Books

(courtesy official Freya North site) Identity is a powerful driver for every person alive. Not all of us may acknowledge it outright, but whether we emphatically embrace the dogma of a religion, the fervency of fandom of a football team or we live and breathe artistic expression in all its Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) If you have ever met someone possessed of singular, unwavering ambition, you will be well acquainted with how consuming that kind of focus can be. Nothing else matters to that person beyond seeing their vision realised, their life goals realised and all of the hope and Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Heading off on holidays, all we really want is to get away from the insistent stresses and strains of everyday life. Hand us a cocktail, sit us by the pool or in a bush cabin somewhere, banish the internet to a simpler, more analogue time and Continue Reading

(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia) When my parents died less than four years apart in the mid-to-late 2010s, I was plunged into the kind of grief I had never really known before. And honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do with it; I expected it to be intense then ebb Continue Reading

(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