Theresa Smith's Blog, page 8
March 2, 2025
Book Review: All the Golden Light by Siobhan O’Brien
1918, Belowla. As the Great War grinds to an end, Adelaide Roberts accompanies her father to a rugged island off the south coast of New South Wales. While loss and deprivation have decimated the country, Ada dreams of a life filled with purpose and hope.
On the windswept rocky outcrop she meets lighthouse keeper Emmett Huxley, a dark-eyed outsider haunted by his service in France. Adelaide and Emmett are inexorably drawn together, but Adelaide discovers plans have been made for her with decorated returned soldier Donal Blaxland, a local landowner.
Soon Adelaide is forced to make a choice about her future, and discovers that Donal harbours terrible secrets of his own. As she begins to understand the depths of Donal’s desperation, Adelaide knows she must leave – and between the treacherous waters of the coast and the rugged ranges of an ancient land, she fights for her survival, determined to live and love on her own terms.
A moving, uplifting story about the craving of the heart – and hope in the darkest of times.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Released January 2024
My Thoughts:This one was sitting on my tbr for a long time, having originally received a copy for review from HarperCollins. I ended up picking up a discounted audio version of it not that long ago, which prompted me to finally read it.
I’m conflicted about this novel. It changes its mind throughout, quite frequently, about what type of story it is. Starting off strong with suffragette vibes, this all rapidly fizzles out as our main character falls pregnant by one man and marries another. From here, it morphs into a bit of a domestic drama with pockets of early 20th century history thrown in, but that all gets left behind as the story takes a very sharp turn and begins to resemble a series of Underbelly, complete with abduction and forced drug use. It was a lot, and frankly, a strange story arc.
The one enduring theme throughout was the psychological effects of war on returned service men, specifically world war one in this story. I appreciate on the one hand what the author was trying to demonstrate with this issue, but on the other hand, I don’t think the story played out all that well with the direction she took it.
The pacing with this novel was off. At times, it was drawn out, others, the action ramped up so rapidly you were left backtracking to know what had just happened. Overall, a disappointing read, my second 2.5 star read in a row.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
In Brief – A Very Short Book Review on The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose
Molly the maid is no stranger to secrets…
She sees everything behind closed doors at the Regency Grand hotel: wiping away the dust and grime of guests passing through.
But one secret lies much closer to home.
An old trinket – a faux Fabergé egg – is revealed to be a precious antique during an appraisal at the hotel, making Molly a rags-to-riches sensation. But no sooner has the egg shown its value than it’s stolen: vanishing without a trace.
Determined to crack the case of the missing Fabergé, Molly begins dusting for clues – uncovering a mystery that stretches deep into the past.
For in the pages of a long-forgotten diary, written by her late gran, lie the secrets that could unlock all others – and only Molly holds the key.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Released April 2025
My Thoughts:The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose is the third instalment in her hugely successful Molly the Maid series. This one is a little different from the previous two as it’s a dual narrative, Molly in the present day and her Gran in the past, told through the medium of a diary. I quite enjoyed Gran’s backstory, but overall, this one was an average read for me, at best. I found the elements of the mystery far too dependent upon unrealistic coincidences, and the banter between the characters felt cheesy and overdone. It was a bit tedious.
Looking back over my ratings for each of these Molly the Maid books, the first book in the series was a solid 5 stars, the second was a 4 star read, for the Christmas special I gave 3 stars, but for this one, it’s 2.5 stars. I think Molly the Maid has reached the end of her road, and the happy ever after ending of this one makes me believe that it should be the final book.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
February 25, 2025
Book Review: Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh
WINNER OF THE READINGS NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION PRIZE
Mary Anne is painfully aware that she’s not a good wife and not a good mother, and is slowly realising that she no longer wants to play either of those roles. One morning, she walks out of the family home in Wollongong, leaving her husband and teenage daughters behind.
Wounded by her mother’s abandonment, adolescent Vivian searches for meaning everywhere: true crime, boys’ bedrooms, Dolly magazine, a six-pack of beer. But when Vivian grows up and finds herself unhappily married and miserable in motherhood, she too sees no choice but to start over. Her daughter Evie is left reeling, and wonders what she could have done to make her mother stay.
Emma Darragh’s unflinching, tender and darkly funny debut explores what we give to our families and what we take from them—whether we mean to or not. The stories in Thanks for Having Me are like a shoebox full of old photos: they aren’t in chronological order and few are labelled. Looking at a family this way reveals things we don’t see when these moments are neatly organised. Except that within these pages are a few moments you wouldn’t want to hold up to the light.
Released February 2024
My Thoughts:Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh was my latest audio book, and what an amazing listen it was. The structure of this one is what makes it such an absorbing read, for it follows three generations of women from the same family, but in pieces, with no chronological order – a novel in stories, as it is described on the cover. I didn’t really know what that meant until I was in the thick of it.
The narration of this one was done by three different narrators, one for each of our main perspectives: Mary Anne, Vivian, and Evie. It’s a novel where you can think of each story as a random puzzle piece in the history of this family, a jumble of stories when regarded separately, but a full and meaningful portrait when finished and regarded as a whole.
Thanks for Having Me is about mothers and daughters. There are readers who will connect with this novel on a whole other level and then readers who will not. I think it depends on your own experiences with the mother load. The mothers in this novel leave their children, are struggling, and have failed their daughter(s). But this is only the surface story. The deeper we go, the further in, we become aware of so much more.
This novel is deeply nostalgic for those of us who were children in the 1980s and teenagers in the 1990s, with so many cultural references and nods to the Australian lifestyle as it was back then. And sociologically, this one is an exploration on the lives of Australian women in the mid to late 20th century and the intergenerational impacts this had on women coming of age in a society that was giving them more freedom with one hand whilst continuing to limit their options with the other. There is so much that can be pulled out and examined from this novel, socially, psychologically, and culturally. I thought it was brilliant.
This novel reflects the complexity of families and their hidden inner workings. But most of all, it examines motherhood, the perceptions, the realities, and the human failings of those who hold that much revered and sometimes reviled title.
February 21, 2025
Book Review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realises Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
A novel of heart stopping twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is a story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.
Published by Penguin Books Australia
Released 4 March 2025
My Thoughts:Wild Dark Shore is at once, from the very first page, intensely atmospheric, a gripping mystery that morphs into a moving love story. Interweaving ecology with the intricacies of the human heart, Wild Dark Shore is an impactful, exquisitely rendered story that will linger on for the reader well past the final page.
Set on a fictional sub-Antarctic island, but loosely based on Macquarie Island, in terms of location and terrain and some of its history, Wild Dark Shore is novel that explores life in its extremity. Imbued with a heavy sense of dread, there is an atmosphere that pulses with a dark history, with more recent events embracing that darkness ferociously. Just as Rowan navigates the island and its mysteries, so too do we, as readers, know very little about what has gone on prior to her arrival. The Salt family are a closeknit unit, and yet, there is rift between them, and as Rowan becomes more aware of her surroundings, she begins to question more, to read between the lines, but even she doesn’t fully realise the series of events that has unfolded until they are upon her.
But here is the nature of life. That we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die.
The children of the Salt family have endured more than their fair share of trauma, as has Rowan herself, and Dominic. But it is the children and what they have been exposed to on the island that creeps into your veins, the secrets they are a party to, what they have seen, endured, and continue to hold within. On top of this, is the weight of living on an island that is being reclaimed by the sea, with every storm, the wild habitats disappearing, the history of it, both good and bad, sinking. And the seeds, millions of seeds in a seed bank, about to be lost in the ocean, with only a fraction of them able to be saved, the choosing resting on the shoulders of a 9-year-old boy obsessed with botany.
There are some incredibly moving scenes within this novel, both between people, as well as interactions with the natural world, two of which involving a humpback whale and her calf that were outstandingly written, so immersive and real. Charlotte McConaghy wields a special power when it comes to writing about the natural world set within the harshest of landscapes and the crisis that our planet is within the grips of.
I understand it so simply now, it is a love that lives in the body but unlike the body it never dissolves. It lasts forever.
This is a heavy novel, thematically and emotionally, dealing with multiple forms of trauma, depictions of death, and violence throughout. But it is beautifully written, not at all gratuitous with the way in which it presents the more disturbing aspects of the story. I loved it, and felt deeply moved by it, but I wanted a different ending. It doesn’t sit well with me, how it finished, and I’m giving it four stars instead of five on account of this. It’s nonetheless a novel I highly recommend, probably enjoyed more if you can swallow it whole rather than nibble at it here and there.
Thanks to Good Reading Magazine for the review copy.
February 20, 2025
Book Review: The Mix-up by Kylie Ladd
What would you do if you found out you’d been raising another couple’s child – and they’ve been raising yours?
Fourteen years ago, Kelsey and Raf Maccioni left hospital with their newborn daughter, Ammy. Days later, Shona and Nathan James welcomed the birth of their son, Zac.
The only thing the two couples have in common is the IVF clinic where their dreams came true. They are strangers to each other – for now.
Fast forward to April 2024 . . . Ammy has grown into a rebellious young woman, and Zac is a kind but introverted teenager.
Life may not be perfect for either family, but like everyone else they are muddling through.
Until Ammy takes a DNA test for a school project. At first the results are puzzling. Then disturbing. Then earth-shattering – when the IVF clinic admits a terrible mistake.
Published by Penguin Books Australia
Released February 2025
My Thoughts:The Mix-Up by Kylie Ladd is absolute top shelf contemporary Australian fiction. I’ve been reading and loving Kylie’s books as long as she’s been writing them, and while she never fails to deliver, she just keeps on outdoing herself. I loved this novel, and listening to it became something I craved. I couldn’t wait to get in the car and continue spending time with these characters. Traffic jam? Bring it on. Every red light and a train as well? Yes, please. Ending credits…what? No! Not yet!!
In a nutshell, the story is about an IVF blunder that puts two families into an absolute state of emotional turmoil. Told in alternating viewpoints of all the major characters, we get to form a pretty solid picture of the inner workings of these two families, and I was quick to form preferences and strong opinions.
This novel is a must-read for book clubs. There’s no way it won’t generate enough chatter to sustain beyond the pre-dinner drinks. It’s controversial, topical, involving, and dramatic. Everything you want in a book! I highly recommend the audio version. Outstanding narration that really pulled me into the story.
February 14, 2025
Book Review: Sing, Wild Bird, Sing by Jacqueline O’Mahony
It’s 1849 on the west coast of Ireland. Resilient Honora O’Donoghue is accustomed to fending for herself and to reading the language of the natural world. It was always said she’d been marked for something different, but it’s not until she suffers devastating losses in a country gripped by the Famine that Honora begins to understand how that difference will save her. With the hope of a better life in America calling, Honora keeps moving toward her freedom.
Across the Atlantic, she’s unfamiliar with the customs, jobs are scarce, and she has no money. She finds only one new friend, and Honora’s desperation is a state to be taken advantage of. Even the prospect of marriage is not without its conditions—and far from the dream she imagines. With so much disappointment and heartbreak in her past, Honora must decide what kind of life she wants, and what she’s prepared to do to get it.
Published by Lake Union Publishing
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:I bought this one based on the author, when it was first released, and then forgot about it. But I recently went through my Kindle and was reminded about this – and several other titles – that I really wanted to read. I loved Jacqueline O’Mahony’s debut novel, A River in the Trees, so I had high hopes for this one. She did not let me down.
Inspired by the tragedy of Doolough on the west coast of Ireland in March 1849. A group of starving people set out on a quest to beg for help from English landlords, crossing mountains, barefoot, dressed in rags, through snow. Turned away, they all died on the way back on the banks of a black lake. In this fictionalised account, one woman survives, and she flees Ireland hiding on a ship bound for America.
From an Ireland ravished by famine, to servitude in New York, to a brothel in the wild west of America, to finally, the great plains of Montana, this is a story of displacement, loss, grief, and fortitude. It’s also a story about the intersection between two displaced nations, the Irish and the Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest, through Honora and Joseph. It’s a grim story, particularly in the beginning, but Honora’s determination is inspiring, and once she meets Joseph, the story takes a hopeful turn.
Jacqueline O’Mahony writes with such instinct; her prose is unflinching in its honesty, devastatingly beautiful, and so atmospheric. Once again, she gave me goosebumps while reading. I look forward to her next release.
Book Review: The Ledge by Christian White
When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.
It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.
In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.
Released September 2024
My Thoughts:Read for March book club or, rather, listened to on my daily commute throughout the first half of this week.
The Ledge by Christian White has a real Stand by Me vibe. The author says in his notes at the end that he was heavily inspired by It and Lord of the Flies. I definitely checked that vibe throughout.
Even so, the hype for this one fell flat for me. I am a tough nut to crack when it comes to crime fiction, I’ll readily admit to that. I didn’t like the main character, even less so after the twist revealed at the end, and without empathy for a character, it’s a hard sell. I’m also a bit over the whole ‘return to the small town after decades away when a body is found’ plot line.
This is a case of the wrong reader for the wrong book, but you get that with book clubs. Not everyone likes the same type of book, and everyone gets a turn at picking. Better luck next time!
February 8, 2025
Book Review: After the Fall by Kirsten Alexander
When Giselle escapes to the north Yorkshire village of Hollydale, she doesn’t give much thought to what she might find there. She’s more concerned with what she’s leaving behind – a toxic marriage, the loss of her beloved sister, Lina, and the cloud of suspicion over the circumstances of Lina’s death.
But in this small community she makes new and fascinating friends, chief among them Margaret, a wealthy elderly local who lives in Chatswood Hall, the mansion perched on a hill above the village, and Tom, the local handyman. Giselle hopes to start life over, but the past cannot be outrun and her husband will not be cut loose, threatening to arrive in Hollydale at any moment.
When a bomb explodes on the one road that leads to her cottage, Giselle realises that her Hollydale life is larger and more complicated than she’d understood.
Released February 2025
My Thoughts:After the Fall is the much awaited new release from Kirsten Alexander. It’s a powerful story about breaking free, but with a quirky twist and a dash of the paranormal in the most delightfully unexpected way.
After the death of her sister from cancer and a subsequent coronial inquest into the circumstances of her death at home, Giselle makes a snap decision to flee her marriage. She flies across the world to a village in the Yorkshire Dales, to a cottage she had booked months ago for a holiday away with her husband. Fleeing to a place that her husband knows about and using funds from a joint account were never going to guarantee her safety.
The novel is slow moving at first as Giselle is lost in a barrage of memories as she processes that she’s actually left. The recounts of cruelty and gas lighting form a tight picture of coercive control that was spilling into physical violence and rape. Her husband continues to stalk her via text. While difficult at times to read, these scenes are necessary to fully appreciate the damage Giselle is suffering.
The village is filled with quirky characters. Everyone knows everything about everyone else but is particularly closed mouthed about certain things. I had a bit of a Twin Peaks meets Fargo vibe with a bit of Northern Exposure thrown in. It was fantastic.
Ultimately, this is a story about breaking free, but it’s also about hope, community, and female friendships. There is an environmental aspect to the story that was woven through with ease. The pacing in the second half of the book was much swifter than the first half, I’d have liked that to be evened out, but otherwise, a cracker of a read. Loved the ending.
Thanks to Ultimo Press for the review copy.
February 1, 2025
Book Review: Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
WINNER OF THE 2024 MATT RICHELL AWARD FOR NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR
Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers and a dog-eared novel collection.
While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she’s actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.
With her daringly specific and intimate voice, Madeleine Gray has created an irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing; about the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century; and about the winding, torturous and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.
Released October 2023
My Thoughts:This one has been on my tbr for way too long. Green Dot – so aptly named – has an affair storyline, and while I’m not the biggest fan of stories about affairs, particularly when told from the perspective of the ‘other’ woman, this one sang to me.
Hera, the protagonist in Green Dot, is young, nearing her mid twenties but behind her counterparts in terms of career progression and generally being ‘sorted’ on the life front. She’s done three arts degrees back to back and is living with her father, rent-free, and finds herself in the position of finally needing to find a job and take that next step into adulting.
Enter Arthur. From the get-go, there is a power imbalance within the relationship between Hera and Arthur. They meet at work, he is a journalist while she is a comment moderator, he’s also the boss of his department and significantly older than her, financially secure, and of course, married. What starts out as an office flirtation rapidly progresses to an affair.
The novel is written in a first-person ominiscent narrative style, giving the reader the benefit of hindsight, as Hera breaks the fourth wall regularly throughout the novel to remind us that she knows she was behaving badly, stupidly, pathetically, etc. within certain situations with Arthur. I think it is here, within this space, that made me like this story so much and feel empathy for Hera instead of disdain. She’s so young and so vulnerable, so desperate to be within the next stage of her life.
Green Dot is funny, particularly in the beginning, but the humour does fall off once the affair intensifies. It’s very much a coming of age story for Hera, and as she reaches the conclusion, at long last, that this is not the right relationship for her, she also realises that the life she was reaching for with such desperation is not particularly the life she even wants.
I enjoyed this novel a lot. Despite the main character being so much younger than me and such a disaster throughout, it ends on a hopeful high and I think it has a lot to offer to many readers.
Belated thanks to Allen & Unwin for the review copy.
January 27, 2025
Book Review: The Story Thief by Kyra Geddes
Her family’s story made Henry Lawson famous. But was it his story to tell?
Fact and fiction meld into one in this stirring family saga set against shifting landscapes and pivotal moments in Australian history.
Lillian was born in 1892, the same year Henry Lawson wrote ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and cemented his place in Australia’s literary canon. When Lillian reads the short story as a teenager, she is convinced that it is based upon her own family and becomes determined to prove it. But as the years pass, the truth becomes more problematic, and Lillian must decide what is more important: holding onto the past or embracing the future.
The Story Thief is about mothers and daughters, love, loss and the power of words. Ultimately it is about how each of us must find our own way to live.
Released April 2024
My Thoughts:This story opens with Lillian as a child, living in the bush with her parents and four siblings, her father a drover, constantly away for work, and her mother, therefore by default, ‘the Drover’s Wife’. In the prologue, Lillian’s mother and siblings, along with her uncle, perish in a raging bush fire, leaving the eight-year-old Lillian an orphan. However, instead of hardship ahead of her, a benefactor steps in, her father’s employer, who pays for her to attend a convent boarding school and then university beyond that. Her father only features in the story as the drover off working, who later passes away from a fever but never sees his daughter even once after the tragic fire.
At the age of sixteen, while at school, Lillian is exposed to Henry Lawson’s story, The Drover’s Wife, and immediately becomes obsessed with the idea that Henry Lawson must have met her mother and her family and then written about them. This then morphs into her believing that Henry Lawson has stolen her family’s story, specifically that of her mother, and become famous on the back of it. If you’re worried I’ve just spoiled the story, don’t be. All of this happens by the end of chapter two.
A flimsy theory, but Lillian was sixteen and alone when she formed this belief. I could credit it for a while, but the woman is beyond fifty years old before she really lets it go and accepts that there is almost no likelihood of Henry Lawson having written his story based upon her family, and also, moreover, that all stories are in effect taken from someone or something, that authors are always seeking inspiration from the real world. As an English teacher and avid reader, it took Lillian a very long time to arrive at this realisation.
Now, many of you who have been with me for the long run might remember that I began my blogging and reviewing days as editor of historical fiction with the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge. As such, it pains me to no end to not like this novel and to also feel compelled to draw attention to why. Historical fiction has come a long way, so far, and so much for the better. I still love reading historical fiction, but I read far less of it now than what I used to, for many and varied reasons. I digress here, but to circle back to my point, this novel, The Story Thief, is not an example of the finest in terms of Australian historical fiction.
For most of this novel, I just kept asking out loud, what is this even about? Because beyond the above outline, it is incredibly encyclopaedic. It’s like the author just put in everything to happen of significance in Australia between the years of 1900 and 1960. It was fact dump after fact dump, even woven into dialogue, which was not natural at all. By the halfway mark, I had started to skim read, and this was a long book too, near on 400 pages. Perhaps if the author had just stuck with making this a story about identity, with a few key themes and events thrown in, it would have worked better. I have no doubt that Trove is a treasure trove when it comes to finding out things about our history, but sometimes less is better, quality over quantity, and all that jazz.
As to Lillian, the protagonist of the story. For the most part, I liked her, enjoyed her as a character, until the point where she deliberately estranged herself from her daughter, her only living child. I found that bizarre in a character who had lamented for the majority of the story the loss of her own mother. From this point on, I just couldn’t wait to be done with it.
In the meantime, I really wish I’d picked a different book for my long weekend read.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
