(courtesy Allen & Unwin) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a romcom worth its swoon-worthy salt is in need of a protagonist and their would be significant romantic interest who are hugely and endlessly likable (and yes, I have paraphrased the opening sentence to Pride & Prejudice by Jane Continue Reading
Books
Halloween book review: The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) If you’re someone who has grown up on the social margins, you will be ruefully well acquainted with how isolated and alone you can feel. While it feels like the entirety of the far more socially acceptable world, and yes, you will also wonder where those Continue Reading
Halloween book review: The Tinderbox by M. R. Carey
(courtesy Hachette Australia) We are so used to everything we consume these days delivering up instant gratification vibes that when it doesn’t, we are prone to simply to see it aside and find something else that will deliver the narrative sugar hit we have been conditioned to crave. Slow-burn anything Continue Reading
Not so scary after all … Grover discovers all kinds of courage in Sesame Street: The Monster at the end of your Story with Grover and Elmo
(courtesy Sesame Workshop) Ever since I was a kid, which let’s face it, was a good long while ago now, I have loved the character of Grover from Sesame Street – yes, yes I know you’re not supposed to have favourites (sorry Bert and Ernie, and Oscar the Grouch, and Continue Reading
Halloween book review: Angelika Frankenstein Makes her Match by Sally Thorne
(courtesy Hachette Australia) One enduring constant of life is that finding a perfect partner, or even a lovably imperfect one, is no easy thing. While Hollywood and Mills & Boon would have you believe that meet-cutes are strewn across the ground like confetti and your one and only is bound Continue Reading
New release October book review: Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn Moriarty
(courtesy Ultimo Press) Good lord but I love books which go deep and hard and yet which still manage to feel light and accessible too. There’s a real art to investing huge amounts of meaningful heart and drama into stories with a fantastical airy premise and it’s clear pretty much Continue Reading
New releases October book review: Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus
(courtesy Allen & Unwin – Australia) It’s an interesting exercise diving into the sophomore follow-up to the debut effort of an author which was globally super popular and a phenomenon on all kinds of levels unto itself. For a start, millions of people around the world have been waiting eagerly Continue Reading
Halloween picture book review: The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt by Riel Nason (writer) and Byron Eggenschwiler (artist)
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) There is an inestimable delight to opening a picture book and falling into a story which delivers imaginative and poetic wordplay and vividly arresting, often gorgeous illustrations; it doesn’t matter whether you are reading them to endlessly eager nieces and nephews (in my case) or simply Continue Reading
New release October book review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) We live in an age where people are, with a few notable exceptions, divorced from the natural world, or what’s left of it, around them. We catch our trains, eat at our favourite restaurants and live our concrete-clad, digitally buttressed lives without any sense of the Continue Reading
New releases October review: She Lied First by Dinuka McKenzie
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) A good, no, great crime thriller is always something to be savoured, enjoyed and thereafter, remembered. But for that to happen you need an author who understands that the crime is not the only thing and that for any of it to impact beyond the Continue Reading