The three #loveozya novels I've chosen are all ones I've picked up after seeing authors speak at events - all three at the Sydney Writers' Festival All Day YA, in fact! I saw James Bradley and Sarah Ayoub at last year's event, and Sarah (again) and Tamar Chnorhokian were both on the panel about diversity in YA this year (which, by the way, I'm hoping to write here about over the next few days!).

I can tell you I'm off to a good start on this reading goal - I'm writing this on Saturday night and today managed to read The Silent Invasion (I thought it was really good and am keen to get my hands on the sequel now!)

I'm planning to start Hate is Such a Strong Word next, and then The Diet Starts Monday after that.


We have another long weekend coming up in two weeks from now, so if this goes well I might try the same again then - I'd love to know if any of my Aussie friends are keen to join me for a Queen's Birthday readathon then!

xo Bron

We had a delicious bbq lunch in the sunshine, and then it was back in to the funniest session of the day, which was an exploration of character development through a live 'Dungeons and Dragons' style game - complete with sound effects from a live band! SO MUCH FUN. This was my first experience with D&D, and it was brilliant. I loved seeing not only how the panelists developed their characters according to their experiences, but also how they played off of each other - especially Amie and Jay, who of course have a lot of experience developing characters and narratives together.

xo Bron

Whisper is a YA sci-fi book, with a fantasy feel, and is the first in a new series for Lynette. One of my favourite things about the Medoran Chronicles is the way she writes characters and their relationships, and we are treated to more of that in this one - although those characters do find themselves in perhaps a more sinister setting.
We know almost nothing about the protagonist ('Jane Doe') or her situation when we start, and I felt like the story unfolded really well. The pacing felt perfect, and I really enjoyed getting to know Jane as the book progressed. I loved that we learned more about Jane as the people around her did, but more about the situation as Jane learned what was going on.
This book had a some twists and surprised me a couple of times.  I found the ending pretty satisfying,  but can't wait for the next one to come out because I really want to know what comes next!

I gave this one 4/5 stars! It felt like a fresh idea, and I think it's a must read for fans of the Medoran Chronicles, as well as anyone looking for some #loveozya sci-fi, or a story set in a 'gritty underbelly' of Sydney!

xo Bron

***
Whisper is out now from Pantera Press, who kindly sent me a free copy. 
All opinions here are my own.

Jane Harper
I loved Jane Harper's debut novel The Dry, and was excited to see the attention it got all over the world. I'd love to talk to her to find out what it was like to have your debut novel take off the way The Dry did, how it felt to be writing the follow up - Force of Nature - in the midst of all the buzz, and I'm also always interested in what it is like to make changes to  a book that feels so Australian for an international market. I think Jane will be touring when her new book - The Lost Man - comes out later this year, and I'll definitely be watching out for opportunities to see her speak.

Maxine Beneba Clarke
If you've visited my blog before you probably know that The Hate Race is one of my favourite books, and Maxine Beneba Clarke is pretty much an automatic buy for me - across any genre/format/age that she writes. I have no idea what I would actually say to her if we met, but I would love to hear her speak about her work, and about anything, really.


Hannah Kent
I actually have met Hannah Kent before - she spoke at the ANU when The Good People was released - so this is kind of a cheat, but I would love to talk to her more. Her two novels so far have been historical fiction, and I'm really interested to know more about her inspiration and research processes - like, how does she know when she has come across a story she wants to tell? And how does she make it feel so authentic when she is telling it? Also,  Hannah and I both were Rotary exchange students (she went to Iceland and I to Denmark) and it would be really interesting to chat a bit more about that common experience and how it has shaped our lives and identities.


Colson Whitehead
This is a bonus one, since his books sit next to Hannah Kent's on our shelves and I noticed them when I was grabbing The Good People for a photo. Colson Whiteheads books are all so different from each other that I am really intrigued to know more about where his ideas come from. He was in Australia last year and I would have loved to have seen him speak!



Let me know which authors you'd like to meet by leaving a link below, or in the comments!
xo Bron

Jen is at her wit's end. Her fifteen-year-old daughter has just been found after going missing: four days lost and alone in the desolate countryside. Lana won't talk about it. The police think the case is closed. But Jen can't leave it alone. Lana is acting strangely: she stops going to school, she sleeps with the light on. With her daughter increasingly becoming a stranger, Jen is sure the answer lies in those four missing days. 

But will Lana ever reveal what happened?

When I read Whistle on the Dark I definitely spent quite a bit of time, in the back of my mind, thinking about what the 'big twist' was going to be, and when it was going to come alone. I had kind of expected to be reading this on the edge of my seat, holding my breath while I worried about whether everyone was going to be okay, and I was definitely waiting for something sinister to come along at any minute. It was like my brain was confused that the story unfolding before me wasn't fitting into the shape I wanted from a thriller. It was interesting to hear at book club that a lot of people felt similar things - that they were waiting for something big to happen, and for all the clues (red herrings) planted along the way to come together - and that overall people seemed to feel more positively about the book after we discussed it.

Personally, I definitely felt like the 'disappointing' bits of my experience when reading this came from the expectations I had for it to be twisty/thriller-y. Interestingly (I think), I can't actually figure out why I thought it was a thriller in the first place. As you can see from above, it is clear in the blurb that the daughter is home, and there is nothing on the cover that says says anything like "perfect for fans of Gone Girl" (you know, the sort of marketing blurb we're seeing lately). The word 'dark' in the title sounds a bit sinister (although I learned at book club that 'to whistle in the dark' is an expression) and there are birds on the cover (I'm on team 'birds are creepy' all the way), but I really couldn't say what made me so sure I was picking up a thriller when I started.

I think I probably would have enjoyed reading this more if I hadn't had any expectations (or, perhaps if I hadn't had the wrong expectation!) We talked a little bit last night about the sorts of ways you can find your preconceptions changing the reading experience you have with a book - for instance if a book has been really hyped it can feel like a bit of a let down if you don't love it as much as everyone else, or - particularly in kids/YA - when something you're reading ends up being written for perhaps a younger audience than you had thought (or than it is being marketed for). In general I'm pretty good at avoiding developing a view on how something will be before i read it - I tend to let those really buzzy books cool down a bit before I get into them, and doing so much reading on my kindle has sort of got me out the habit of looking at back covers - but it is something that I think is so interesting that I'll probably be more conscious of it in the future.

Something else I thought was super interesting from our book club meeting, that I might talk about a bit more another time, is the fact that the discussion of the book seemed to enhance most people's experience with the book - overall we seemed to walk away with a more positive feeling about it than when we each had read it (yay book club and bookish chats!). This was certainly the case for me - I had rated this one 2.5/5 stars (which means it was ok - I didn't regret reading it or the time I spent on it, but I'm not sure i'd pick it up again) to 3/5 stars. Based on my experience with this one I would pick up Emma Healey's first book, and I'd be really interested to know more about what she would like readers to have taken away from this. There was some pretty excellent social commentary on here, especially in terms of social media, and - like I said above - the writing was fun and easy to get through. The way the narrative was split into little almost vignette-y chapters was  clever - it felt a bit frantic and I thought she did a remarkable job of putting me in Jen's mind.

Next month we're reading Emily O'Grady's The Yellow House - about which I know NOTHING, except that it is the winner of the 2018 Australia/Vogel's Literary award, and I'm hoping to read in the next week or so.

I'd love to know if you've read Whistle in the Dark and what you thought of it! Or if there's been a time where you've kind of ruined a book for yourself because of your expectations!

xo Bron

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Kirsty Manning talk about her new book - The Jade Lily - at my local Harry Hartog store. I won copies of both of Kirsty's books (this one and The Midsummer Garden) in a giveaway, and when they arrived I was super excited - they both sounded totally in my wheelhouse!

The Jade Lily follows two connected stories - in one it is the late 1930s and Romy is a young Jewish girl who has escaped Austria, fleeing with her family to Shanghai. In the other it is is 2016 and Romy's granddaughter Alexandra is trying to find out more about her Chinese heritage (Alexandra's mum was adopted from China by Romy and her husband).

Kirsty spoke so beautifully about the books - her inspiration and her research, and how important it was to her to represent this time and place appropriately. It was so interesting to hear about her discussions with people who had lived the experience she was writing about - living in Shanghai during WW2 - while she worked on the book. I think it is always interesting to hear about the process authors take to make sure a story is told in an appropriate way when they writing something outside of their own experiences. You could tell from the way Kirsty spoke about her research that this had been super important to her, and it seems like she has done a wonderful job. (Check out her website for some info about her inspiration and research for The Jade Lily, including a video where she talks a bit about it)

I really enjoyed the plot (plots) in this books, and the beautiful, descriptive writing made it even better. The sights and smells - good and bad - were described so perfectly in this book, I felt like it really helped transport me to Shanghai and I felt completely immersed in the story. I especially loved the description of food and herbs and traditional medicine throughout - herb lore and the 'medicine/healer women' are some of my favourite things in books.

 Overall, this was a gorgeous book, and the event was really special. I'm looking forward to reading Kirsty's other book The Midsummer Garden too!

xo Bron