Jennifer Kloester's Blog, page 14

Book Review of Kylie Scott’s “Trust”

I can still remember my first Kylie Scott book, it was Lick and it was brilliant. One of those books that grabs you from the first page and doesn’t let go. Lick was the first book in the Stage Dive series and I totally recommend all four books: Lick, Play, Lead, Deep.

The awesome, rockin’ Stage Dive series

Kylie’s got a great style and she knows how to grab your interest and hold it to the last page. I’d heard that Trust was different from her other books, so I was keen to see what she’d written this time. I wasn’t disappointed. The first chapter was startling – not at all what I’d expected and totally visceral and traumatic. It was so convincing that it pulled me in and by the end of chapter three I was dying to know how this was going to turn out. This is a brilliantly told story of two older teens whose lives are changed forever by a horrific experience. The main characters, Edie and John, are so real and you really want them to figure out how to get past their nightmare experience. Kylie Scott totally understands young people but more than that she understands relationships and angst and how people try to work through the crap in their lives. I loved the way Edie and John evolved, how they got to know each other and the realistic way in which they looked out for each other after what they’d been through. The secondary characters were also well-written. I think it takes a skilled writer to make  every character in a book feel real but they do in Trust. This book is filled with friendship and anger and revenge. It’s ‘New Adult’ fiction which means there’s swearing and sex scenes, but they’re really well done and never gratuitous. This is a great story. I loved Trust and read it at one sitting. Highly recommended.

Kylie Scott’s bestselling series

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My Garden Odyssey – beginnings

I’ve always wanted a beautiful garden. A romantic garden, full of flowers and bits of sculpture with birds and insects humming everywhere. For years I’d weed the land around our house and wonder how to turn it into the garden of my dreams. Oh, I’d buy plants – gorgeous plants that I’d see in the local nursery screaming ‘buy me!’ I’d bring them home and think, ‘where can I put this?’ Then, without the faintest idea about whether it needed sun or shade, lots of water or only a little, I’d just stick it in the ground and forget about it. Most of the plants died but occasionally I got lucky. Two tiny roses I bought for a couple of dollars at a clearance sale are now enormous and every year they reward me with magnificent yellow and pink flowers. Unfortunately, the rest of my hopeful purchases did not follow their example.

Into the grinder

Luckily, we already had some lovely old trees. A couple of elms and wattles, a bottlebrush and a huge spreading peppermint gum. But the biggest tree was at the back of the house. A huge old pittosporum with flowers that gave off the most incredible scent on warm spring evenings. Trouble was, a previous owner had planted it right by the back door. Worse, in order to reach the sun, it had developed a precarious lean and its roots had actually cracked our massive bluestone doorstep. I loved that tree, but the increasing damage to the house meant it had to go. It was sad seeing it come down. It went from tree to sawdust much too quickly.

These crunchers will eat anything!

Still, good things were to come from cutting down that beautiful tree. I didn’t know it then but that tree’s destruction was a portent of amazing things to come in my garden …

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