Theresa Smith's Blog, page 9
January 25, 2025
Book Review: The Wedding People by Alison Espach
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people – but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall Inn who isn’t here for the big event.
Phoebe has dreamed of coming here for years. She hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband but now she is divorced and depressed, and not sure how to go on. She’s not been sure how to do anything, lately, except climb into bed and drink gin and tonics and listen to the sound of the refrigerator making ice.
When the bride discovers her elaborate destination wedding could be ruined by this sad stranger, she is furious. She has spent months accounting for every detail and every possible disaster – except for, well, Phoebe . . . Soon, both women find their best-laid plans derailed and an unlikely confidante in one another.
Uproariously funny and devastatingly tender, The Wedding People is an irresistible novel about love, friendship, dysfunctional families, and the unexpected paths that lead to happiness.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released August 2024
My Thoughts:I had seen this one popping up on Instagram here and there with mixed reviews. Some loved it, some seemed to think it didn’t live up to their expectations. This is an example where it just pays to read the book if you want to, because everyone likes different crackers, right? I loved this novel, absolutely 100% adored it. It was not at all what I was expecting but managed to exceed every possible expectation that I had.
But Phoebe hates the word fun. Phoebe thinks that if people could just stop using the word fun, stop expecting everything to be fun, everything could be fun again.
Phoebe is depressed, to the point of seeing no way forward. Her husband left her for her best friend, her cat has just died, her career is going nowhere, and she is unable to have children despite multiple IVF attempts, and both her parents are dead. She’s checked into the Cornwall Inn, her dream holiday destination, and she has no intention of checking out. She has a plan, and yet, in one swift move of trying to stop the bride from getting into the elevator with her and causing said bride an injury to her hand, Phoebe derails her own best laid plan, and the trajectory of her life is completely altered.
She wonders if this is the difference between growing up with and without a mother. Having a mother helps you believe that everybody wants to hear every little thing you think. Having a mother helps you speak without thinking. It allows you to trust in your most awful self, to yell and scream and cry, knowing that your mother will still love you by the end of it. In her teens, Phoebe was regularly astonished by how awful her friends were to their mothers, and the mothers just took it, because the mothers had made their own mistakes.
I loved the way this story unfolded. Phoebe was such a glorious protagonist. Her honesty was devastatingly hilarious, and I felt so much empathy for her and the place she was in within her life. Her journey to end her life gets turned around as a fresh start, and she changes so much over the course of the week in her role as one of the ‘wedding people’ as well as being a force for change for others, without even trying. She offers, to the other wedding people, a new ear to bend, a fresh confidant, someone new to offload all their problems and viewpoints onto, and Phoebe, in her newly emerged state of not actually caring about these people she doesn’t know, offers her sage advice to each, and in the end, begins to care after all.
She loves deep, winding conversations that go up and down, especially in the dead of night when everyone should be sleeping. She has forgotten the way conversations, really good ones, can change her – shape-shift her like a tree. Sometimes leave her bare, sometimes leave her fuller.
The novel is structured whereby each chapter is a day of the wedding week, and as well as detailing the day as it is occurring, Phoebe unpacks her own marriage, her life of growing up without a mother, her career goals and writing dreams, and her life since being divorced. This one was often hilarious, frequently sad, and so, so life affirming. A brilliant novel about love, marriage, friendship, family, and finding your way back from the brink. One of my favourites of the year so far.
Love is visible – it paints the air between two people a different colour, and everyone can see it.
January 24, 2025
Book Review: The Cicada House by Ella Ward
When Caitlin inherits a significant sum of money on her fortieth birthday, she decides to break the habits of a lifetime and throw caution to the winds. She’s about to tell her husband Paul that they’re leaving London on a once-in-a-lifetime journey to Eat Pray Love their way around the world, only … she doesn’t tell Paul that, because before the candles are lit, he tells her that he’s very much in love with someone else. After a drunken night trying to console herself, Caitlin books tickets to Australia – anything to get as far away as possible.
What does the world feel like when it’s ending for you, and no-one else? What does life feel like when you are running away from it? This is a story that begins in a way you expect and ends very far from there. It is a story of creaking English hallways and vast Australian skies. Of hands that feel like warm sandpaper. Cicadas that sing so loudly they drown out the grief. Of white wine and an old piano and children who want their parents back from the dead. It is a magical tale of travel and mystery. And a very human tale of sex and loss and seawater and the primal joy of coming home. This is The Cicada House.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Released January 2025
My Thoughts:I love a good long sea change novel, where the protagonist travels to some far-flung place to find themselves after a life changing event. So, from the get-go, The Cicada House ticked a lot of boxes for me. However, while I was quite satisfied meandering along with a story like that, The Cicada House threw in another little surprise, a dash of magical realism that took the story to another level. I find when it comes to magical realism it’s best to just go with it and not question the mechanics or viability of it within the context of real life. Unlike fantasy or paranormal novels, magical realism pops up in general fiction, usually when you least expect it, and if you keep an open mind, it can be a really rewarding plot twist, as was the case within The Cicada House.
Caitlin was an incredibly human character, and by that, I mean fully realised and relatable, flawed, awkward, striving to be better, but constantly castigating herself for her own shortcomings. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her grandparents in a very quiet, polite, and contained environment. She learnt at a young age to keep her emotions in check, to not bother with friends, and to acquiesce instead of question. At the opening of the novel, she is home alone while her husband was away at work, and prior to him returning, she unmakes the house from the way she likes it and likes to live back into the way he does. That, for me, defined the type of person Caitlin was right from the outset.
The Cicada House, Caitlin’s destination for her sea change, was not quite what she had been expecting. Indeed, it wasn’t even the property she had booked online, but another one offered as a last resort to make up for the booking debacle. The descriptions of this house were so familiar to me, having grown up in rural Victoria, and having been inside houses like this many, many times over. I’m not sure though I could have stayed there with the outdoor loo, although my decision on this comes as a fully informed Australian on exactly what kind of spiders and snakes could be lurking in there after so long out of use. Being from the UK, Caitlin was blissfully unaware of those aspects, fortunately for her!
As I mentioned above, I was enjoying this story as it was, an English woman experiencing Australia for the first time, solo travelling for the first time, and trying to come to terms with her new life as a forty-year-old divorced woman. Who was she? Who had she ever been? And who did she want to be going forward? Enter David, the handyman who shows up out of nowhere and begins to fix things around the house, who seems to know this house and where to find things in a way that a handyman normally wouldn’t. Who shows up randomly and regularly, and slowly but surely, clears a space for himself within Caitlin’s heart.
However, when Caitlin begins to mention him to her new friends within the town, no one knows who he is, and he isn’t the handyman sent over by the real estate. The story dips into its magic here and as Caitlin begins to realise who he is and where he is from, more of his story is opened up to her in a magical sort of transportive kind of way. I don’t really know how to describe it in any other way without veering into spoiler town, so we’ll leave it at that. I do think the author, Ella Ward, did a splendid job of writing this aspect of the story in a way that reflected both Caitlin’s disbelief on what was happening and her acceptance of it.
In the end, there is a metaphorical and an actual moving on for both Caitlin and David, and I really liked this ending, for all involved. Caitlin shows a lot of character growth over the course of this novel, and as an invested reader, I appreciated that. The Cicada House was an engrossing read, deeply moving at times and overall, a fabulous journey of self-discovery, love and friendship.
I listened to this on audio as well as reading the eBook, so I was fully immersed in the story, the hybrid read being a fantastic option for a long and involving story such as this one. It’s becoming my new favourite way to read. The Cicada House was our January book club pick and I’m looking forward to seeing what the other book clubbers thought of it.
January 10, 2025
Book Review: Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank’s life is full of all the excesses Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could’ve predicted.
Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it’s Cleo’s best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo’s marriage, or Frank’s financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.
As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.
My Thoughts:I’ve been immersed in this glorious novel all week, indulging in a hybrid read/listen. Almost impossible to believe this is a debut novel. The genius of Coco Mellors is stunning. I adored Blue Sisters, but I have to say, Cleopatra and Frankenstein would have been a hard act for her to follow.
The brilliance of this novel lies in the way the story is told. This is a story of two people who rush headlong into marriage but the story unfolds from a range of perspectives, so that in effect, it’s not just the story of Cleo and Frank, but the story of others who are within their circle.
Each chapter is like a jigsaw piece fitting neatly into the whole. Each character added a perspective to the story of Cleo and Frank that could not be garnered from either of them. So many moments throughout, that squeezed me dry and made my heart ache. And then there was the joy. A magnificent love story that will stand the test of time.
The reading year is off to a very good start.
January 4, 2025
Book Review: The Sirens by Emilia Hart
Lucy is running from what she’s done – and what someone did to her.
There’s only one person who might understand: her sister Jess. But when Lucy arrives at her sister’s desolate cliff-top house, Jess is gone.
Lucy is now alone, in a strange town steeped in rumour. Stories of men disappearing without a trace. A foundling discovered in a sea-swept cave. And women’s voices murmuring on the waves…
As Lucy searches for her sister, those voices get ever louder. They tell of two sisters, two centuries ago, bound and transported across the world. A world where men always get their way. A world that is at once distant, and achingly familiar.
Are these voices luring Lucy closer to her sister? Or will the secrets of the past pull them both under?
Published by HarperCollins Australia
Released 29 January 2025
My Thoughts:The Sirens is quite a complex story with several narrative threads moving it along. I enjoyed the way this story came together, culminating in the revelation of a family mystery along with confirmation of a mythological/supernatural aspect.
The chapters set in the past onboard the convict ship were incredibly engrossing, dread filling all the spaces in between with the appalling conditions the women were kept in and the certain knowledge of their fate at the end of their long and arduous journey. From the outset, you know this ship ends its journey as a shipwreck, and as you become attached to these women, that tragedy is an ever-present hum in the background of their chapters.
I really loved the epilogue, where the origin of the baby found at sea was fully explained, bringing all of the narrative threads full circle. Just as she did with Weyward, Hart has a talent for interlocking the past with the present. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and recommend it.
PS: I have included both the paperback/eBook and the special hardback edition cover images here as I think both covers beautifully convey so much about the story.
Thanks to HarperCollins Australia for the NetGalley arc.
January 1, 2025
Book Review: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family.
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
My Thoughts:I always experience a degree of anxiety over starting a new Sally Rooney novel. She is not prolific, her last release was back in 2021, and there is so much personal – and public – anticipation along with a degree of expectation for each new novel that I usually find myself rushing out to buy it in the days it is first released and then sitting it on my shelf for weeks after, waiting for the right time to begin. This lull between Christmas and New Year became my time to read the latest Sally Rooney, Intermezzo, and I think it was the right time too, a time when I could linger over it, re-reading passages and thinking about it without any other pressing work/life interference.
Intermezzo is about as perfect as a novel can ever be. I know I said the same thing about Beautiful World, Where Are You. I don’t know how she does it, but it seems like she improves even upon perfection with each new release. Or maybe, and I did feel this continually throughout Intermezzo, her focus is maturing as she herself gets older. Each new novel by Rooney also gives us characters in an older age bracket, or at the very least, more varied, as and as such, their life experiences have broadened and the issues that they are dealing with more complex and involved. Intermezzo is also her longest novel, over 400 pages. Anything less though would have been an injustice to the story.
Intermezzo follows two brothers in the wake of their father’s passing from cancer. With a ten-year age gap between them, they are not close, but with grief pressing between them, their relationship fractures even further. The chapters alternate between Peter and Ivan, with perspectives also offered from the women in their lives. Not long after his father’s death, Ivan meets an older woman, Margaret, and the two begin an intense and meaningful relationship. Peter is involved with two women, his first love, Sylvia, and a younger woman, who is the same age as Ivan, Naomi, whom for the majority of the novel, he treats quite shabbily. His relationship with Sylvia is complicated, they were together for more than six years but then an accident left her badly injured and suffering lifelong chronic pain. She ended their relationship, unable to participate in it fully any longer, yet while she keeps Peter in her life as a close friend and confidante, she also allows him to operate much in the way of a partner, a situation that is emotionally tenuous for both of them.
I really love how Rooney writes of these brothers, their relationship with each other, as well as with their mother, and the women that they are involved with. They are so bad at communicating with each other, there is so much anger simmering between them, but just below the surface, so much love, muddied though by the age gap, all that has gone on in Peter’s life while Ivan was still young, and their individual relationships with their father. Intermezzo is a novel with several love stories running through it and intersecting, but the most profound of these was the love story of Peter and Ivan. Rooney captures this over and over with such exquisite perfection, both the love, and the hate.
Ivan glances up at him now. Did you tell Naomi I’m a genius? he asks.
Feels himself almost fondly smiling. I don’t know, he says. Probably. If she said I did, I’m sure I did.
Well, I hope you realise I’m not.
To me, you are.
Rooney has a particular talent when it comes to writing deep emotion, inner turmoil, and all of the complex thoughts and regrets that swirl within the minds of humans, both fractured and whole. Peter, as the novel progresses, is not well within himself. More than grief ails him, he is weighted down by the loss of a life he thought he was going to have, and he is unable to see his way forward as he destroys his relationships with Ivan, Naomi, and Sylvia, in that order. Peter’s internal distress and momentum towards the brink of suicide is an example of some of the best writing I have ever come across in a novel. The creeping into Peter’s mind, that this is what he needs to do, that this is all that’s left, that everyone’s lives will be improved if he was gone, was so devastating to read, yet also, inevitable for the character up to that point. And in this moment too, Rooney was able to show the complexity of humans, for when Peter reaches out to his mother, we see a completely different side to her than previous – as is often the case in real life, people are rarely one dimensional.
Intermezzo is a novel filled with love and hope, despite the heavy themes of grief and loss. The romantic relationships within the novel are all out of the ordinary and underpinning the story is the idea that they shouldn’t be out of the ordinary, because there is no ordinary when it comes to love. There are obstacles, and the speculation of others, but in the end, it is the love that sits front and centre. Intermezzo finishes well, on a note of hope with a view towards the brothers moving forward and repairing their relationship as best they can, creating a new family without their father and with the women they love. The grief that hums in the background of the story often pushes its way out into unsuspecting moments, much like real life. I felt an increasing sense of loss as the end of the novel approached. I loved lingering within these pages, feeling the intensity and beauty of Rooney’s writing. Even if I have to wait another three years, at a minimum, for the next novel by her, I know it will be worth the wait.
He remembers the day last summer when he made that video, when his dad was still living at home, still well enough to go for walks every day, to play with Alexei in the garden, and the sun was shining. Afterwards they went back inside, back into the kitchen, which was cool and airy with the window open, and Ivan cooked dinner for both of them, he remembers, it was pasta that he cooked. Thinking about that day, the dog running for the tennis ball, the pasta that they ate together, the feeling wells up inside him painfully. Wanting to say and hear the words again, that can never again be said or heard. To return to the house once more, and not find it dark and empty, but airy and bright again with open windows. To spend an afternoon together, playing with the dog, eating dinner, doing nothing, only being together, just once more.
December 28, 2024
Top Books of 2024
I’ve been reluctant to draw a line under my reading for 2024 because this week has been a big one for reading books, knocking over four across the week. But the latest one I’ve started today is over 400 pages, so it’s not likely I’ll get it finished before end of day Tuesday. And even if I do, it’s only one book, hardly make or break for the reading stats.
According to Goodreads, which still remains my favourite way of keeping track of my reading, I read 117 books. My average book length in 2024 was 319 pages, which sounds about right as I have been leaning towards shorter books in recent years. My average rating for 2024 was 4.1 stars. Given how selective *fussy* I am nowadays, that also sounds about right.
Earlier this week I dropped my top ten books of 2024 onto Instagram, and then immediately realised I had left some favourites off the list and followed it up with an honourable mention featuring a further five. It’s always the way though, isn’t it? So hard to pick just a few. So here they are, my top 15 books of the year, in no particular order:
I could have added an extra five on top of this but where do you draw the line? Let’s just say, it was a very good year of reading and leave it at that! Happy New Year to all of you and I wish you all the best for a fantastic year of reading in 2025. See you there!
Book Review: That Island Feeling by Karina May
From holiday fling to homecoming … A whirlwind island romance becomes something more in an uplifting romantic comedy about finding yourself after heartbreak.
(This book is an adult romance novel that contains mature themes and content.)
A week on Pearl Island is exactly the R&R that perpetual planner Andie Alcott needs. Except instead of sipping pina coladas by the beach, she’s busy throwing her freshly divorced bestie, Taylor, a girls’ trip to remember, dealing with a double-booking fiasco and worrying about her ailing father on the mainland. But it’s cool – she has it covered. After all, everyone would be lost without her, right?
The last thing habitually barefoot local Jack Cooper wants is the headache of managing tourist bookings. But since he’s to blame for the island’s dwindling supply of holidaymakers, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep them happy – in particular, a beautiful visitor named Andie . . .
With sun-kissed sands, sapphire waters, oysters and wine, Pearl Island promises the perfect getaway – and maybe even a hot holiday fling. But what happens when the emotional baggage comes in excess, and island life suddenly feels all too real?
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released 31 December 2024
My Thoughts:All the holiday vibes are wrapped up in this one! That Island Feeling by Karina May is the perfect escapism if you’re on holidays – or perhaps wish you were!
When Andie organises a girls trip to help her best friend move on after her recent divorce, she shuttles them all off to a sleepy island that also happens to be the location where her parents honeymooned more than thirty years previous. With one parent passed away and the other in a nursing home fading with dementia, Andie is desperate to connect with her parents and chase that island feeling her late mum always spoke about.
From the get-go, nothing about the trip goes as planned, especially meeting Mr Right and trying to convince herself he’s just a holiday fling. As the romance steams up, the feelings turn real, and the drama sets in. Peopled with a cast of quirky island dwellers and predictable city slickers, That Island Feeling ticks all the rom com boxes for a good holiday read.
This is Karina May’s third novel (I think), and she has well and truly asserted herself as a rom-com writer. She definitely knows how to hook the reader and reel you in with romance and fun. It’s not all hearts and rainbows though with a thread of family obligation running through, the very real toll being a carer takes on a person, and the burden of bearing the weight of a failed venture.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: In the Hour of Crows by Dana Elmendorf
In a small town in Appalachia, people paint their doorways blue to keep spirits away. Black ferns grow where death will follow. And Weatherly Opal Wilder is a Death Talker.
When called upon, she can talk the death out of the dying and save their lives; only once, never twice. But this truly unique gift comes at a price, rooting Weatherly to people who only want her around when they need her and resent her backwater ways when they don’t.
Weatherly’s cousin, Adaire, also has a gift: she’s a Scryer and can see the future reflected back in dark surfaces. Right before she’s killed in an accident, Adaire saw something unnerving, and that’s why Weatherly believes she was murdered — never thinking for a moment that it was an accident. But when Weatherly, for the first time, is unable to talk the death out of the mayor’s son, the whole town suspects she was out for revenge, that she wouldn’t save him.
With the help of clues Adaire left behind and her family’s Granny Witch recipe box, Weatherly sets out to find the truth behind her cousin’s death, whatever it takes.
Imbued with magic, witchery, and suspense Dana Elmendorf’s In the Hour of Crows is a thrilling tale of friendship, identity, and love.
Released 1 January 2025
My Thoughts:In The Hour of Crows will be out in just a few days, but thanks to HQ Australia, I got to read an early copy.
This was a bit different to my usual reads, a paranormal crime/family mystery. Once I got my head around the hocus pocus aspect, I was away and slipping through the pages with ease.
Set in the Appalachia, it’s essentially a story about family secrets and greed. The paranormal aspects seemed to draw on the practice of traditional remedies but with dark magic that blurred the lines of doing good.
It probably could have done with a bit more fleshing out of the main characters as it was light on details for some and moved at a very rapid pace, dumping a lot of backstory in clumps and expecting the reader to remember it all at pivotal moments.
Overall, though, it fit the bill for reading in a day, and while it was a decent read, you wouldn’t want to linger over it too long.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
December 21, 2024
Book Review: Woo Woo by Ella Baxter
A thrilling and eccentric novel about what it means to make art as a woman, and about the powerful forces of voyeurism, power, obsession, and online performance, Woo Woo follows Sabine, a conceptual artist on the verge of a photo exhibition she hopes will be pivotal, as she plunges deeper into her neuroses and seeks validation in relationships—with her frustratingly rational chef husband, her horde of devoted Gen Z TikTok followers, and even a mysterious, potentially violent stalker.
Accompanying her throughout are Sabine’s strange alter egos, from hyper realistic puppets of her as a baby to the ghost of conceptual artist Carolee Schneemann, who shows up with inscrutable yet sage life advice. Ella Baxter approaches the desire to see and be seen that defines both the creative and romantic act with humour, empathy, and a good dose of wildness, driving Sabine to a surreal and compelling climax that forces her—and us—to reconsider what it means to be an artist and a partner.
My Thoughts:Read this week for book club Woo Woo by Ella Baxter is a satirical depiction of Melbourne’s art scene. Its absurdity was hilarious, the main character, Sabine, ridiculous and utterly self-absorbed, obsessed with her own self and filled with a sense of entitlement that bordered on deranged. I’m not sure if I read this novel in line with its intent, but I did enjoy it immensely and laughed out loud over and over. The ending confirmed my dislike of Sabine and my overall sense of confusion about what her husband saw in her. For the most part, I thought she was an immense embarrassment.
This is Ella Baxter’s second novel, I haven’t read her first, New Animal, but I probably will now. I enjoy the way she writes, its visceral, tangible, ignites all of your senses and repels as much as delights. Her overall theme of replacing fear with rage was not lost on me.
Something different that I’m sure should lead to some entertaining book chat.
Book Review: Tin Man by Sarah Winman
This is almost a love story.
Ellis and Michael are twelve when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of an overbearing father. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more.
But then we fast forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question, what happened in the years between?
This is almost a love story. But it’s not as simple as that.
My Thoughts:I’ve been slowly reading Sarah Winman’s backlist ever since Still Life changed my life. Tin Man is an exquisite portrait of grief, loneliness, deep love, and friendship. It’s about the intuitive kindness of strangers, acceptance, and forgiveness.
As is always the way with Sarah Winman, she just knows how to write about life and being human in the most beautifully meaningful way. I adored this novel and wept at its finish, and if you’ve read it, you’ll know why.
‘In my chest, the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.’
