Books

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Even though the books of Agatha Christie were my entry way into adult reading, thanks to the insightful thoughtfulness of father, an inveterate reader himself, I spent many years away from the crime genre for reasons I can’t fully explain. My way back to the genre came Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) What a marvellous creation, The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell is. Set for much of its intriguing and compelling storyline at the titular magical hotel in Switzerland, the novel is a richly intoxicating and moving exploration of how grief manifests in all kinds of ways, Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) The Emily Wilde trilogy by Heather Fawcett – read my reviews of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands and Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales – are a delight to read. Not only do they offer vividly imaginative escapism and an original Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) The multiverse, as the name suggests can accommodate many things but a place in which love can be renewed? Theoretically possible, true, since pretty much anything is in a sprawling assembly of endlessly diverse universes, but not exactly where you see Cupid doing his best work, Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Books have power, real, life-transforming, soul-restorative power. If you been a reader for any length of time, you will know this quite well, especially if, like this reviewer, reading got you through some quite harrowing parts of life where the real world was desperately unkind and Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) While it’s an immutable fact that we exist in the here and now, for better or worse, we are always living in the past to some extent. It’s impossible not in many ways since who we were and what we did are intrinsically woven into the Continue Reading

Recovering from great trauma is never easy. It’s there in the word really; “trauma” even sounds hard and brutal, and so it stands to reason, that moving on for it will not be quick, easy or trouble-free. For a book devoted to the wondrous idea of second chances, Escape to Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Reading, done right, is often a seismic trip to all kinds of extreme emotions. Often in the same book too, which is what Palm Meridian by Grace Flahive achieves with an effortless ease, reducing us to side-clutching bundles of laughter one minute before grabbing our heart, giving Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) As ideals go, perfection has to be one of the most laughably impossible. Granted all ideals dance somewhere in the land of blue sky implausibility, cosily inspiring ideas that would be wondrously good if they made it from hope to actuality but which never quite manage Continue Reading