Lucy
What a read! Read in one sitting, up until midnight kind of book. Very excited to see this is going to be a series. Can't wait.
I tried hard to love this book but it was just badly written. I like most of the characters and the setting but the story was jerky, confusing and didn't flow. 2.5/5 stars.
Just the right mix of sweet and interesting, with a strong female lead, not often seen in romances. A romance for people who don't like the genre.
A ripping second half made up for a slow start. A worthy companion to The Midwife and Etta.
I really enjoyed the fluid and wild graphic style of this auto fictional graphic novel. Love the Tamaki cousins work.
As always, Stephen Daisley writes blue collar men - in this case shearers in WA in the 1950s, so very very well. The young shearer Lew, his older mentor Painter Hayes, the farmer Drysdale, the station cook Jimmy and the dingo hunter Smith are all painted in delicate, intimate brush strokes that show the men as they are and also the forces that shape them.
Another trademark of Daisley's writing is the lack of punches he pulls when describing the realities of life. In Traitor and A Better Place, Daisley describes the horrors of war on the men that fought in them, and here those horrors are shown again in the PTSD that several characters live with and how that shapes their lives, but the realities of farming life, in the stark hardship of the arid areas of Western Australia are brutally described too.
The other main character in Coming Rain is a dingo bitch that is being tracked through the scrub because she killed a young sheep. She and Lew are similar in many ways - very smart and clever, but also young and vulnerable. This relationship was my favourite part of the book.
I love Daisley's brutal and uncompromising writing style very much and I look forward to reading many more.
Part memoir, part nature survey, Amy describes her climb to sobriety against the stunning backdrop of the Orkney Islands.
Beautiful nature writing mixed with grumpy old man bemoaning that people don't live exactly the way he thinks they should.
Sylvie is the second child, always in the shadow to her fragile, tormented older sister, Cate. When Cate tries to commit suicide, again, Sylvie's essentially abandoned by her parents, and is forced to deal with many things a 15 year old shouldn't have to face.
I thought Sylvie's voice was a strong, very realistic one, not clouded by political correctness, or idealism. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Reading this book while wildfires rage in Hawaii and Canada and a hurricane bears down on LA for the first time in memory. An allegorical tale of the end of the world and the ennui of previous generations ruining the future. 3.5 rounded up.
To be fair, the one star is only representative of the first 1/4 of the book, because that's all of it I could stomach.
Stereotypical characters, boring plot, slow, and just plain badly written. There are literally hundreds of great thrillers out there, back away from this one and go and read something else.
I wanted to love this book, but I felt it fell short. Some of the characters like Kait and Velvet I liked, others like Joe I felt were under developed. Over all, solid if a bit lacking in pizzazz.
I'm so sad to see the end of this fantastic series. I hope the author returns to this world soon.
An intelligent, thoughtful and deeply personal thriller. I've read almost everything the author has written, both his scifi and his YA, and I believe he's one of the most versatile writers around at the moment.
I wanted to like this book, but I found it ponderous and patchy. I liked Samuel's story much more than Loo's.
A mixed bag of short, sci-fi-ish stories. Many stray into fantasy more than sci-fi. The titular story was the best.
Margaret Atwood never fails to blow my mind. A beautiful, quirky collection of tales, mostly around the topic of aging, but coming at it from many different views. And vampires.
A solid senior fiction read, with interesting characters and tie ins to historical events in NZ history. I felt it got a little repetitive after a few chapters, the earlier stories were much more engrossing than those set after WW1.
An interesting premise bogged down by too many characters and too many plot lines. 2.5 rounded down.
Not my favourite Anne Tyler, but a sweet and sad story of one women's life, propelled by the choices and decisions of others; a boyfriend proposes, a husband makes a rash decision and a miss placed phone number all guide her life. Until one day she has the opportunity to seize her own life by the horns.
The story of two migrants headed across the Sahara, to Tripoli and eventually into Europe. Perfect for the older child/teen reader.
ALL OF IT. I RELATED TO ALLLLLL OF IT.
A brilliant collection of funny, tear jearking and practical treaties on parenting. I will buy a copy for all my new parent friends.