Purchased Archives

Book review: Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason

September 6, 20263 min read

I didn’t read the much-lauded and loved Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason but now that I’ve read her second book, Sophie, Standing There, I know I need to rectify that. While it may have been the plot (a writers festival sound technician fan-girling a well-known but potentially prickly author) that led me to purchase her latest release, Mason’s writing is stunning. There’s a depth or weightiness to her prose making them profound and poignant… all at once.

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Book review: Philly Barker and the French Connection by Joanne Tracey

July 10, 20262 min read

Philly Barker and the French Connection by Joanne Tracey is the fourth in the cosy crime series featuring the likeable and pragmatic former cop-turned antique dealer. Here she again pairs up with recently-retired DI Robbie and eclectic colleagues from the Chipwell Barns Antiques. And I’m reminded (other than the murders and crimes) I kinda want Philly’s life*, where she wanders down to the Chipwell Arms most nights to hang with her friends and colleagues.

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Book review: Barren Cape by Michelle Prak

May 24, 20263 min read

I missed getting Barren Cape by Michelle Prak for review last year so am a latecomer to this, picking it up at my local second-hand bookstore. I read and enjoyed Prak’s 2023 novel The Rush and her second book sustains the sense of foreboding she instilled in her debut. This unfolds from several points of view and again Prak takes this in an unexpected and somewhat shocking direction. Prak also reflects on housing security and homelessness here and our female narrators also experience a sense of menace thanks to several men featured in the novel.

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Book review: Dove by Georgia Harper

May 18, 20264 min read

I was a latecomer to Georgia Harper’s award-winning debut novel, What I Would Do To You, buying a copy after meeting her at the BAD Sydney Crime Writing festival a few years ago. I missed out on a review copy of her second book, Dove, but picked one up when I went to a (rare) local author event featuring Harper and Penguin stablemate Mercedes Mercier (whose book I also missed for review*). And I must confess, this book stayed with me after I turned the last page. In fact, the night I finished the book it somehow became muddled in a work-related dream I was having and I woke very discombobulated.

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Book review: The Couples Retreat by Mercedes Mercier

May 14, 20262 min read

The Couples Retreat by Mercedes Mercier is a departure from her two previous novels featuring psychologist Dr Laura Fleming, and I really enjoyed this latest book. She’s left prison here (the setting for her previous books) and we’ve journeyed to Kangaroo Island – incidentally a place I’d love to visit. The setting and sense of place here is very strong, but the island’s isolation and the onslaught of a raging storm also makes this is a locked-room mystery and (setting-wise) I loved that Mercier able to to reflect both the impending threat and the sense of pampered luxury.

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Book review: The Missing by Fleur McDonald

January 22, 20262 min read

The Missing by Fleur McDonald is the second in a loosely linked series based in Kalgoorlie. I don’t tend to get review books from McDonald’s new publisher so only belatedly read both only weeks apart. We met a few of the characters here in The Prospect though I really only remembered Jack, a police officer who (grudgingly) took a demotion to accompany his journalist partner to a new job. Interestingly she is still recovering from injuries sustained from events in that book and back in the city, whereas Jack has opted to stay in Kalgoorlie. Here McDonald also introduces the very likeable Angie who’s recently moved there to take up a promotion, here leading the case of a teenager who disappeared after a party.

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Book review: Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth

January 4, 20262 min read

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth is another I missed getting during the year for review, so I only read it belatedly during my brief Christmas sojourn. 81-year-old Elsie is a bit like a character out of a Fredrick Backman book. Sassy and grouchy to all except her long-time friend Daphne and Pete, a neighbour. We learn she’s lived on Kenny Lane for 60 years and it’s a societal microcosm of sorts and also includes a single mother and her rowdy 7-year-old daughter, and the litigious Joan who’s constantly slipping notes under Elsie’s door complaining about one thing or another. When this book opens the latest note references Elsie’s past which she thought she’d left far behind her.

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Book review: Our Last Resort by Clémence Michallon

January 2, 20262 min read

I loved The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon. The tone of the book itself beguiled me and I note (in my review) I comment on a sense of ponderance. I didn’t enjoy her latest release Our Last Resort quite as much but it does offer the same weighty themes and take place amidst a sense of impending doom. Unfolding in three different timelines Michallon again slowly drip-feeds facts from the past into the present, with Frida our narrator torn between a kindredness she feels towards her chosen-brother Gabriel and the impact that a childhood characterised by coercion, control and thwarted trust has going into adulthood.

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