All the Reviews

Our Dark Secret, Jenny Quintana

Crime Fiction themes do have a tendency to come in waves, but the past having a direct impact on somebody's present and future is a particularly rich field when tilled well, and Jenny Quintana has done that with considerable skill in OUR DARK SECRET.

Based around the character of Elizabeth Constance Valentine, the storyline moves from Elizabeth's 70's childhood, an only child, awkward, shy, clever, tending towards a bit frumpy and overweight. She adored her father Ted (of the wandering eye) but had a more complicated relationship with her more uptight mother Phyllis, ... Read Review

Moving Pictures, Terry Pratchett

I'm still wallowing happily around in the audio versions of the Discworld series - working my way from the start to the end and loving every minute of it, despite it being mostly re-reading / re-listening. MOVING PICTURES is, not surprisingly, the story of Holy Wood come to the Discworld. A bit of an accident / come happy outcome on the part of the Alchemists and the film industry is born. As are stars, starlets, agents, theatre owners, and strange beings from another place. All coincide for yet another excellent outing in the mad world of the Disc.Read Review

My Perfect Wife, Clare Boyd

As popular fiction catches up with the fact that the home is where true horror lives, there’s a heck of a lot of authors writing about the dangers nested deep in our most intimate relationships.  My Perfect Wife depicts how many small acts of cruelty and control can incrementally cause such enormous amounts of damage.

Returning home to help out her parents who are in a bind, Heather Shaw is once again living in the humble house she grew up in, located next door to the Huxley mansion. As a teenager, sneaking over for swimming lessons from the 25 year old Lucas Huxley, ... Read Review

Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

The 8th book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, GUARDS! GUARDS! introduces readers to the main characters of The Night Watch - Sam Vimes, Fred Colon, Nobby Nobbs, Carrot Ironfoundersson (diversity quotas don't hit until a bit later in the series, so there are a lot more to come). The Night Watch is generally regarded as a bunch of no-hopers, wandering about during the night, ringing bells and walking backwards quickly from anything slightly dodgy just in case some policing might be called upon. But new recruit Carrot, a 6'6" tall "dwarf" recently arrived in the Watch, has ... Read Review

Pyramids, Terry Pratchett

As the blurb puts it, "It isn't easy, being a teenage pharaoh. You're not allowed to carry money, uninhibited young women peel your grapes for you, everyone thinks you're responsible for making the sun rise and the corn grow, you keep dreaming about seven thin cows and seven fat cows (one of them playing the trombone), and on top of everything else, the Great Pyramid has just exploded because of paracosmic instability."

I'm not sure you could call this the sort of First World problems that confront your average great leader, especially when the rest of the blurb states " ... Read Review

Rain Fall, Ella West

Hands up those of us raised on a reading diet of Trixie Belden and the Famous Five, who sneakily always wondered why nothing "interesting" ever happened at home. RAIN FALL is a young adult novel set in rural, green, lush New Zealand, in a place that did seem strikingly similar to the green hills of England.

Annie lives with her parents in the small, isolated community, a horse obsessed teenager, who loves her glorious Chestnut gelding. When she meets young professional rodeo rider Jack Robertson, a romantic attachment starts to build, complicated by the fact that Jack's ... Read Review

Make A Hard Fist, Tina Shaw

The abuse, stalking, and/or terrorising of young women is something we read about in the news these days with depressing regularity. It's always about the consequences, often of events that were downplayed, covered up or ignored by victims and the authorities. What is it about the way women have been raised in this day and age that makes everyone, even from a young age, assume that the behaviour of others is their fault? (Rhetorical question obviously - victim blaming / shaming / female behaviour controlling / avoiding talking about the perpetrator's sense of entitlement ....).  ... Read Review

The Chinese Proverb and One Single Thing, Tina Clough

ONE SINGLE THING is the second in the Hunter Grant series from NZ author Tina Clough. You don't have to have read the earlier book (THE CHINESE PROVERB, 2017) to get this outing to work, but this series is developing into something a bit special, and it's always best to get in at the start when that's going on.

Somehow I managed completely and utterly to miss posting a review of THE CHINESE PROVERB when I read it, so this is now a combined thing. The first book in the series was released in 2017, after an earlier standalone novel by the same author.

THE ... Read Review

Falling Towards England, Clive James

The second in the Unreliable Memoirs set of books sees Clive James newly arrived in post-war England, a Sydney boy trying to make good in the bright lights, high(er) society and learned sets of English society. Don't read this, however, if you're expecting the really breezy, cleverly observant, self-deprecating ways of his childhood. Young adult Clive James is a different beast and he's out of place, out of step and seemingly somewhat out of clues in this world.

Moving from self-deprecation clearly into a form of almost self-loathing, the Clive James that is trying to ... Read Review