Review: Garnet Flats by Devney Perry

Garnet Flats (The Edens #3)
Devney Perry
Penguin Books AUS
2022, 384p
Copy borrowed from a family member

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: For one year, two months and eleven days Talia Eden loved Foster Madden . . .

And on the 438th day that love died. He chose to marry her best friend and she chose to never think of him again.

Until years later when he has the audacity to show up in her small hometown of Quincy, begging for her help.

The ink on his divorce papers is barely dry, yet he comes armed with apologies and promises. She knows it’s all a ploy. Foster is the king of games and secrets. But he’s got delusions the size of Montana if he thinks she’ll help him train for a world championship fight.

Except Talia has forgotten exactly what made Foster famous. The man has dedicated his life to victory. He’s steadfast. He’s determined. And he won’t stop fighting until he’s won her heart.

Okay.

So. I’ve read and liked the first two books in this series but I knew this book was well, a bit different. It was probably going to garner a different reaction. I’ve seen a few people who really hate this book (including the person that loaned it to me) and from just the blurb, I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be my thing either. But I’m reading the series, so yeah, for the sake of continuity, I picked this one up. Should I? Probably not. But here we are.

It’s not just the actions of the male character that bothered me. Oh they were garbage, hot garbage and I didn’t really buy the plot at all. But I found that Talia’s actions really bothered me too, I really hate the ‘body betrayal’ trope that used to be quite popular in romances back in the day. This has it in spades, where she’s so upset at his betrayal, they haven’t seen each other for seven years, he married someone else and he’s back five minutes and she ‘can’t help herself’. Please. Girl. Get some self respect. Make him apologise properly. Make him grovel. If the story is going to be the man betraying the woman and then attempting to make amends, I want the grovel. I want to see him suffer. I want him to beg for forgiveness, to acknowledge his mistakes, to assure her he’ll never do such a thing again. Look, this took a swerve into some weird mafia-style territory and there’s always a little bit of the suspense in these books but this one I feel like it went a bit too deep and therefore, it was less credible than previous books.

My biggest problem was that I didn’t feel those things I wanted to feel from Foster and Talia lets him off the hook far too easily. He just turns up in her town, after seven years and is like “well I’m here to get you back” and she’s like “um no, please leave” and he says “nah, don’t think I will, whether you want me here or not, here I am” and it made me uncomfortable. This is her home. Like maybe you should’ve sounded things out before buying a building and moving your entire life here, because yes, this is a romance novel, it’s going to work out but…..let’s face it. How many people want the ex that broke their heart by marrying someone else, just turning up in their tiny town and being literally everywhere. Coming to her house, running into her at work when she’s trying to eat her lunch…..I think I’d have respected Foster’s attempts more if he’d not barged into her entire life and basically been like “well I live here now, here I am everywhere you go, I am here forever”. But it just felt so heavy handed and a bit gross, even his attempts to explain he more or less just says “oh I was actually the victim here, you can’t hate me because of that”. Yes, he was a victim, but so was Talia. And Talia didn’t hurt him, he has no right to start being angry at her for things, when he is yet to actually properly apologise. This whole thing is handled so badly, I never felt like he genuinely apologised for the hurt he caused her, he just expected her to forgive and forget everything because of his excuse. And the third party in this never apologises properly either, for going along with it when honestly, she could’ve had the power to stop it, potentially, should she chosen to use it.

But Talia. Let’s get back to her. You’re a doctor. You went to med school. You’re smart. You’re financially independent. You’ve got a big, loving family. And yet you completely fold any time he’s in the room. I actually cringed reading some of the scenes where Talia says one thing and then promptly does the exact opposite. I wanted to DNF this book so badly because of her actions, more than Foster’s. As much as I didn’t like Foster for his arrogant assumptions that she should take him back the moment he asked, I had equally as much problem with Talia’s absolute lack of a backbone. This one was a real big disappointment after the first two, which I quite enjoyed. Also, I really am starting to dislike some of the common themes I’m seeing running through these books, in that they all end with all of the women in exactly the same position. Like that’s the only way that the books can end. It’s the only next step. I’ll be interested to see if the next 3 end the same way. I preferred it when the Eden brothers were the love interests because it was less likely they’d do something horrid – the women were screwed over by other men, not them. But I just didn’t buy into this love story in the slightest. Maybe because we didn’t get enough of their relationship seven years ago. Maybe because I also didn’t feel like the book did enough to convince me they got to know these new versions of themselves.

I will say, I felt like this book was well written, I just didn’t like the plot. Like the second half was significantly better to read for me than the first half, because the first half was Talia saying one thing and then doing another and not even bothering to really demand more from Foster and the second half was more about some other sort of conflict or issue. The writing is fine. But I just hated the contents. This wasn’t it for me as a romance novel, it didn’t feel romantic. It didn’t feel like there was this great love between them. It felt like Foster had a point to prove, but to the wrong person. And there was a completely unnecessary part that dragged this book out for another 50+ pages only for it to resolve in a way where it could’ve done the same thing, just earlier.

I really don’t have much to say about this one that’s positive, unfortunately. Hated the story, didn’t like either of the main characters.

3/10

Book #113 of 2024

Review: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

Warbreaker
Brandon Sanderson
Gollancz
2009, 652p
Purchased personal copy

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

For a while now I’ve been wanting to get into reading Brandon Sanderson because I think that his books are ones I’ll enjoy, I just wasn’t sure where to start because he has quite an extensive backlist. I saw someone start with this one as it’s stand alone and apparently a good place to dip a toe in, so to speak and Sanderson himself recommends starting with this one if you enjoy a bit of romance as well. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s got a lot of romance but it is there.

I enjoyed this a lot. I read most of it on two plane journeys and it’s quite a chunky book, 650 pages so it was a good book to have for 2x2hr plane rides! I liked the world building and the characters and the plot definitely took me by surprise a couple times. This definitely made me actually kind of wish it was a series – the ending made me really want more of two characters in particular. It’s set in the same world apparently, as other books so maybe I’ll see them again? Not sure. I’ll have to begin my journey through the other books and see!

This is set in a place where a former royal family have been ousted from the land they once ruled and they now reside in a remote place that is still important because it has control of the trade routes. In their former ruling place, God touched people now rule instead. War has been kind of brewing for years and in an attempt to keep the peace, it’s been agreed to wed a princess of royal blood to the current God King. Tying the two together should help ensure that any sign of rebellion of the ousted royal family is quelled and the God King won’t move on his wife’s family either. It’s supposed to be a perfect plan, until the King in exile sends his youngest daughter to wed the God King, instead of his eldest, throwing everything into disarray. His eldest daughter is so distraught that her younger sister has to go in her place that she runs away to the city to find and rescue her sister from this arranged marriage that she had no time to prepare for. Siri, the youngest sister, is a bit wild, she was always the “spare” – her eldest sister was to be for the God King, the middle one became a monk and dedicated herself to a life of service and that left Siri much to her own devices. She’s not the perfectly well brought up, educated wife those who orchestrated the deal and who serve the God King, thought he would be getting. Siri is much different and it doesn’t take her long to realise that the God King is not really what he seems and that this marriage might have just set both of them up to fail. War is coming anyway, unless they can stop it.

Woven into the story of Siri and the God King is also that of her eldest sister Vivenna, who should’ve married the God King. She is trying to rescue Siri and ends up caught up in a rebellion plot. She wants to work hard to prevent a war – the area her family rule over now is small, they are under resourced and probably would be crushed in any fighting. But Vivenna has a lot to learn about the truth – the truth about the magic her family has always feared and shunned, the truth about the war and who wants it and who is behind it and the truth about who she can trust (and who she can’t).

I quite liked Siri stumbling through her marriage with the God King and realising certain things but the story I really enjoyed in this was Vivenna’s. She goes through a lot in this book and comes out the other side of it in the most remarkable way. She’s been raised as this perfect princess, the one that has been shaped to marry the God King, provide the next heir and basically unite the two kingdoms into a cohesive unit that will no longer carry the treat of war. She’s been schooled in politics and manners and basically every single thing that she’d need to be this perfect wife, with all this responsibility. It doesn’t pan out that way and she ends up going through some of the worst parts of society, she’s betrayed, kidnapped, almost killed so many times. She has to face the fear she has of the magic that lives in this world, that her family shuns and is forcibly inserted into a powerful position with that magic. She also meets a man that is morally ambiguous and mysterious and has to decide whether or not she can trust him. Vivenna had the most fascinating story and I want more. More about her and more about Vasher. I ended up really liking them together, they were very different and because of that, they complimented each other in so many ways. Also there’s a murderous sword in this that talks and it’s far funnier than it really should be.

I found this a solid introduction into Sanderson – despite the length there was never a time when I was bored even though there are definitely times when the story is quieter. The character development was good and the world building excellent as well.

8/10

Book #111 of 2024

Warbreaker is one of my 24 in 2024 books! It’s the 8th book read for the challenge so far….I’m catching up a little on this one. I’m still behind but I think I’ve already read more books from this challenge than I read from the entirety of my 23 in 2023, so….progress, right?

Review: Buried In Between by Leanne Lovegrove

Buried In Between
Leanne Lovegrove
Self-published
2024, 303p
Purchased personal copy

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: She’s not your average city girl looking for a new beginning… 

Ava Montgomery is desperate for a safe place to call home. On the run from her controlling marriage and fearing for her son’s safety, she hopes the small town of Bellethorpe she left years ago is the one location her husband won’t think to look.

Local builder, Noah Hawthorn, has no time for city chicks disrupting his town’s idyllic country lifestyle. Especially one who purchased the dream house he planned to buy before his wife left him.

But Noah can’t say no to renovating Ava’s home, because the money will help him to fight for custody of his daughter. Except when they uncover an incredible historical find on the grounds, the secrets they’ve both been keeping threaten to be exposed.

If Ava and Noah can’t learn to trust their hidden feelings for each other, it’s not only their pasts that are in danger of catching up with them. Their chances of building a new future together could be destroyed too… 

This was another book I read before heading off on my reading retreat (I’m there right now) and although it is part of a series, you don’t need to have read the rest. I hadn’t and I had a great time with this, I enjoyed the local community and didn’t feel like I’d missed anything.

Ava has bought a beautiful old house in the small town of Bellethorpe in Queensland. She’s on the run, having basically escaped with the clothes on her back and fled halfway across the world back to the town she lived in as a teen. She has her young son and it’s clear she’s hiding. Ava is paranoid about being found, she keeps everything locked, she doesn’t want to take any chances.

Noah is a local man who desperately wanted to buy the house Ava has just purchased. He thought he had an agreement with the real estate but then Ava swept in with her cash offer and now Noah is devastated. He has a dream for that house. He’s desperate to get his daughter back after his wife moved away, taking the six year old with her. The house seems to be part of that dream he has and he’s upset to have it snatched away….enough to be difficult at first with Ava, until he realises that there could be opportunity in being hired by Ava to fix it up.

I had a good time with this, I enjoyed both Ava and Noah as characters. Both are newly single parents – Ava has left her husband behind in a foreign country and returned to Australia with their young son, having realised that there will be a strong difference in how she wants him to be raised and how he will be raised if she’d stayed in that country. Noah’s wife has left him and returned to Brisbane, unhappy with life in the small town. She’s taken their daughter with him and although she isn’t restricting access to her, she isn’t exactly helping either, with all the onus on Noah, which, with balancing work, is difficult. Noah is very invested in Bellethorpe remaining this small town, rejecting any development and progress that might bring more people and that might change the ‘feel’ of it. Noah in general, seems upset with change and he doesn’t react well to Ava purchasing the house he dreamed of buying, even though Ava knew nothing about it.

Ava hires Noah to help renovate the house and this allows them to overcome their rocky start and get to know each other. There’s definite attraction there but there are also so complications too. Ava makes a fascinating discovery on her land which is incredibly interesting, especially for Ava both personally and professionally but it also brings about both of their worst (very different) fears and will need to be handled delicately. There were times when Noah frustrated me and I think the book did a good job of showcasing his frustration with the situation and look, it was unfair but it was always going to be unfair to someone, unfortunately, whether that be Noah or his former wife, etc. She was the primary caregiver, she had made arrangements to get herself some support and a ‘village’ I guess. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t sympathise with his problem, I did. I did think it was unfair she was able to move the child away from him without helping to shoulder any of the responsibility of travel or helping facilitate a better form of shared custody other than Noah just having to drive to her every second weekend. He and Ava were always going to have a difference of opinions on one issue in particular but I did feel like Noah was very black and white in his original reaction.

I did feel like the resolution of Ava’s issue was a bit….idyllic. I’m not saying that it couldn’t happen but it did feel like it was this sort of dream scenario in the end, the best possible outcome for her. Which is good, for Ava but given the background information and the situation she’d fled, it did feel a bit like it was a lot of build up for not much happening in the end. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the book, as I was looking for a gentler, less stressful story anyway but it was something that I noticed.

I did enjoy this and I feel like I will read the other books in the series. They seem perfect for when I do want a gentle, rural-based read with a sweet romance in a great setting.

8/10

Book #110 of 2024

Review: You Are Here by David Nicholl

You Are Here
David Nicholls
Sceptre
2024, 352p
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way.

Marnie is stuck.
Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it’s passing her by.

Michael is coming undone.
Reeling from his wife’s departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on long, solitary walks across the moors and fells.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very English weather conspire to bring them together, Marnie and Michael suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship.

But can they survive the journey?

I am very much in the minority over this book, it appears.

I thought it’d be fun from the synopsis. I am not a hiker or long distance walker but I actually enjoy reading about things like that and watching YouTube videos on people who hike the PCT or the Appalachian trail or whatever. The other night I watched a guy’s video of him summiting Everest and that was fascinating and also terrifying and also…..look, not going to lie a little gross at the absolute disgusting state that the hiking season leaves the mountain in. Seeing all the rubbish and stuff everywhere (a Coke bottle! On the summit ridge! Who on Earth is taking a Coke bottle up there?!) is definitely like being slapped with the cold reality of the selfishness of humanity. I mean there’s also all the dead bodies and human waste as well but….yeah. For some reason, the Coke bottle got to me. Anyway, back to the topic, I thought I’d find this fun and cute and interesting. Especially as Marnie isn’t a hiker (she basically has barely left her apartment since before covid) but unfortunately, I just didn’t really like much about this. I found both Michael and Marnie’s misery were getting to me and this is hard because both of them are going through very real things but I’m just not sure I’m really into the misery fiction genre anymore. I like the idea of a slow story and people working through their trauma but…. this book did not make me feel like anyone was actually really doing that. And their bickering wasn’t cute, it was super tedious and I didn’t find Marnie at all funny.

I just didn’t enjoy any of the characters. Michael and Marnie share a mutual friend named Cleo and they even met once, like thirteen years ago but they don’t know each other. Cleo is really pushy and not in a gentle way that feels like she’s just encouraging them to try and embrace things that might make them enjoy their lives a bit more or work towards healing themselves, but in ways that feel a bit over the top and honestly, kind of mean. It’s supposed to be a group hike but one person pulls out and another one (that Marnie is supposed to be kind of ‘set up’ with – the mutual friend invites like a male friend presumably for Marnie and a female friend for Michael, the female friend for Michael is the one that pulls out) is incredibly obnoxious, like over the top city finance bro (except he’s a pharmacist). Yet Marnie persists with this guy, like girl, please. She and Michael don’t originally hit it off but eventually they find a bit of common ground and even after Marnie could’ve left the hike, she chooses to continue on with Michael lugging her million pound backpack with her laptop and 12 pairs of pants and her three dinner dresses.

The parts I enjoyed most about the book where before Michael and Marnie even met – when Michael was interacting with his school kids (he teaches geography) and when Marnie was musing on her introverted lifestyle. Both of them had had relationship breakdowns but for very different reasons so in a way they did have an understanding I think, of the place the other was at in life in a way. Although Michael doesn’t really tell Marnie everything, especially when they get to a point where he really should have….? Which I found frustrating.

I soldiered on with this but I wasn’t rewarded as I really, really disliked the ending. I see people tagging this as romance and I guess it…technically…? loosely…? fits the description in a way (we are to assume) but I didn’t find any of this romantic.

5/10

Book #109 of 2024

Review: Not In Love by Ali Hazelwood

Not In Love
Ali Hazelwood
Sphere
2024, 384p
Copy courtesy of a family member

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.

Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through—and he’s a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can’t stop thinking about. The woman who’s off-limits to him.

Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business—one that plays for keeps.

This hurts.

I have pretty much loved every book by Ali Hazelwood. I wasn’t even sure it’d be possible for her to write something I didn’t like. But this one? This was a big disappointment for me, I really struggled with it.

From the beginning (or maybe the second interaction) I just never felt it. I never really liked Eli as a character and I never really saw them build a connection. In something a little different for Ali Hazelwood, they meet on an app for what is supposed to be a one night only encounter – that’s the way Rue does things. But then Eli turns up at Rue’s place of work as one of the four founding members of a company that has taken on the loan owed by Rue’s boss. And Rue feels like they’re going after the tech that the company has been developing with a ruthlessness that makes her sick. Rue had a rough upbringing but she loves two people in the world – her best friend Tisha and her boss, Florence. And now Eli, a man she’s violently attracted to, is out to ruin Florence.

I never felt their attraction to be honest. It was very, very instalust – not even, they arrange to meet on an app, it’s just a clinical transaction. And yet somehow it suddenly becomes this all encompassing thing before anything even happens. In lieu of building a connection that feels emotional and long lasting, they occasionally share horrible things that have happened to them as some sort of transaction before sexual activity.

And there is a lot of sexual activity in this.

I love spice – I enjoy spice and sexual attraction in my romance. But I never felt like this built, I never felt the journey. The first encounter is pretty early in the book and then they occur with enough regularity that you never get to feel longing or pining or strong attraction. And the spice….? The spice isn’t particularly to my taste either. It felt very 2008 in a post Fifty Shades of Grey world where every love interest suddenly had an interest in if not outright BDSM, then at least, excessive control. It’s my least favourite sexual interest to read about and I found Eli arrogant, cold and boring. I never found him interesting and when he revealed his preference to Rue, I wanted to DNF. It’s so overdone. Rue has her own hangups about intimate encounters that also don’t make much sense in the context of her sexual history. Eli kind of has a point in his arguing against it but I had a moment of being exasperated like, ‘if he fixes her with his magic dick, I’m done’. The book even jokes about it and then just does the trope anyway. I don’t know why it couldn’t have just been something that didn’t work for Rue because it’s not exactly like it’s unrelatable. Also there are aggressive usages of the c word in the intimate scenes in this book, which is also just…..it’s just not for me. We all have words we don’t like, or things we don’t enjoy and that’s definitely one for me. I don’t find it a kind word in terms of description and in Australia, it is used more casually than most other countries, so it’s not like I’m offended by it or whatever. But I just don’t like it in love scenes.

Also there’s a scene in this where Eli kind of suggests he might do a particular thing to Rue if she doesn’t negotiate her preferences or boundaries (Rue originally says she doesn’t have any) and even though I think I get that Hazelwood was just trying to assert how important those boundaries are…it kind of had a threatening aura? Like why would he just say that instead of reiterating that it was important for them to discuss what it and isn’t acceptable in certain situations?

There’s also a villain in this book and it’s way too easy to discern who it is and the fallout of it should be devastating. But Rue just kind of is like …eh? She’s that Loki meme where he’s like oh so sad….anyway! And I know that Rue is written in a way where she struggles to connect emotionally, where her upbringing has kept her very closed off from others, but this should’ve devastated her. It should’ve upset her so much, that this was such a deep betrayal, not just personally but also professionally? But it was like it was just a blip.

I also have a funny feeling that we’re going to get a book between Eli’s younger sister Maya and his business partner/friend Harkness, who is bitterness in human form. I don’t love this. I feel like the most interesting thing happened way before this book even started and that’s the marriage of Eli’s two other business partners.

Unfortunately I just didn’t connect with either of these characters, or their story. I felt like the development of them as people was underdone in favour of more spicy scenes and I found those scenes honestly, quite lacklustre in some ways and just not my thing in others. The science background also felt like a bit of an afterthought and although I did enjoy how Rue’s work was shaped and motivated by her background, she was stupidly naive as a character and wilfully ignorant of pretty much everything going on in her life. Eli was the first ‘hero’ from Hazelwood that I actively disliked. I was excited that this was a dual POV – I’d have loved several other novels from Hazelwood to have been structured that way!

I’m so sad that I didn’t love this. A new Ali Hazelwood is something I actively look forward to and it sucks that I just didn’t enjoy this one much. I did like Rue’s friend Tisha and Tisha’s sister and felt like the scenes between those three women were the highlight of the book.

5/10

Book #55 of 2024

Review: As The River Rises by Fiona McArthur

As The River Rises
Fiona McArthur
Penguin Books AUS
2024, 352p
Gifted via Secret Santa in my online book club

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Dr Hannah Rogan, a GP from outback Queensland, is in hiding from an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend. When a visit to her friend Gracie in Featherwood sparks the idea to move there and open a medical practice for the town, Hannah finds the fresh start she needs. The town has rebuilt after devastating fires and its growing population is desperate for her calm presence and expertise.

Her first patient is the son of the tight-lipped, attractive Jude, from the mysterious closed community upriver. Jude has a troubled past he doesn’t talk about, but now he’s helping others to turn their lives around. The last thing Jude needs is to fall for the new doctor in town but his son’s illness means they’ll be spending a lot of time together.

The rain starts, and doesn’t stop. The creeks fill, the river bursts and soon the residents of Featherwood are at risk of losing everything they’ve rebuilt. As the floodwaters rise, so do emotions and everyone must pull together to save lives and salvage whatever they can.

From the bestselling author of The Opal Miner’s Daughter comes this suspenseful tale of love, redemption and finding your path when you feel surrounded.

Fiona McArthur is one of my favourite authors and a new book from her is such a treat. I have to admit, I am a bit behind with this one – it was actually gifted to me by my Secret Santa in a Christmas gift exchange and I put it on my 24 in 2024 as a ‘cheat’ book: one that I knew I would absolutely read! Fiona McArthur is going to be at the retreat I am going to this month so I figured it was time to read this one, especially as she has a new book coming out soon as well.

If you’ve read The Farmer’s Friend then the setting of this one will be very familiar. We are returning to Featherwood in rural northern New South Wales with a familiar cast of supporting characters and two new main characters. Hannah is Gracie’s friend and a chance visit leads her to move to Featherwood to open a GP office. The town desperately needs one and Hannah has a steady stream of patients from the very beginning. One of her first patients is the young son of a mysterious man named Jude who lives on a property out of town. No one seems to know much about him but that doesn’t stop the rumours flying. Hannah is fleeing an abusive relationship and the last thing she needs is the be drawn in by the mysterious man but…..she can’t help it. There’s something there. She just has to hope that her instincts aren’t leading her wrong.

It was such a delight to be back here, reconnecting with characters like Gracie and Jed, Nell, Mavis and her grandson Archie. In the previous book, the community was facing the threat and aftermath of bushfires and now it’s the complete opposite, with pouring rain that is in danger of bringing terrible floods instead. Parts of the country have been really hammered by natural weather phenomenon lately and it honestly doesn’t feel uncommon to go from one extreme to the other.

The way Fiona McArthur writes the weather is so……incredibly evocative, there are some truly terrifying moments in this book. I’ve never lived through a flood although the area I grew up has flooded once or twice since I left. I’ve lived through bushfires and evacuation and being sent home early but I’ve never lived anywhere when there was genuine threat of a terrifying flood. However I’ve watched so many documentaries and news reports especially on places like Lismore, that flooded multiple times in recent years. I felt like reading this book really captured the experience of not just the awful, devastating weather event, where people who lost their homes in a fire face losing them again in a flood, but also the ways in which communities come together to help in the face of such adversity. Everyone in this book pitches in in some way or another, be it housing those that have been forced to flee, search and rescue, providing food and meals and comfort, helping to provide medical care, helping move stock and belongings to higher ground. You see examples of this in real life scenarios all the time and this book encapsulates that human spirit and connection so well.

I really enjoyed the romance. Jude was my sort of hero and I found his backstory really interesting. I liked the contrast between him and Hannah and I also loved his relationship with his son. Also what Jude was doing on his farm would make a great book all on its own. I understood Hannah’s conflicted feelings though as Jude is a bit reticent and standoffish and given her history with her previous boyfriend, you can see why she’d want to know more about him, to be wary of falling for the aloof one on the gated property. Small towns are always rife with rumours, especially about people who don’t seem to conform to the norm and there’s definitely been a few thoughts about what Jude might be up to. Leo, his son, is a great kid and he and Archie make a great little dynamic duo.

This book gave me all the emotions! It’s so heartwarming, I love the community but it also really made me fear for certain people and not going to lie, I definitely teared up twice.

A must read.

9/10

Book #108 2024

As The River Rises is one of my 24 in 2024 books. It’s the 7th book read so far for this challenge.

Review: Green Rider by Kristen Britain

Green Rider (Green Rider #1)
Kristen Britain
Gollancz
2011 (originally 1998)
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Karigan G’ladheon always seemed to be getting into a fight, and today was no exception.

But as she trudged through the forest, using her long walk home to contemplate her depressing future – and the expulsion it was bound to hold – a horse burst through the woodland and charged straight for her. The rider was slumped over his mount’s neck with two arrows embedded in his back. Wherever his horse was taking him, he would be dead before they got there.

There’s nothing Karigan can do, as the young man lies dying on the road. He had sworn to carry out his mission as a Green Rider – one of the legendary messengers of the king – and he has a life or death message that must reach King Zachary. Karigan may be unable to save him, but she can deliver his message. He makes her swear to it, to keep it secret and, with his last breath, he warns her to ‘beware the shadow man …’

Pursued by an unknown assassin, following a path only her horse seems to know, and accompanied by the silent specter of the original messenger, Karigan is going to become a legendary Green Rider herself. Caught up in a world of deadly danger and complex magic, compelled by forces she cannot understand, her simple promise to deliver a letter is about to become a race against time … and a race for her life …

I do not know how I had never heard of this series before like, 2-3 weeks ago. This book was first published in 1998 and there are like, 8 books in the series. I saw someone talk about the first book recently and it sounded good but when I looked it up, I honestly didn’t expect my library would have it given it was published so long ago. It looks like a bulk of them were republished or reissued starting in 2011 and surprisingly, my library has all of the books in those editions. So I requested this one and decided to give it a go.

Karigan has been suspended from her school due to an incident where she bested the son of a very powerful man in a fight. She’s the daughter of a very rich merchant but a merchant isn’t the same in terms of rank as a landowner clansman and so she leaves the school. She finds a dying Green Rider (one of the King’s messengers) on the side of the road and he begs her to complete his mission, to take a very important message to the King. When Kari agrees, he transfers his Green Rider privileges to her including a badge, his horse, his cape and saddlebag as well as a few other surprises that Kari will come to discover. She’s immediately pursued by the same assailant who killed the rider and her mission to get the letter to the King becomes an incredibly dangerous one. Along the way Kari meets some mysterious people who help her, more people who want to kill her and attempts to thwart a mission to overthrow the King. She’s also ‘protected’ in a way by the spectre of the fallen Green Rider, who seeks to still help the completion of the mission.

I found this really enjoyable. I’m glad I only came across it now as it seems there’s been some pretty big gaps in between some of the instalments. 16yo me would’ve ate this up in 1998, when I was right into David Eddings and the like. And I still really liked it now. I love a quest book – they’re my favourite type of fantasy, probably because of those David Eddings books I read in high school that were all focused around one quest or another. Kari is determined to get the message to the King but she’s also equally determined that it be her only Green Rider task – it’s clear she doesn’t fully understand the commitment of a Green Rider yet, nor the circumstances under which someone becomes one. Now because there are many more books in this series, obviously Kari isn’t going to just ‘go home’ when this is all over and she’s this reluctant kind of hero, or chosen one.

I really enjoyed her as a character. In the beginning she’s angry about what occurred at the school, knowing that she’ll never be treated fairly, that kids like the boy she bested will always have family members to call upon, to see that she’s punished. She is determined and strong but also…..knows when she’s beaten as well and isn’t prone to crazy and fruitless escape attempts. She’s good at judging a situation and knowing when to move and when not to. I enjoyed the other characters we met along the way and towards the end, you could see a core group of potential supporting characters coming together, the ones we might see again and again in future books, that Kari becomes friends with and learns to rely on. Because for a large majority of this book, all she has to rely on is the horse of the fallen Green Rider. They do develop a relationship (that evolves quite slowly, it’s definitely not instant) and learn to trust each other. The horse knows things and Kari at times, has to accept that he’s doing something for a reason and she should just go along with it.

I had a great time reading this and think it left off in a way that will allow for a lot of interesting world building and character development so I’m definitely going to be reading book 2 as soon as I can.

8/10

Book #107 of 2024

I’m also going to count this towards my Historical Fiction Reading Challenge for 2024. It definitely gives a historical feel, very Middle Ages vibes. It’s the 12th book read for the challenge.

Review: A Fate Inked In Blood by Danielle L. Jensen

A Fate Inked In Blood (Saga of the Unfated #1)
Danielle L. Jensen
Del Rey
2024, 432p
Copy gifted from a family member

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: A shield maiden blessed by the gods battles to unite a nation under a power-hungry king—while also fighting her growing desire for his fiery son—in this Norse-inspired fantasy romance from the bestselling author of The Bridge Kingdom series.

Bound in an unwanted marriage, Freya spends her days gutting fish, but dreams of becoming a warrior. And of putting an axe in her boorish husband’s back.

Freya’s dreams abruptly become reality when her husband betrays her to the region’s jarl, landing her in a fight to the death against his son, Bjorn. To survive, Freya is forced to reveal her deepest secret: She possesses a drop of a goddess’s blood, which makes her a shield maiden with magic capable of repelling any attack. It was foretold such a magic would unite the fractured nation of Skaland beneath the one who controls the shield maiden’s fate.

Believing he’s destined to rule Skaland as king, the fanatical jarl binds Freya with a blood oath and orders Bjorn to protect her from their enemies. Desperate to prove her strength, Freya must train to fight and learn to control her magic, all while facing perilous tests set by the gods. The greatest test of all, however, may be resisting her forbidden attraction to Bjorn. If Freya succumbs to her lust for the charming and fierce warrior, she risks not only her own destiny but the fate of all the people she swore to protect.

This book has been getting a lot of traction recently. I was curious about it and I love a fantasy series. I borrowed this one from a family member who didn’t end up loving it enough to want it back. I think I liked it more than they did but it didn’t become a favourite. Although it was entertaining there were parts of it that felt very fantasy-by-numbers.

The world was interesting. It’s very Norse mythology inspired, Viking times, with lots of wars and pillaging and raiding going on. In this world, some people are touched by the Gods…imbued with their power. Freya’s awful husband is one such person and his gift keeps their village well supplied with fish. He sells Freya out to the….kind of King? of their area, as Freya is apparently the subject of a prophecy that says she will unite everyone beneath the power of the man who controls her. That’s the King guy, who marries her and charges his oldest son Bjorn with looking after her. It’s not a real marriage, the King is already married to another woman he’s supposedly faithful to but what is definitely inconvenient is Freya and Bjorn’s attraction to one another that began before they even knew who the other was. They had a chance encounter before Freya’s husband sold her out and now they’re forced into close proximity every day. The complication being that to everyone else, Freya is Bjorn’s ‘stepmother’ and supposed to be loyal to her husband.

The King isn’t a particularly good guy. He’s not evil, like Freya’s husband was but he’s also very power hungry and very into controlling Freya because the wording of the prophecy basically makes him feel like he has to wield her like a weapon and have her beholden to him. This he does in various ways including but not limited to threatening the various useless members of her family. If Freya has an Achilles heel, it’s definitely her family, although why is a bit of a mystery as she’s never been treated particularly well by any of them. She’s always played second fiddle to her brother, who grew up spoiled. Although he fights in the King’s army, he’s a weak man and you get the feeling he’d sell her out at first opportunity too.

I really enjoyed the idea of some people being touched by one of the gods and what that meant. For example, if you possess a drop of Thor’s blood, you can control thunder and lightning. Bjorn is also god touched, it’s his job to train Freya, who has always had to hide her abilities previously. There’s a war coming and basically once it’s known that Freya, the child of the prophecy has been found, almost everyone wants to kill her. Or sway her to their side, rather than be under the control of the guy who wants to be King of the united people which apparently, he can only do whilst he possesses or controls Freya. The wording and implications are a bit gross.

I think the biggest issue with this one is that the characters spend a lot of time walking places. Freya has to go make an offering to the gods or something as part of the prophecy, I don’t know, so they have to trek there and then back and then somewhere else and then there’s a battle, etc. It does occasionally make the book feel a bit slow as they’re just walking around for a while, with this being broken up sometimes by someone or other trying to kill Freya. It’s not until close to the end, where there’s a big battle and then…well….something I should definitely have seen coming and didn’t, happens. I knew part of it was coming but when it was all revealed….I was annoyed at myself for not noticing it.

I did like this enough to read book 2 but the ending of this one severely impacted on my liking of one character. I understand why they did what they did but the way in which they went about it is going to be almost unforgivable. It’s going to be interesting to see how they try.

7/10

Book #105 of 2024

Review: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

I Hope This Finds You Well
Natalie Sue
Harper Collins AUS
2024, 352p
Copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.

I have to admit that what I got with this book, was not what I was expecting. I think I was thinking it’d be something like Attachments by Rainbow Rowell and it was…..definitely not. It’s less of the rom com and more an exploration of a very depressed and traumatised person negotiating an incredibly toxic workplace where there’s an horrific amount of bullying going on, on a day to day basis.

Jolene copes with her workplace by writing what she truly thinks on emails to her colleagues and then whiting them out so they don’t see them. When she forgets one day, she is hauled in by HR and although she isn’t fired, she’s made attend (and pass) a harassment course with the new HR guy, Cliff. Cliff also fixes Jolene’s computer in a way that is supposed to restrict her emails but instead allows her access to pretty much everyone’s emails and direct messages. She tries to tell Cliff what he’s done but he just thinks she’s talking about the restrictions that were supposed to have been placed on them and she gives up. And with the temptation there, she decides to use the other emails and messages to be better about her job so that she might keep it. Everyone knows the next round of layoffs are coming.

Except what Jolene mostly reads are the colleagues closest to her, being absolutely horrible about her. I’m not going to lie, a lot of this book was really hard to read. Jolene is suffering through not just an awful workplace but there’s not much joy outside of work in her life either. She lives in a shitty apartment in a shitty building and hanging over her is something that happened when she was still in school, that has deeply traumatised her. Her mother is Iranian and interested in setting Jolene up with men to find a good husband and Jolene finds all their interactions exhausting. She knows her father struggles with how long they had to support her after high school, which was why she finally moved out and away. She has no friends and spends most of her time after work drinking alone in her apartment. She clearly drink way too much to forget whatever it is that has marked her so badly, as well as the way her life has turned out.

I did not find a lot of humour in this. It’s not so much cute rom com, like I thought it might be. Jolene’s life is deeply messy and she’s a person who is just going through the motions. She hates her job and is barely getting buy but she clings to it because the alternative of having to move back in with her parents is even worse. All her colleagues are at first look, quite horrible and they say truly awful things about Jolene. As she delves a bit more into their personal correspondence we learn that they all have their own difficult things going on but…..I’m not sure it was enough to be an excuse for the truly awful way these people all treat each other. The whole workplace is rotten and I feel like everyone is pitted against each other and they all become complicit in the games.

That is not to say Jolene is without criticism either. Some of what she does is equally awful, going in and getting colleagues passwords, reading some of their most intimate correspondence. She’s truly unfair to Cliff, the HR guy, who I ended up really liking. Actually, Cliff ended up being the best thing in this book, for me. I felt sorry for Jolene, she’d definitely gone through some things and she was struggling a lot but…. I didn’t feel like that excused some of her actions. I wanted her to get help and face some of the things she was struggling with and take accountability for the things she did using the emails.

I will be honest and say I didn’t enjoy this as a read. It actually made me quite anxious myself in parts and would definitely be upsetting to people with certain issues, particularly around workplace bullying. It wasn’t a fun read. I appreciated some of the representation and exploration but for me, it wasn’t funny and there were not many moments that felt heartwarming. Maybe a couple at the end, but it definitely didn’t feel as warm and fuzzy as it seems to suggest it might be.

If I’d known that I might’ve had a better time with it, but I just found it a struggle to read.

5/10

Book #104 of 2024

Review: Trail Of The Lost by Andrea Lankford

Trail Of The Lost
Andrea Lankford
Hachette
2023, 352p
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: From a former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, this female-driven true crime adventure follows the author’s quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail by pairing up with an eclectic group of unlikely allies.
 
As a park ranger with the National Park Service’s law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service’s bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left – three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed’s Wild , and no one has been able to find them. It’s bugging the hell out of her.
 
Andrea’s concern soon leads her to a wild environment unlike any she’s ever ventured into – missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launches an investigation, joining forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who are determined to solve the cases: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker who monitors terrorist activity for the government. Together, they track the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigate a cult, rescue a psychic in peril, cross paths with an unconventional scientist, and reunite an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but eventually their hardships begin to bear strange fruits—ones that lead them to places and people they never saw coming.

I can’t remember where I first saw this. Maybe it was when it was nominated in the Goodreads Choice Awards. But I have read Wild by Cheryl Strayed and seen the movie. I’m kind of interesting in people who are long distance hikers even though I could never do that myself. I’m just not a hiking kind of girl. Short hikes? Yes, absolutely. But I need indoor plumbing, thank you. And knowing I’ll be returning to a real bed at the end of the day.

This is about the uglier side of long distance hiking, the dangerous side of the Pacific Crest Trail, a hiking trail that runs 2600ish miles through three states from the US southern border with Mexico, through California, Oregon and Washington to its northern border with Canada. This is about the people who set out on a hike, be it a thru-hike, where they hike the whole trail, or just a portion of it, and never return. This book specifically focuses on three people, all men, who have never been found. In some cases, there hasn’t even really been a trace of them – no gear, nothing. In the third instance, gear belonging to the missing man was found abandoned. But in all three cases there’s been very little to go on and extensive private searches as well as some professional searches as well, have turned up basically nothing. This book is written by a former park ranger who helped coordinate search and rescue as part of her role, although she left that job and retrained as a nurse. She is still ‘connected’ to hiking though and has herself, hiked the Appalachian trail, the US’ other great trail on the eastern side of the country that stretches through many states. She was struck by some of these cases and offered assistance in search efforts and ground research.

I am at the moment, watching a couple of people documenting their own hiking of the PCT, which has become common in recent years. Youtube is a platform that makes it very easy to create short videos and in one I’m watching a woman who was a “SOBO” (south-bound, starting at Canada and hiking down) hiker post the videos from her 2023 hike. In the other series I’m following a man who is a NOBO (you guess it – northbound) hiker who is basically uploading his videos in as close to real time as it gets, editing and uploading at various points on the trail. He started maybe a month or six weeks or so ago. The SOBO hiker started later, hiking out of Canada in the summer so that by the time she gets to colder weather, she’s hopefully well into southern California where it’s warmer. If you’re NOBO, you want to start in the cooler months because it’s obviously hot down along the Mexican border and be hitting the Canada border in summer. The PCT has become so popular in recent years that you need a permit to hike it in its entirety and the department responsible issues about 55 permits per day, staggering starts. You’re given your start date and I don’t believe it can be altered. The idea is to “take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints” but obviously, this is not always the case.

The three cases are all interesting in that there’s so little to go in so many ways. I know this is remote territory and that it’s easy to get lost and the like and there are examples of how people have gone missing and searches have come within like, 50-100m of them and not found them the first time. There are examples here of using drone and aerial photography to search from above, in rough terrain and when there is simply too large a search area to be practical and it’s a technology that does seem under utilised as a method and flying drones in National Parks is illegal in the US as well, which also doesn’t help. Another large problem with reporting people missing is that often, the police are uninterested and tend to regard hikers, be they casual or dedicated thru-hikers, in less than ideal ways, like itinerant people, assuming they are disappearing on purpose and aren’t interested in speaking to their families. And that does happen, but even when presented with evidence to the contrary about people, the pattern in this is that largely they were uninterested until research done by parents/family/dedicated volunteers turned up something or multiple things, police had missed. Jurisdiction is also often an issue, with the trail being so long, going through so many different counties and states etc. It’s very complex, which is why it seems, there is such a dedicated team of volunteers who turn up to help when people do go missing and aren’t found immediately. And so much of it is done by the family – one of the men who went missing, his stepmother has spent years searching, going through social media tips and possible sightings, working tirelessly to try and find him so that they might have closure.

This was so interesting but I won’t lie – it’s also very deflating. Time and time again there are hopes raised by a story that seems credible of a sighting somewhere only for it not to pan out. It’s time and effort and so many tears. It’s uncertainty because without a body, there’s still hope, even when it’s been years and that hope is futile, really. But it’s still there, because you don’t have the definitive to say otherwise. The not knowing must be awful. There are also parts in here where it’s quite obvious that grieving parents are being targeted by either charlatans or trolls – people who want to profit by telling them they can find their loved one via some new and improved sort of way or by people who want to tell them that whatever they’re doing is wrong. If you’re looking for them, you’re “smothering them” and you’re probably the reason they vanished in the first place or if you’re not and trying to wait and see, do you even care about them? As much as social media can be a very valuable tool in something like this, to get word out, organise searches etc, it can also be the opposite.

I found this fascinating. Not sure I’ll say I enjoyed it exactly because it’s quite grim subject matter. It raises a lot of issues not just about hiking but about people disappearing in general and how difficult it can be to get taken seriously by authorities and how when someone is hiking, it can be quite a while before people realise that someone is missing. This is probably less likely now, a lot of hikers wear GPS trackers but there are some that don’t want that sort of exposure. It means that the key window of searching is often missed significantly.

I did feel somewhat flat after finishing though. I can’t imagine how the loved ones must feel.

8/10

Book #103 of 2024

It’s a bit cheeky but I’m going to count this one towards my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge, hosted by Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out. I’m going to use it for True Crime which….look, it is not strictly a fully true crime novel but it contains a lot of elements of true crime and a lot of investigation. It does showcase some criminal cases, where people on the PCT have been targeted. But I am twisting this a bit, to suit myself. This is book 4 (of 6) of my challenge.

Categories:

History
Memoir/Biography
True Crime
Science
Health
Food
Culture
Transportation
The Future
Pets
Architecture
Published in 2024