BOOK REVIEW: The Girl with the Lost Smile written by Miranda Hart and illustrated by Kate Hindley Hachette Children’s Group October 2017 Paperback, $26.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Fiction / Children & Teenagers / Action & Adventure 7/10 As much as we’d love our lives to be one big festival of happiness, the reality is […]
BOOK REVIEW: Consent by Leo Benedictus Faber & Faber February 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Crime / Thriller 2/10 Note: This cover does NOT have a black border… but it disappeared in the white background of the page. This book is an experiment. We’re experimenting together. You are part of the experiment, if […]
BOOK REVIEW: My Mother, a Serial Killer by Hazel Baron and Janet Fife-Yeomans Harper Collins March 2018 Paperback, $32.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Non-Fiction / Biographies & True Stories / True Crime 6.5/10 Dulcie Bodsworth murdered three men. And she would have got away with it too, if it weren’t for her pesky daughter. This […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Mulberry Tree by Allison Rushby Walker Books July 2018 Paperback, $17.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Middle Grade / Mystery / Supernatural 6/10 Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree, or she’ll take your daughters … one, two, three. Ten-year-old Immy and her family run away from their storm cloud of problems to […]
BOOK REVIEW: Alone by Christophe Chabouté Faber & Faber July 2018 Paperback, $32.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Graphic Novel / Translated 9/10 Available in English for the first time—the internationally bestselling graphic novel and an Official Selection at France’s prestigious Angoulême Internaional Comics Festival by master illustrator-storyteller Chabouté (Park Bench, Moby-Dick). On a tiny lighthouse island […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Court Reporter by Jamelle Wells ABC Books February 2018 Paperback, $32.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Non-Fiction / Biographies & True Stories / True Crime 9/10 For the majority of us who don’t work in jobs related to the criminal justice system or who haven’t chosen to become court watchers in our spare […]
BOOK REVIEW: Ponti by Sharlene Teo Picador April 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Fiction / Contemporary / Literary 6/10 One day I will learn to be as expertly cruel as she is. She finds the weakness she wants behind the eyes, tucked within crow’s feet and worry lines, all that fear and blind […]
BOOK REVIEW: How to Buy a Home – From Debt to a Deposit by Emily Power Random House Australia May 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Non-Fiction / Accounting & Finance / Property & Real Estate 6/10 Home ownership has long been considered the great Australian dream. But when you’re a first home buyer […]
BOOK REVIEW: One Way by S. J. Morden Gollancz April 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Science Fiction / Mystery 8/10 “This isn’t a pardon. You’ll remain guilty of second-degree murder. This isn’t commuting your sentence. You’ll serve the rest of your hundred and twenty years. This isn’t parole. You’ll be at all times […]
BOOK REVIEW: Bab Sharkey and the Animal Mummies – The Weird Beard by Andrew Hansen and Jessica Roberts Walker Books Australia May 2018 Paperback, $14.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Children’s Fiction / Middle Grade / Action & Adventure 7.5/10 The Chaser’s Andrew Hansen, along with his designer/illustrator wife Jessica Roberts, joins a long list of Australian […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Book Ninja by Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus Simon & Schuster Australia June 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell General Fiction / Romance / Contemporary 7.5/10 Sometimes love means having to broaden your literary horizons. Frankie Rose is desperate for love. Or a relationship. Or just a date with a semi-normal […]
BOOK REVIEW: Misogynation – The True Scale of Sexism by Laura Bates Simon & Schuster Ltd April 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Non-Fiction / Society & Culture 6.5/10 We do not live in a bubble. Feminist author, advocate, and Everyday Sexism Project founder Laura Bates knows this all too well. In her third […]
BOOK REVIEW: Rory Branagan, Detective by Andrew Clover and Ralph Lazar HarperCollins March 2018 Paperback, $14.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Middle Grade / Mystery 3/10 ‘I’d like to know,’ I tell her, ‘WHERE my dad went. He disappeared when I was three. And I’d just like someone to tell me WHY.’ She comes so close […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester Hachette Australia March 2018 Paperback, $29.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Fiction / Modern & Contemporary Fiction 7/10 Natasha Lester’s previous two historic novels have starred strong female protagonists trailblazing away in a man’s world. The Paris Seamstress is essentially cut from the same cloth. This means that […]
BOOK REVIEW: Hive by A.J. Betts Pan Macmillan June 2018 Paperback, $16.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Young Adult / Science Fiction / Dystopia 6/10 All I can tell you is what I remember, in the words that I have. Hayley tends to her bees and follows the rules in the only world she has ever […]
BOOK REVIEW: Every Note Played by Lisa Genova Simon & Schuster Australia April 2018 Paperback, $32.99 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Fiction / Modern & Contemporary Fiction 7/10 Some people’s experience with motor neurone disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is confined to their knowledge of the late Stephen Hawking. Others may also know about the […]
BOOK REVIEW: After the Lights Go Out by Lili Wilkinson Allen & Unwin July 2018 Paperback, $19.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Young Adult / Contemporary / Speculative 7/10 Seventeen-year-old Pru Palmer lives with her twin sisters, Grace and Blythe, and their father, Rick, on the outskirts of an isolated mining community. The Palmers are doomsday […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Biggerers by Amy Lilwall Point Blank August 2018 Hardcover, $29.99 Reviewed by Steph O’Connell Speculative Fiction / Dystopia / Satire 9/10 Everybody became a bit mean. A bit individual. Units. That’s all humanity could say for itself – well, it couldn’t actually, because it was made up of too many, um, units. […]
BOOK REVIEW: Paris Dreaming by Katrina Lawrence Harper Collins November 2017 Hardcover, $35.00 Reviewed by Natalie Salvo Non-Fiction / Biographies & True Stories / Memoirs 6/10 Some people dream of New York. Others find London calling. For Australian beauty editor and journalist Katrina Lawrence, Paris is all that, as she writes in a book that […]
BOOK REVIEW: KILL THE ANGEL by Sandrone Dazieri Simon & Schuster, rrp $29.99 March 2018 Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar Paperback, Crime thriller 8 ½ /10 Book 2 in Sandrone Dazieri’s series sees Deputy Police Commissioner Colomba Caselli making a cautious return to work after the abuse she received in previous book Kill The Father, and […]
