AWARDS - AUSTRALIAN ROMANCE READERS AWARDS 2014

Some of you may remember Helene Young an author who flew from Brisbane to Melbourne and took the long drive to Foster just to present at one of our final Twilight Talks series a couple of years ago.  Helene keeps wining awards for her books.  The most recent is The Favourite Romantic Suspense 2014 for Safe Harbour.  We say, well done and congratulations Helene.  And thank you again for taking the long trip to tell us what you do and how you do it.

OUTSIDE THE LINES BY AMY HATVANY - Review No. 2

You'll notice there is a recent review of this title earlier in the blog with a challenge to take the free copy and do a review.......well Mary Ellis took up the challenge and here is her take on this book......

Outside the Lines by Amy Hatvany

Mental illness – don’t be put off –is a difficult subject. It’s difficult for the sufferer, relatives and friends, medical practitioners, social workers and all of us who witness unusual behaviour.  Would you choose to write a novel whose characters deal with mental illness?

Amy Hatvany has produced a very human story with characters who ring true – flawed, brave, hard-working, misguided and attractive.  Perhaps she has sugar-coated the pill by making it a love story with a beautiful heroine, giving her a pet dog, a successful career and charity, but the depiction of the mental illness of her father is heartbreaking, given his artistic creativity, drunkenness and inability to live within the lines according to society.

Like so many recent novels, there are a lot of time and narrator changes, but each chapter is headed with a date and character, so it isn’t confusing.

This is a book worth reading, about a difficult subject rendered sympathetically and with understanding.  The heroine’s quest maintains the suspense so that you want to keep reading and the ending is realistically satisfactory.  I think Amy Hatvany has pulled off a difficult challenge.

                                                          AMY HATVANY

 

VALE SIR TERRY PRATCHETT

Colour Of Magic, The: Discworld Novel #1

Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincwind decided, meant idiot. Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same. Its very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the arrival of the first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land. But if the person charged with maintaining that survival in the face of robbers, mercenaries and, well, Death, is a spectacularly inept wizard, a little logic might turn out to be a very good idea...

And so began the story of Discworld that went on for 40 books and ended in 2013.  In December 2007, Terry Pratchett announced he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.  He later made a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and filmed a television program chronicling his experiences with the disease for the BBC.  Sir Terry Pratchett died on 12 March 2015, aged 66.

BOOK REVIEW: HADES BY CANDICE FOX

When someone takes a book to read and review we are asked often "what if I don't like the book" and we ask that they write a review anyway; not everyone likes the same books and it's good to have a mix of reviews.  So, here's one of the "I didn't like it......." reviews.

In some ways Hades is typical of a first novel, the author is trying to put all her ideas about crime, police and medical malpractice into one hotchpotch of a novel.

The police are tough, the victims are vulnerable for multitudes of reasons, there is only one likeable character.  It is a crime noir book, horrifying and nasty.  On occasion Fox excuses the reactions of her characters to ugly events by putting it down to their continual exposure to such events. How could they retain normal human responses when dealing daily with drug addicts, psychopaths and criminals.

The writing is irritating with several words used incorrectly and some phrases repeated that are inappropriate, for example Frank smirks, an unusual facial expression for a seasoned cop, and he does is often.

I didn’t like the book from beginning to end.  However, for those of you who like to read about dissected bodies, psychopaths, and mean cops it might be a treat.  

Thanks to Mary Ellis for an honest review.

 

BEATRIX POTTER

I'm sure more than 100 years ago Beatrix Potter didn't imagine her comforting little images of bunnies, frogs and field mice would one day be exhibited on this side of the world.  For the month of March original watercolour drawings for The Tale of Peter Rabbit will be on show at the State Library, along with more than 100 books and works on paper from London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

 

BOOK REVIEW: USEFUL

Useful by Debra Oswald is a very strange story.  What does someone do when they've tried to commit suicide and failed and that's the ultimate failure for them? Waking up in hospital after falling the wrong way on a rooftop, Sully comes to a decision.  He shouldn't waste perfectly good organs just because they're attached to his head.  After a life of regrets, Sully wants to do one useful thing: he wants to donate a kidney to a stranger.  Sounds easy.........simple.......?  This is certainly worth a read and there's a free copy here if you're prepared to do a review for us.

  

BOOK REVIEW: OUTSIDE THE LINES

Outside the Lines by Amy Hatvany was released a little while ago and I've just had the chance to read it.  This is the author's third book and it looks like she's getting a much better handle on character development if this latest is any indication.  The basis of the story centres around Eden who, when we meet her, is thirty and running a successful catering company, she hears from her father only rarely and finds out that he is now living on the streets and struggling with a mental illness.  There is of course back story to flesh out Eden's relationship with her father, suffice to say she decides to search for him and in doing so learns what it is like for people who live on the streets.  Of course there is a love interest in the plot and he helps her in the search.

What I liked most about the story is the detail in the search for the father and the description of the conditions for the homeless and most importantly, how putting our own expectations on someone is bound to fail.  It's a story worth spending time with and you may get cross with the main character around the same time in the plot as I did.  There's a free copy here at the bookshop if you'd like to do a review.