Bookish Bron

Review :: The Mother-in-Law :: Sally Hepworth

The Mother-in-Law, the brand new novel be Melbourne writer Sally Hepworth, was near top of my list of most anticipated books for 2019. I was delighted to find a copy waiting for me when I arrived home from our holiday, and when I finally sat down to read it this week I devoured it in two short sittings.

Someone once told me that you have two families in your life - the one you are born into and the one you choose. Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don't choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.

From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite, but Lucy knew, even after marrying Oliver, that they'd never have the closeness she'd been hoping for.

But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.

That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something...

In this compelling family drama Hepworth's use of alternating points of view works perfectly to examine the way people make assumptions about what others are doing and saying (or not saying), how this can lead to two people walking away with completely different views of a situation,
and the way these misunderstandings can shape our relationships.

I really felt like I got to know both Lucy and Diana so well throughout the book, and my heart was breaking over the parts of their stories that they couldn't or didn't share. Seeing both their stories from 'the inside' meant that I as the reader was privy to things the other other characters weren't and there were times when I just wished I could step in as the peace maker between them! I definitely needed a few tissues by the end.

I adored this book, and I know it will be one I'll be recommending a lot this year! I gave it 4 stars, and I think it would be perfect for fans of Australian family drama like Liane Moriarty.

xo Bron

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I received a free copy of The Mother-in-Law from Pan Macmillan Australia. All views are my own.

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Review :: The Widow of Ballarat :: Darry Fraser

I was really keen to read Darry Fraser's The Widow of Ballarat after getting a taste of her writing in HQ Fiction's Christmas release Our Country Christmas (as an aside, this is one of my favourite things about those kinds of anthologies/short story collections - it is such a great way to discover new favourite authors!)

1854, Ballarat, Victoria When Nell Amberton's husband is shot dead by a bushranger, there are few who grieve his passing, and Nell least of all. How could she miss the monster who had abused her from the day they wed – the man who had already killed his innocent first wife? But his death triggers a chain of events that seem to revolve around the handsome bushranger who murdered him – a man to whom Nell, against her better judgement, is drawn.

But Nell has far more than a mysterious stranger to worry about. With a mess of complications around her late husband's will, a vicious scoundrel of a father trying to sell her off in matrimony, and angry relatives pursuing her for her husband's gold, she is more concerned with trying to ensure her safety and that of her friend, goldfields laundry woman Flora, than dealing with the kind of feelings that led her astray so catastrophically before.

After the violence on the goldfields, Nell's fate also hangs in the balance. It seems that, after all, she might need to do the one thing she has avoided at all costs … ask for the help of a man.

This book kept me company as we travelled across the US and Canada in December/January (it's pictured here on the on Chattanooga's Walnut Street Bridge on the Tennessee River) - and it was wonderful company! The story was really easy to get into, which made it perfect reading for those times when I had to read in brief chunks - it was easy to get back into the story and I never felt like I lost track of where I was up to.

It has a lot of the things I am loving in books at the moment - strong women, alternating POVs/stories that come together, and an historical Australian setting. One of the things that I thought Fraser did exceptionally well in this book was to put women back in the story of the goldfields. She really shows the importance of women in that time and place, and the variety of roles that they took - from laundry women like Nell and her friend Flora, to women panning for gold themselves, running the homes, or providing food, lodgings, or entertainment for the men. It was fantastic to see this aspect feature so strongly in the story, since women are so often written out of these space in history.

As a fan of Australian historical fiction I'm looking forward to seeing what Fraser writes next!

x Bron

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I received a copy of The Widow of Ballarat from HQ Fiction (Harper Collins). All views are my own.

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, by Bron

In chatty, goals

2019 Reading Goals

Hello and happy Monday! It's a long weekend here this week, and I've had a wonderfully lazy few days full of coffee, kitties, books, and brunch!

With the New Year starting I've been thinking quite a bit about reading goals, but here we are almost in February already and I'm still not really sure where I stand in terms of setting goals for this year.

I've mentally split the types of things I'm thinking about setting goals around into a few categories, and I thought I'd talk about them a bit here today.

Firstly there's the Goodreads challenge, which is about how many books you are aiming to read overall in the year. I know that I'm not interest in trying to read the most books this year, or more books than this year, or any number oriented goals like that, so I've set mine at 75 books for this year.

Next, reading challenges that I want to join in with. So far I only have one on my radar: the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge which I've participated in the last few years and love doing with my book club at work. I really should do a wrap up post on how I went with this challenge in 2018! I tend to not necessarily stress too much about completely every single prompt in this challenge, but more to use it to make me more mindful of what I'm reading, and where there are gaps in the diversity of my reads. You can see the 2019 challenge list on the Book Riot website here.

The last mini category of goals I've been thinking about is the challenges I want to set myself. I have so many unread books at home, and while this doesn't completely freak me out like it would some people, I'd like to focus on getting through some of them. I'd also like to continue my focus on Australian writers, in particular #loveozya, women, and diverse/own voices stories. I think I'd like to try and hit 50% of my books read being by Aussie writers (I don't have a baseline to compare it to for last year because I was terrible at keeping up to date with my spread sheet!). I was thinking maybe I would try to read at least on #loveozya and one own voices book each month, but then these start to really add up to a huge monthly tbr once I add in my book club reads , plus the bookish escape crate books (every second month) and a couple of review copies from publishers each month... all of a sudden I've already 5 or 6 books on my list for the month and that's before I count new things that I come across during the year,

Now that we're home and getting back into a proper life routine again I intend to set aside some quiet time to sit down and do some planning to nut it out a bit more, so hopefully I'll be able to report back with some plans soon! In the mean time, I'd love to hear about any reading goals other have, and how you set them!

xo Bron