“Give people a few convincing threads and they’ll spin the rest themselves. This story has been woven for us, more tightly than I could have done. I couldn’t untangle the knots now if I tried.”
I really liked Nobody Knows But You by Anica Mrose Rissi (Quill Tree Books, 2020). A welcome change from the mystery/thrillers I’ve read lately.
If you liked A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (Electric Monkey, 2019) you might not like the following rant.
Finishing this trainwreck of a book was excruciating. It has a 4.3 average rating on Goodreads, when most books average 3-4. I have no idea how that happened. A theme of the book is racial profiling by police and how media coverage differs between people of colour and white victims and murderers. Pippa the student PI acts like an entitled white girl trying to save the brown boy. Additionally, Pippa gives a speech about racism at the end. If all the diversity boxes are ticked, does that make it ok?
I think I could love It Sounded Better in My Head by Nina Kenwood (Text Publishing, 2019). What better time to blog here again, two years after my last rambling. I’ve been reading the whole time, but putting reviews on Goodreads. Time for some backups (and pics of my dog reading).
“Tonight, everything is still possible.”
“Then the sky cracks open and the light shines through.”
Cracked by Clare Strahan (Allen & Unwin, 2014) has all things I love in a book: a waddling senior staffy, nature, graffiti, hot ranga who rides bmx, one angry young woman. My regular refrain: how did it take me so long to find this, get around to read it. Also, how has this book not won awards?? I’ll give it one now: Fav Book I Just Finished Reading.
This has spoilers. If you want to read with the spoilers hidden, go to my Goodreads version. (You don’t have to be a member to read it.)
Two weeks into my 2018 Reading Challenge half of January’s books changed, but I got through all four and loved my surprise additions. (No DNFing around here.) I also love Gabrielle Williams’ books, so I’ve been wanting to read My Life as a Hashtag (Allen and Unwin, 2017) for a year. It only took a reading challenge to make it happen.
“I was going to have the worst night of my life, and they should be there for it. That was what friends did for each other.”
“We need our monsters to know what it is to be human.”
I came to Ballad for a Mad Girl wishing for another magnificent tale woven through my soul by the hand of Vikki Wakefield. The story is entirely more strange than I anticipated. I still can’t work out if Grace could see unquiet ghosts or if she had one of those annoying mental illnesses. Grace is as confused as me.
Note: this is slightly spoilery. if that bothers you, read until you get to the dog, then stop. Dogs always sidetrack me.
“Everything in Mobius stretched to reach the light: we built our houses on stilts, our trees grew tall and spindly, our shadows were long.”
When you’re stuck between yesterday and tomorrow, where is there to go? Inbetween Days by Vikki Wakefield (Text Publishing, 2015) was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of The Year Older Readers 2016 and longlisted for the Inky Award 2016. I’m hopeful of winning all round!
I read Special by Georgia Blain (Random House, 2016) knowing nothing about the author or her books. After reading I found out she was diagnosed with brain cancer last November.
“That hour, that ambiguous space between light and dark, between embracing what’s possible and falling into despair, is Blain’s uneasy new home.” – The Sydney Morning Herald
I’m glad Georgia Blain found time to write Special during her uneasy years left. And I look forward to reading more of her books. The post apocalyptic world Fern Marlow inhabits is a future where we could be heading.
This blog has a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
of ceiling wax 