problems on her plate – between her sister’s cheating boyfriend, hormonal surges for her best friend and unanswered messages from her adulterous father – when her new/old friend, Mr Sands, asks her to take his life. What follows is a quick timeline that sees Frank Sands deteriorate before Grace’s eyes as Lou Gehrig’s disease turns his body against him.

With Frank’s request weighing heavy on her mind, Grace turns to God. She hasn’t had much to do with the big guy ‘upstairs’, since her mum is agnostic and it was always her dad taking the girls to Sunday mass followed by pancakes at the local IHOP (an American version of ‘Pancake Parlour’, for those of us down under). But since Grace’s dad didn’t really lead by example, Grace kind of figured the whole ‘good Christian’, praying and kneeling thing was over for her. Little does she know that when she most needs answers, God is the only one she’s willing to ask questions to …

Having an answer is a comfort. It's when you start asking questions and those questions pull threads in the larger fabric, you're forced to wonder what you're left with. And for people of any age, it's scary to think the fabric of the universe - or the universe as you've always believed it existed - can just unwind, you know?

The title of Epstein’s book is a wee bit misleading and suggests that the ever combustible topic of religion is a major focus. Yes, Grace does turn to God for answers … but she receives no definitive’s, and throughout the novel she is unsure and firmly on-the-fence about her belief in Him and His role in her life. She’s between a rock and a hard place with Frank’s request, so she turns to a childhood comfort – praying. Epstein is in no way shoving God down reader’s throats. Instead she’s using him as a crutch for a confused girl. And, actually, I kind of liked that Epstein wrote a little back-story for Grace’s dad’s affair, a nice little nuance that the woman he was cheating with is someone he met at bible study. It reminds me a little of that bumper-sticker joke: ‘I've got nothing against God, it's his fan club I can't stand.’

If I had any complaints about the book, it's that the relationship between Grace and her father was left a little too open-ended. It seemed like Epstein was deliberately dropping hints about Grace's dad trying to reconnect (and perhaps repent?) but this part of the narrative just sort of fizzed towards the end, and I would have liked a little more conflict and confrontation.

I also liked that the real conflict of the novel, Frank asking Grace to help him die, was watered down somewhat by Grace’s many problems. This could have been a very heavy, depressing novel if not for side-stories about Grace’s sister, Lolly, and her best friend, Eric. All of which add up to a sort of ‘softening the blow’ when based around Frank’s request. It’s also a means by which Grace can put her life into perspective – seeing that the truth is never easy, and that some things are worth fighting for … two lessons she comes to learn through her interactions and conundrums with Frank and his death wish.

I knew I’d love ‘God is in the Pancakes’, but I didn’t know how much. I laughed, I cried, I want to read absolutely every other bit of YA that Epstein comes up with. A beautiful novel, not for the faint-hearted, and definitely one to be read in the right mind-set, about a young girl coming to grips with God, life and perfect pancakes.

5/5

The Benjamin Andrew Footpath Library - Book Donations

2011-12-17T15:17:00.005+11:00

Hello Darling Readers,

So the end of year is nearly here. No doubt your Christmas list is bulging with book wishes, and you’re making room for all your new paperback lovelies. You’re probably sorting through your bookshelf, looking which books will be ‘keepers’ and which you can pass on to friends and family, or put up for a book swap.

Well, how about an alternative? Instead of gifting your books to your nearest and dearest, how about donating books to the homeless and marginalized?

The Benjamin Andrew Footpath Library is a wonderful organization. Founded in 2003, the non-profit charity looks to give reading resources to homeless and marginalised people. It all started when a soup kitchen volunteer saw a man reading a book while he waited for the food van to arrive. She started bringing him a few books every week, and thus the Footpath Library was born. The library is currently based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and will be opening in Perth early in 2012.

I love this organization – they’re a group of book-loving volunteers who are challenging misconceptions about the city’s homeless population.

I know lots of us in the book blogging/reviewing community get inundated with books throughout the year. Some of them we don’t even read, for various taste and time constraints. So I would implore you to do something wonderful and pass those books on to people who will truly appreciate them (and clear some room on your, no doubt, bulging bookshelves!).

The Library has a few stipulations about what sorts of books they’ll accept, and it goes without saying that they should be in excellent condition.

Book Donation Guidelines
The Footpath Library accepts high-quality books in the following genres:

Women’s, men’s and children’s fiction
Non-fiction, including dictionaries, simple cookbooks, parenting, and self help
National Geographic, Australian Geographic, motorcycle and car magazines.
Please note, out of respect for our customers we do not accept:
True crime
Travel/wine/restaurant guides
Get-rich-quick/investment/ financial guides
Coffee table books
Home decorating, gardening, sewing, craft, fashion
Sport (unless biographies)
Any books with suicide, depression, or drug themes
Computer manuals
Text books of any description
Magazines, except National Geographic, Australian Geographic, motorbike and car
Encyclopaedias
Street directories
Religious material
Used crossword/puzzle books.

And it’s not just books they accept – the Library also appreciates donations of bookcases, knitted goods and monetary offerings.

This is a really great cause for Australian-based book bloggers to get behind.

Merry Christmas!

'The Good Daughter' by Honey Brown

2011-12-15T13:07:00.005+11:00

From the BLURB:

Rebecca Toyer and Zach Kincaid each live on the outskirts of town, but come from very different sides of the tracks. When Zach's wealthy mother goes missing, Rebecca – the truckie's daughter – is implicated in her disappearance.

In the weeks that follow, Rebecca and Zach are drawn into a treacherous, adult world. Eager to please, Rebecca finds herself in danger of living up to the schoolyard taunts she so hates, while Zach channels his feelings through the sights of his gun.

In the fading summer light, grudges are nursed and tempers fray, and as old lies unravel it seems nobody can be relied on. But beyond the fallout, the hard lessons in love and betrayal have not been wasted. Rebecca and Zach realise that judgements can be flawed – and that trust is better earnt than given.

It begins in the backseats of a bus. Rebecca Toyer is the old cliché, girl from the wrong side of the tracks pining after her town’s prince, Zach Kincaid. Most of this little outback town is settled on Kincaid land, even the house where Rebecca and her stepfather, the truckie, live.

Rebecca’s mother started the Toyer women on bad reputations – town bicycle, easy pickings – and the slander has stuck to Rebecca even after her mother’s death. Try as he might, Zach Kincaid can’t get Rebecca out of his head – and their secret fumbling in the bus keep him thinking about her over the school holidays…

But pretty soon Zach has other things on his mind. He overhears a conversation between his mother and father, angry accusations and bitter words are exchanged as it comes to light that Ben Kincaid has been giving weekly payments to local restaurant owner, Kara Claas, and her son Aden. Her son, who is Ben’s illegitimate child and Zach’s older half-brother.

Joanne Kincaid is distraught by her husband’s admittance. Even if the child came before she and him started dating. Joanne is known about town as being a little bit flighty; prone to crying fits and quick to blame her manic mood swings on a creative mind.

When Rebecca comes across Joanne Kincaid, puffy-eyed and thick-tongued from crying, she offers her a lift into town, to the Claas restaurant. She watches Mrs Kincaid walk around the back, and then she waits… but Joanne doesn’t come back, and no one inside the restaurant claims to have seen her.

Suddenly Rebecca is the last person to have seen Zach’s mother alive. Aden Class, the gorgeous twenty-two-year-old bike-riding, pot-selling town bad boy is quick to comfort a shaken Rebecca as she sits with the police and recounts Joanne’s movements the day she went missing.

But something isn’t adding up. Zach’s father is adamant that Joanne is just off on one of her flighty fits. Zach starts wandering around the expansive Kincaid property with a rifle, looking for baby graves and sneaking along Rebecca’s property line, spying on her and Aden Claas as they grow closer and more intimate.

‘The Good Daughter’ was the 2010 contemporary mystery novel from Australian author, Honey Brown. The book was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2011, and shortlisted for the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award.

This novel absolutely sucker-punched me. Brown’s writing is claustrophobic and disquieting, as she explores a small town mystery that is exacerbated by town politics, secrets and family fall-outs.

The story is told in third person, but focused on Rebecca and Zach. Through Rebecca we read about a misjudged sixteen-year-old who has already lived her fair share of tragedy. Her young half-sister died at the age of five, and her mother had a long, slow death from cancer not too long ago. Rebecca is the product of her mother’s reputation – she doesn’t know who her biological father is, and everyone assumes she’s as loose as her mother once was.

Rebecca becomes unwittingly caught up in Joanne Kincaid’s disappearance when she is the last person to see or speak to her, alive. But Rebecca is slowly let in on the town secret – that the restaurant where she dropped Mrs Kincaid off is owned by the woman who her husband has been paying child-support to, and Joanne is not a stable woman at the best of times. Rebecca is snared in this small town secret when twenty-two-year-old local Lothario, Aden Claas, explains the faux-pas she has unwittingly let loose by calling the police about Joanne’s disappearance.

What comes next is a rapid slide into adulthood as Aden turns his amorous intentions on Rebecca. Caught up in the drama of the police investigations, Rebecca succumbs to Aden’s well-worn charms, hardly dissuaded by the age gap between them, or the fact that a day ago she was harbouring similar feelings for his younger half-brother, Zach.

As Rebecca’s story unfolds, we read about it through Zach’s eyes as he trains his rifle on Aden from the bushes surrounding the Toyer property. Zach watches with envy and jealousy as his bastard brother steals Rebecca off her feet. But Zach is also watching the other people in town, people seemingly disinterested in his mother’s disappearance. There’s Nigel, Aden’s best friend whose alibi for the night Joanne went missing is that he was ‘with’ Rebecca and Aden. Luke Redman, a local boy turned cop, who is still somewhat plagued by his reckless youth that doesn’t exactly translate well into a position of authority now. And Zach’s father, who is hell-bent on not searching for Joanne and keeping her away from Zach when, or if, she does resurface.

Honey Brown weaves a tangled web indeed. Her characters become mired in suspicions and guilt by the connections they establish. Within the first few chapters Rebecca has swung from Zach to Aden, and her interest in both boys look suspect. Even more eyebrow-raising is Aden’s sudden intense (and illegal) interest in Rebecca, the girl who is also conveniently the only witness to have last seen Mrs Kincaid

There is certainly a lot going on in this novel, and no one is as they seem. Brown writes Aden in shades of grey – so charming and sexy in one scene, so that you almost forget his twenty-two to Rebecca’s naïve sixteen is both wrong, and possibly calculating. Brown writes about small town corruption with a Raymond Chandler eye, particularly in her explorations of crooked cops (borne more from them being local boys who already knew the lay of the land, than an inclination to dishonesty in the general police force). She definitely writes outback noir;

Police do nothing to build a person’s confidence in them. They seem so civilian. What from a distance looks good, someone she might trust and confide in, up close looks too much like men with food crumbs on their chests, nicks from shaving, ugly mouths and bad breath. Taking her statement seems a chore they have to get done so as to get back to bitching in corridors.

Honey Brown is also exploring quite a few devious themes in ‘The Good Daughter’. One recurring and disturbing examination is that of pack behaviour, particularly men and their pack-like antics. Rebecca keeps a litter of six dogs on her property; these mutts and mongrels yap and snarl, turn on one another and enjoy pack hierarchy … just like the men in town. One particular scene involves Rebecca being cornered in a house full of young male tenants, drunk and showing off for one another and when Rebecca (the town ‘slut’) is thrown into the mix, their one-upmanship takes a harrowing turn. This scene is every girl’s worst nightmare, and reading it was like having someone fisting my heart for an entire chapter.

The small town is so remote, like a country unto itself, that it wasn’t until halfway through the novel when a character’s birth date is mentioned, that Brown even reveals that the book is set in 1986. Small towns just seem to be a step out of time, so much so that I thought it was a given the backwards nature of the policing and technological advances. And Brown really plays that up in ‘The Good Daughter’ – that everything is dictated by the history of this town. People have long memories in small towns, they rarely let people break out of the boxes they were originally put in, and town gossip can have a vicious backlash;

His gaze tightens. His tone grows firm. ‘You might be surprised, Rebecca, at how cops in a small town aren’t always about throwing the book at people. We do try and help.’
‘Sure.’
His eyebrows pinch in. ‘Sure?’ He glances up at the two dining on the veranda. He returns his gaze to her. ‘If we don’t charge somebody for something, or if we let something go, it’s because we know what’s really going on.’ He continues quietly, ‘You should have a little more respect for the system.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘I could help you, but you make it hard on yourself. I could tell you what’s going on, but it’s like you don’t want to know. Everyone’s got the backing of someone else in this town, but you’ve got the backing of no-one – you’ve got no-one behind you.’

‘The Good Daughter’ is an incredible and frenetic novel. Following the lives of two sixteen-year-olds from opposites sides of the track as one event inextricably links them, and forces them into adulthood. This is a disquieting novel, beautifully told. Zach and Rebecca are two innocent’s in a town of old memories, and reading about their near-misses and awful discoveries made me want to bundle them in blankets and keep them safe, just for a little bit longer. Fantastic. I can’t wait to get my hands on more of Honey Brown’s books!

5/5

'Head Rush' Disillusionists trilogy #3 by Carolyn Crane

2011-12-13T20:26:00.010+11:00

From the BLURB:

JUSTINE JONES FACES HER ULTIMATE ENEMY: HERSELF!

In an attempt to put her unhappy past behind her, Justine Jones throws herself into nursing school and planning her wedding to Otto Sanchez, the man of her dreams. But something is off. Random details aren’t adding up…and is it her imagination, or are her friends and fiancé keeping secrets from her? And what’s with this strange sense of unease, and her odd new headaches?

Justine tries to stay upbeat as Midcity cowers under martial law, sleepwalking cannibals, and a mysterious rash of paranormal copycat violence, but her search for answers leads her into the most dangerous mindgame yet.

With the help of unlikely allies, including her paranoid dad and best frenemy Simon, Justine fights her ultimate foe…and unravels the most startling mystery of all.

Product Warnings
This book contains high-speed rollerblade chases, a mysterious green dashboard ornament, a father of the bride in full hazmat gear and a delicious kebab.

For the longest time Justine Jones was ruled by fear. Her mother’s premature death by vein-star syndrome dictated her entire outlook on life and turned her into a neurotic hypochondriac. Justine couldn’t hold down a relationship, women’s health magazines were her kryptonite and any slight headache had her checking into the ER and going on hospital blacklist’s.

And then she met Sterling Packard, and he changed her life. . .

Justine was inducted into a neurotic superhero club – the Disillusionist’s – tasked with protecting the streets of Midcity from serial killers and con artists. Packard turned Justine’s neuroses into a power – able to inject people with her own hypochondriac fear and paralyze them with the power of her stoked terror. Packard, able to see people’s deep psychological secrets, introduced Justine to a justice crew of neurotics – people whose varying neuroses (from an absence of fear to an overabundance of gloom) could rehabilitate criminals and killers.

Justine also met Otto Sanchez – Midcity prince, former police chief and current mayor extraordinaire. Also, one of Packard’s oldest friends, turned worst enemies.

Otto and Packard had a history that started on the Midcity streets when they were homeless children. But now their bitter rivalry has turned deadly – with Packard on the run for the murder of a man Justine considered friend, and her best friend loved dearly.

While Packard is on the run for Avery’s brutal murder, Justine is planning her upcoming wedding to Otto. But when cold feet turns to icy realization, Justine knows she has to don the superhero guise once again and save Midcity from itself.

‘Head Rush’ is the long-awaited third and final book in Carolyn Crane’s ‘Dissillusionists’ trilogy.

Thank god for ‘Head Rush’ and Carolyn Crane’s tenacity in the face of adversity! This book almost dissolved into the ether, when Crane was dropped from her Spectra publisher (who only contracted her for the first two books . . . in a trilogy!? Yeah. Massive WTF?). But two other publishers came in to save the day and reassure fans – Samhain and Audible.com (two publishers who now have my complete loyalty and fan thankfulness!). True, there were some odd release dates and formats (the audio book was released first, followed by the eBook and the paperback is a forthcoming 2012 release). Honestly, I don’t care how the final book got here, I’m just glad it arrived because if I had missed out on this catastrophically brilliant finale I'd have been pissed, and heads would have rolled!

‘Head Rush’ picks up where ‘Double Cross’ left off, give or take a few weeks. Justine and Otto are in the thick of wedding plans, and counting down the days to their big day. Only one black cloud looms over their happiness – Sterling Packard. Murderer of Shelby’s beloved Avery and currently MIA. Justine can’t stop thinking about what Packard did – what she saw him do. She can’t shake the image of Packard shooting Avery, point blank, and then fleeing the scene. And every time she does think about it, she gets a searing pain in her head that further exacerbates her vein-star fear . . .

Told from Justine’s perspective, fans are privy to the push and pull between her head and heart. Logically she knows that Packard is a murderer, but in her heart there is doubt. And if she and Otto don’t feel quite right, if she doesn’t really fit with him just yet, surely that will come with time and effort . . . but when Packard suddenly shows up, risking Otto’s bodyguards and stationed snipers, Justine’s loyalties and instincts become ever more scrambled, because Packard may just have a reason for her feeling so torn;

He comes nearer, gaze intense.
I back up.
“You asked me if I think you’re stupid. No, Justine, I don’t think you’re stupid at all.” Lapels in hand, he pounds his fists to his chest, once. Hard. The sound of the pound reverberates through my own chest. “I’m stupid. Me. I’m stupid,” he said. “I know it’s impossible to come back from a revise, but I want you to come back anyway. I want you to remember what really happened. I want you to know I could never kill a man. I want you to remember us.”
I watch him through the haze of pain. He seems so genuine. But he always has.
His voice softens, like the air is going out of him a little. “I need you to remember us . . .”

‘Head Rush’ is an understatement. In this finale Carolyn Crane is pulling out all the stops and tugging fans headlong into a fast and frenetic conclusion that sees Justine’s mind unravel, Midcity murderers cut loose and a wedding showdown extravaganza. ‘Head Rush’ is beyond apt, it’s freakin’ sublime!

The ‘Disillusionist’ trilogy has been one of the best urban fantasies I have had the good fortune to read. It’s a genre meshing of romance and action, crime fighting and psychological exploration. Our protagonist’s are neurotic superheroes, and it’s a series that pits bad guys against worse guys and turns heroes into frauds. Carolyn Crane has written some doozy characters – from the likeable, kick-ass hypochondriac Justine Jones to shady yet lovable double-dealer Sterling Packard. All her secondary characters shine too – like chip-toothed Russian Shelby who can find black in any silver lining, and recklessly dangerous Simon who revels in tempting fate. But one of Crane’s very best characters is Otto Sanchez . . . I admit, I had a great height to fall with regards to Otto’s character transformation, because at one point I was firmly on his Team. I was one of those readers whose jaw literally dropped at the end of ‘Double Cross’ (again with the beyond-apt titles, Crane!) because I was so firmly committed to my Team Otto stance. But therein lays the brilliance of Crane’s trilogy. She revels in writing murky characters that live in the grey areas.

I perish the thought this finale almost didn’t get into our hot little hands (Samhain & Audible should know that avid readers tend to have very long memories, and we won’t soon be forgetting how they made ‘Head Rush’ possible. Works on the flipside too, Spectra.) Fans of the ‘Dissillusionist’ trilogy will not be disappointed with ‘Head Rush’. We get a helter-skelter, all-guns-firing ending that will have your heart racing and hands shaking as you turn the page. I’m sad to read it end, but with a finale like that I can’t be too bitter. Brilliant!

5/5