(courtesy Hachette Australia) Realising a dream is one thing, sustaining it is quite another. That is the stark reality of things for Carmen in Jenny Colgan’s Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, the follow-up to The Christmas Bookshop, when the old, hitherto ill-tended second hand bookstore she was instrumental in saving, Continue Reading
Books
Festive book review: From Shetland, with love at Christmas by Erin Green
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Dreams are supposed to come true at Christmas. Or Christmas adjacent, at the very least; that is the idea behind many a Christmas-based novel and it’s very much the case with Erin Green’s From Shetland, With Love at Christmas which is infused to its tree-topping star with Continue Reading
Book review: Last Christmas by Julia Williams
Miracles are, by and large in short supply in our humdrum, bread-and-butter world. We long for them, we hail the extraordinary moments that do occasionally thwart the drab banality of life as “miracle” and we love stories that embody them because, even if it is only fictional, here’s a chance Continue Reading
Book review: The Christmas Book Club by Sarah Morgan
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Reach) There’s something about the most wonderful time of the year that makes us feel as if anything is possible, that all the baggage of the year can be wiped away in the effervescent glittery escapism of Christmas. While the new year is traditionally the time Continue Reading
#Christmas kids books reviews: Pink Santa, Dharma the Christmas Llama, Dear Santa, I Don’t Need Socks, Christmas at the North Pole + Little Unicorn’s Christmas
(via Shutterstock) I am a big kid at heart. While I have well and truly grown up and I pay taxes and go the office (thankfully not all the time) and do very adult things, there’s a part of me that loves adventure and fun and busting the day-to-day banality Continue Reading
Book review: Christmas at the Beach Hut by Veronica Henry
Is it possible to tire of Christmas? Or in the case of Lizzy Kingham, who LOVES Christmas with furiously bright red and green twinkling lights, great bundles of tinsel strewn everywhere and a kilo ton of fruit mince pieces for every meal, to tire of all the effort that goes Continue Reading
Christmas book review: The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Christmas is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty romantic time of the year. Unless your soul is made of concrete and your heart of thickest steel, you can’t help but feel happily uplifted and lightened by all the twinkling lights, the joy and the Continue Reading
Book review: DallerGut Dream Department Store – The Dream You Ordered is Sold Out by Miye Lee (translated by Sandy Joosun Lee)
(courtesy Hachette Australia) There’s a scene in Pixar’s superlatively moving film Inside Out where Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Bing Bong (Richard Kind) are passing through the part of the mind where dreams are made and Joy tries, and ultimately fails, not to fangirl over Rainbow Unicorn, the Continue Reading
Birthday book review: Queen Bee by Ciara Geraghty
(courtesy Harper Collins Australia) Humanity is weird. We are; while we rightly take pride in our many positives and evolutionarily worthy accomplishments, we are also prone to more than a bit of superstition, twisted, strange belief systems and an enduring idea that certainly quite natural things are taboo in some Continue Reading
Book review: Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland
(courtesy Hachette Australia) We all crave somewhere to belong. Somewhere where people know us, really know us, where we’re valued, our presence welcome and out absence sadly noted, and where, yes U.S. sitcom of legendary fame, everyone does indeed know our name. That’s why we join clubs, churches, volunteer at Continue Reading