My review
Wednesday 8 December 2021
Storybook Corner Book Review: Where's My Dinosaur? by Ashling Kwok
My review
Monday 20 September 2021
Book Review and Blog Tour: The Sound of Violet by Allen Wolf
Publication date: 21st September 2021
Shawn thinks he’s found a possible wife while Violet thinks she’s discovered her ticket to a brand new life. This hilarious and dramatic award-winning story takes all kinds of twists and turns and has been adapted into a major motion picture.
llen Wolf is an award-winning novelist, filmmaker, and game creator. He is also the host of the popular Navigating Hollywood podcast.
His debut novel “The Sound of Violet” has won multiple accolades and is described as “Entertaining, well-paced, and highly visual” by Kirkus Reviews. It is now a major motion picture. (www.TheSoundOfViolet.com)
He has won 39 awards for his games that are available as books, including You’re Pulling My Leg! and You’re Pulling My Leg! Junior. They’ve brought smiles to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
As a filmmaker, Allen wrote, directed, and produced “In My Sleep,” which was released worldwide, won multiple film festivals, and is available on iTunes and Amazon Prime. Hollywood Reporter raved, “In My Sleep never rests, a credit to the tight, psychologically astute pacing of filmmaker Wolf.”
Allen graduated from New York University’s film school. He married his Persian princess, and they are raising two kids together. He enjoys traveling around the world and hearing other people’s life stories. Allen also cherishes spending time with his family, eating chocolate, and visiting Disneyland.
Thursday 16 September 2021
Book Review & Giveaway: The Unusual Abduction of Avery Conifer by Ilsa Evans
Imprint: HQ Fiction AU
When Shirley suspects that Daniel is harming Avery, she enlists Beth to abduct their own granddaughter, even though the two women can't stand each other. They are joined on the run across country Victoria by Winnie, Shirley's own 89-year-old tech-savvy mother, and Harthacnut, Beth's miniature schnauzer.
The abduction gives rise to crises both personal and social, as Shirley's large and interfering family - including her toxic son - struggle to come to terms with her actions, amid a whirl of police investigation and media excitement. This heartfelt, wise, witty and wholly original novel explores of the lengths we may go to for those we love, and the unintended damage folded into daily life.
Photo:Studio3 Photography |
Ilsa Evans has published fourteen books across a range of genres, from light fiction and short stories to memoir, murder mystery and YA fantasy. Two of her books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Davitt (Sisters in Crime) Awards, while her novel about domestic violence, Broken, was an Australian best-seller and selected as Women's Weekly Book of the Month. Ilsa also teaches creative writing students, writes social commentary, and has been published in several newspapers and online journals. In 2011, she received the Eliminating Violence Against Women (EVA) Award for online journalism.
Saturday 4 September 2021
Book Review: Driving Stevie Fracasso by Barry Divola
Rick knows it's a bad idea. But he's out of choices. So he gets behind the wheel of a beaten-up 1985 Nissan Stanza and drives towards his destiny. He's about to find everything he didn't know he was missing. It's September 2001.
"Don't you know anything about road trips? They're not about the destination, they're about the journey."
Wednesday 4 August 2021
Book Review: What Would LaVonda Robinette Do? by Kirsten Maron
It is enough to drive a person to murder.
After her colleague is accidentally, but conveniently killed, LaVonda is left in a bit of a state. The appropriate thing to do would be to confess and accept her punishment. And she will. But maybe she could put right a few wrongs first? Not everything is as straight-forward as LaVonda would like though and bumping people off is proving to be rather tricky.
Does she have what it takes?
Will her newfound interest put herself, and her family, in danger?
"I've become invisible, Ann. People keep bumping into me as though they can't see me."
"It's our age. We're not relevant to society anymore so we're overlooked ......... we're sliding into middle-aged obscurity."
"It makes me furious ....... Any minor irritation flares straight into rage these days."
The frustrations of middle age provided Kirsten with the authorial fuel for writing her second book, but of course, unlike LaVonda, she would never actually murder anyone.
Kirsten lives in rural NSW with her husband and several bossy kangaroos. She is currently working on her third novel; a sequel called What LaVonda Robinette Did Next.
Sunday 1 August 2021
Book Review: The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Lock
Publication date: 7th July 2021
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 368
RRP: $29.99AUD
Format read: Paperback
Source: Courtesy of the publisher
Flung out into the world she's been studiously ignoring, Mercy goes to the only place she can. Her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene's house. But it turns out she can't stay there, either.
And so begins Mercy's unwilling journey. After the chance purchase of a cult classic campervan (read tiny, old and smelly), with the company of her sausage dog, Wasabi, and a mysterious box of cremated remains, Mercy heads north from Adelaide to Darwin.
On the road, through badly timed breakdowns, gregarious troupes of grey nomads, and run-ins with a rogue adversary, Mercy's carefully constructed walls start crumbling. But what was Mercy hiding from in her house? And why is Eugene desperate to have her back in the city? They say you can't run forever...
Credit: Goodreads |
Kim Lock is an internationally published author of four novels. Her writing has also appeared in Kill Your Darlings, The Guardian, Daily Life and The Sydney Morning Herald online, among others. She lives in regional South Australia with her family.
Wednesday 2 December 2020
Book Review: The Grand Tour by Olivia Wearne
Bernard has his own problems to contend with. Adrift in life, his career as a news presenter has been reduced to opening fetes and reading Voss as an audio book (a seemingly impossible task). His troubles are compounded when his wife starts dating a younger man and a drink-driving incident turns him into a celebrity offender.
As Angela and Ruby set about repairing burnt bridges and helping their unexpected guest, and Bernard attempts to patch together his broken life, they discover that even after a lifetime of experience, you're never too old to know better.
The Grand Tour is about relationships and the changing landscape of these relationships as we age. A satirical look at ageing disgracefully.
Ruby is estranged from her grown daughter who she has never had a solid relationship with. She was always a bit wary of her wild, rambunctious child as she was growing up.
Ruby and Angela become firm friends after the death of Angela’s husband. They are complete opposites but they compliment each other. Ruby who is an introvert loves Angela’s flamboyance. They live in the same complex and whilst their units are being renovated they take to the road in Ruby’s motor-home.
Bernard, Angela’s brother, is a curmudgeonly washed-up news reader trying to restart his career when he is pushed back into the limelight for all the wrong reasons. We are also introduced to his actress wife, Mia and her eclectic friends. An arty group of ageing bohemians.
Eight year old Izzy lives with her mother in a caravan park. Izzy’s mother has trouble coping and Izzy is neglected. Thinking her mother would be glad to be rid of her she stows away in Ruby and Angela’s motor-home, making them unwary kidnappers.
There are many funny moments as each character navigates the different relationships in their life.
The book was a slow read for me. A character driven story.
Olivia Wearne’s debut novel is witty and observant. She expertly depicts human foibles and slots them into chuckle inducing scenarios.
Tuesday 20 October 2020
Book Review: Bluebird by Malcolm Knox
Gordon Grimes has become the accidental keeper of this last relic of an endangered world. He lives in The Lodge with his wife Kelly who is trying to leave him, their son Ben who will do anything to save him, his goddaughter Lou who is hiding from her own troubles, and Leonie, the family matriarch who has trapped them here for their own good.
But Gordon has no money and is running out of time to conserve his homeland. His love for this way of life will drive him, and everyone around him, to increasingly desperate risks. In the end, what will it cost them to hang onto their past?
Acclaimed writer Malcolm Knox has written a classic Australian novel about the myths that come to define families and communities, and the lies that uphold them. It's about a certain kind of Australia that we all recognise, and a certain kind of Australian whose currency is running out. Change is coming to Bluebird, whether they like it or not. And the secrets they've been keeping and the lies they've been telling can't save them now.
Savage, funny, revelatory and brilliant, Bluebird exposes the hollowness of the stories told to glorify a dying culture and shows how those who seek to preserve these myths end up being crushed by them.
My Review
Quintessentially Australian, Bluebird is a Sydney beachside suburb filled with born and bred locals who live in a haze of nostalgia remembering Bluebird before the developers set in.
Gordon Grimes is part owner of The Lodge, as it is affectionately called by locals. He has made it his life ambition to save The Lodge from developers even though it sits precariously on the edge of a cliff and is in desperate need of renovation. The Lodge is always filled with a cast of hangers on, old surfers that spend their mornings chasing waves, their evenings reminiscing about life and their nights sleeping in the spare room of their widowed mothers' house.
Bluebird is a place where talk is overrated and time is expected to heal all wounds. Secrets swirl ominously around its inhabitants and there are plenty of old scores to settle, dodgy dealings, secret development plans and mates looking after mates.
Delivered through multiple POV from a diverse cast of characters, all linked to The Lodge in one way or another, there is never a dull moment in this irreverent, and at times politically incorrect, satire.
A story of love, loss, family, community and belonging; Bluebird is sardonic, perceptive, outrageously funny and deeply moving.
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
About the author
Photo: Goodreads |
Challenges entered: Aussie author challenge #AussieAuthor20
Tuesday 7 July 2020
Book Club Book Review: Mammoth by Chris Flynn
Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct American mastodon, Mammoth is the (mostly) true story of how the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a pterodactyl, a prehistoric penguin, the severed hand of an Egyptian mummy and the narrator himself came to be on sale at a 2007 natural history auction in Manhattan.
Ranging from the Pleistocene Epoch to nineteenth-century America and beyond, including detours to Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, Mammoth illuminates a period of history when ideas about science and religion underwent significant change. By tracing how and when the fossils were unearthed, Mammoth traverses time and place to reveal humanity's role in the inexorable destruction of the natural world.
Told through the eyes of a mammoth’s fossilised remains Chris Flynn has delivered a hilarious and thought-provoking tale of life, extinction and rebirth. A tale that spans continents and centuries!
As mammoth is exhumed from the earth his bones absorb information from the conversations around him. Now waiting to be auctioned in a New York City warehouse mammoth tells his story, by mental telepathy, to a tyrannosaurus-bataar skull, a prehistoric penguin and an Egyptian mummy hand. A story that spans oceans and centuries.
Chris Flynn has extensively researched his subject matter and many historical events are included in a narrative where fact and fiction combine.
With Mammut’s formal speech and dry sarcasm, T-Bataar’s witty humour and penguin’s snarky comments Mammoth had me laughing and totally invested in their stories. By the end of the story these ancient fossilised bones felt like old friends.
“Can I jump in? Bro. Take a breather. I knew this was going to be a big story. I didn’t realise it would be so boring.
I’m sorry you feel that way, T-bataar.
I don’t mean to be rude, but a couple more jokes wouldn’t go amiss.
I want to hear about your adventures, Mammut.
Not all this stale historical jibber jabber.”
This quote made me laugh because the story was anything but boring.
Chris Flynn is the author of The Glass Kingdom and A Tiger in Eden, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The Age, The Australian, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Australian Book Review, The Saturday Paper, Smith Journal, The Big Issue, Monster Children, McSweeney’s and many other publications. He has conducted interviews for The Paris Review and is a regular presenter at literary festivals across Australia. Chris lives on Phillip Island, next to a penguin sanctuary.
This review is part of the Book Lover Book Review Aussie author challenge