Category Archives: Book Review

Cassie Clark: Outlaw by Brian Falkner – 2018

Posted on February 22, 2019 by alysonebaker

Cassie Clark is an eighteen-year-old university literature student with a depressed mother, a prickly younger sister, a great friend called Jackson from Jackson, Mississippi, and a bodyguard.  She is still recovering in hospital from being knocked off her bike when … Continue reading →

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Wedlock by Denis Wright – 2018  

Posted on February 22, 2019 by alysonebaker

Lucy has a mixed life: She is more-or-less the only capable adult (at age 15) in her family, living with her aging-rocker Dad and ex-prize-fighter Grandfather, who is living with Parkinson’s. She has some mates and manages to negotiate the … Continue reading →

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The Vanishing Act by Jen Shieff – 2018

Posted on February 20, 2019 by alysonebaker

Art teacher Rosemary Cawley has been exiled to Auckland, New Zealand, due to her upper-class British family not coping with her accidentally-discovered erotic poetry; it is the 1960s – the Vietnam War, toothpick-skewered cheese and gherkins, an almost Victorian-era sex … Continue reading →

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Shadows of the Mind by Owen Clough – 2018

Posted on February 17, 2019 by alysonebaker

Shadows of the mind is the second book in Clough’s Whispers of the past trilogy.  This installment follows the story of Samuel McInnes (Mack), who was bundled away from New Zealand on the HMS Esk while still unconscious after an … Continue reading →

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Stall Turns by Penelope Haines – 2018

Posted on February 16, 2019 by alysonebaker

Stall turns is the third in the Claire Hardcastle mystery series and starts with Claire and her detective boyfriend Jack Body having a well-earned break.  They are on their way to help with the Labour Day Weekend sheep muster on … Continue reading →

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Make a Hard Fist by Tina Shaw – 2018

Posted on February 15, 2019 by alysonebaker

Make a hard fist is an extremely powerful YA novel about the physical abuse of young women.  It is edgy, scary and yet empowering. Lizzie Quinn is doing well, well apart from a hiccough in her relationship with a boy … Continue reading →

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Rain Fall by Ella West – 2018

Posted on February 14, 2019 by alysonebaker

Rain fall is set in rain-soaked Westport, amidst mine-closures and the decline in dairy prices.  The town in depressed; the residents trying to make the best of things.  But when 15-year-old Annie misses an important basketball game when her mate’s … Continue reading →

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Call me Evie by J.P. Pomare – 2019

Posted on February 13, 2019 by alysonebaker

“Who is the mad one, me or him?” Male privilege, the dangerous side of social media, childhood trauma, teenage angst and the vagaries of memory, all play a part in this slow-burning thriller. Kate is a seventeen-year-old teenager living with … Continue reading →

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What You Wish For by Catherine Robertson – 2019

Posted on February 2, 2019 by alysonebaker

Catherine Robertson published Gabriel’s Bay in 2018 and What you wish for takes us back to the New Zealand coastal town, which is even more geographically unfettered this time – the story of the locals being bracketed not by that … Continue reading →

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Women in the Field, One and Two by Thomasin Sleigh – 2018

Posted on January 27, 2019 by alysonebaker

Ruth Bishops is an assistant art keeper toiling in the Fisher Gallery in early 1950s London, shy of relationships after losing her fiancé in the war.  She reluctantly goes to view some paintings by Irina Durova, an aging Russian artist, … Continue reading →

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