JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Rescue Dog by Laura Vissaritis

A practical guide to adopting, training and living with a rescue dog, from popular dog trainer and animal behaviourist Laura Vissaritis.

Adopting a rescue dog can be daunting. With anxieties and fears from their previous life, they can carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. But all dogs deserve a second chance – and this book will teach you how to provide it.

Animal behaviourist Laura Vissaritis’s approach to training a rescue dog focuses on one side of the relationship: the human. Because to help your dog change their behaviour, first you must change your own.

By building a relationship based on mutual trust and respect, you will help your dog make the most of their new life. Explaining the underlying psychology and offering clear step-by-step guides, Laura covers everything you need to know, including how to:

– bring home and socialise your rescue dog
– establish routines for essentials like toilet training and walking on a leash
– understand your dog’s body language
– discourage unwanted behaviours such as excessive barking or jumping up
ease their stress, phobias or separation anxiety.

Giving a rescue dog a better life is one of the most emotional, uplifting journeys you can go on. The Rescue Dog will guide you on the path to success.A practical guide to adopting, training and living with a rescue dog, from popular dog trainer and animal behaviourist Laura Vissaritis.

The Rescue Dog by Laura Vissaritis is a practical, honest, glorious guide to owning a rescue dog and all the emotional baggage that can come from that. How can you best train them? Love them? Punish them when they’re bad? This is a fantastic book to keep on your bookshelf, even if you don’t own a rescue dog. Any dog owner will find use out of this book.

This book has advice for all sorts of behavioural problems — barking? biting? anxiety? not playing well with other dogs? Laura is open about the struggles she’s had with her own rescue dogs, but also the struggles she’s seen in other dogs.

Laura’s tone of voice is conversational, but also welcoming. You don’t feel stupid reading her advice. You don’t feel like a complete failure because your dog has a tendency to be a menace and you’re working really hard to try and fix it. Just this morning I yelled NAUGHTY at my dog so loud he dropped his ball and ran to his bed, frightened. Owning a dog, and especially a rescue dog who had a bad start in life, is really difficult sometimes. It’s nice to read a training guide without feeling judged.

“Once your dog understands that sitting results in obtaining a treat, you can transfer this to a range of rewards your dog may want. Your dog may want to come inside, go outside, jump on the couch, get out of the car, or play with the dog fifty metres away.”

Do you know how many dog training books I’ve read in the last couple of years? A LOT. So many books that ‘claim’ to be a training guide, that ‘claim’ to be a helpful companion to being a dog owner. And so many of them were rubbish. They gave basic advice about how a dog responded to life events, or perhaps information about their personalities, but there was no actual advice. No tips. No step-by-step instructions. And I was always so furious when I finished the books and I felt like I’d learnt nothing to help me with my dog, who is beautiful but needy and energetic and who is ‘behaved’ but not ‘well behaved’.

My major problem at the moment is my dog barks inside the house, and not for any particular reason. He only ever barks INSIDE the house, AT me. I can tell he’s trying to communicate to me, but I can’t always work out what he’s saying. Most of the time he’s confused or frustrated and so he barks. I went into this book wanting to learn a technique to stop that kind of barking. Not the kind of barking that a dog does outside at passersby, because that’s not the issue. The kind of barking that’s communicative, but because I don’t speak dog, I can’t work out how to fix the situation.

Page 19 had my answer — training tips to get rid of this exact kind of barking. And I’ve been using the technique since.

Ever since page 19, I’ve been a convert for this book. It will now sit on my bookshelf as a reference for any issues we may have in the future. Finally — a real, proper, helpful dog training guide.

“If your dog is not allowed on your leather couch, but sometimes you don’t mind if they jump up, your dog will always try to access the couch….If you punish them sometimes but allow them up at other times, then all they learn is that they can get up on the couch, and sometimes for no reason, they get punished.”

Not all sections of this book will apply to every dog owner. There were some sections, chapters, or paragraphs in the book that I skipped over because my dog doesn’t present those kind of issues (for example, separation anxiety) .This book is meant to act as a long-standing resource, so that you can put it on your bookshelf and one day, if your dog or perhaps a future dog develops any of these issues, you can go back and read and feel like you know how to tackle the situation.

An honest-to-God proper dog training guide, with actual instructions that the everyday dog owner can apply. Laura is also incredibly honest about her own dogs — their faults and their weaknesses — and it makes you feel like you’re not alone.

Recommended for all dog owners, not just those of you who have adopted a rescue dog. You’ll all be able to learn things from this resource. If you own a dog and they’re not perfect (hint: no dog is perfect) and you’re exhausted from trying different things and you’ve been through two rounds of private dog training (like me!) and you still need some advice, then buy this and keep this. You’ll feel so relieved.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Rescue Dog
Laura Vissaritis
September 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Sunday Story Club by Doris Brett and Kerry Cue

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cry. But the salons have given me the opportunity to look back and think about my life…I don’t talk to anyone about these feelings outside of the salon.’

We all carry stories within us – wrenching, redemptive, extraordinary, and laced with unexpected and hard-won wisdom.

These are the real-life stories that a group of women tell each other when they gather for a deep and structured conversation – once a month in a suburban living room – about the things that really matter.

They discover that life can be a heartbeat away from chaos; that bad things happen to good people; that good people do outrageous things; that the desire for transformation is enduringly human.

A mother tells of the heartbreaking loss of control when her daughter develops anorexia. A sister reveals the high psychological cost of being hated by a sibling over the course of her life. Husbands leave wives; wives take lovers; friendships shatter; wrong choices turn out to be right ones; agency is lost and re-claimed.

The Sunday Story Club is a compilation of profound, heartfelt, true stories from everyday women who have experienced incredible events in their lifetimes.

Each of the stories possess a unique perspective, a touching, warm voice that guides the reader through a really private moment in their life.

This is non-fiction — each story is the true story of a real woman. The women are anonymous and have given their permission to be in this book; Doris and Kerry have met these women in their story club and have chosen the most affecting, the most moving stories to include in their work.

Sometimes, it feels like you’re reading someone’s diary. You’re shocked, upset, or worried, but you also feel like you’ve been given access to someone’s private moments — someone’s well-kept secrets.

“Inside, of course, there was nothing clinical, detached or objective about my experience. I was a human being, not a science experiment, and my feelings oscillated between hope and disappointment. The overwhelming emotion I felt during the IVF treatments was frustration.”

The Sunday Story Club is about memories, healing, bonding, relationships and regrets. It’s about the moments in our lives that we carry with us, perhaps in silent.

Profound, layered and clear-sighted, this collection of real-life stories reveals the emotional untidiness that lies below the shiny surface of modern life and reminds us of the power of real conversation to enlighten, heal and transform.

“The state of our hair was an anxious undercurrent to our day. If we had managed to emerge from the house with it straight that morning, that was wonderful and afforded us a moment’s relief as we looked in the mirror. But in half an hour’s time, and every half-hour after that, the internal question assailed us: was it still straight?”

Naturally, some of the stories resonated with me more than others. There’s a story about a woman whose husband leaves her one day while she’s at work — takes his stuff, empties their bank account, leaves a note, and abandons his wife and child.

There’s another woman whose father was an abusive alcoholic for most of her life. And another woman talks about her daughter’s anorexia — a dangerous illness that almost kills her.

These stories are all so different that I’m confident any female reader will be immensely affected by at least one of them. It’s impossible to read this and not feel for the women who experienced these events. One woman spent years and many rounds of IVF trying to conceive, only to experience joy on the final chance. How could that not affect you?

“My distress faded eventually. and I could at last think about what happened without a sense of heartbreak and shame. And when I observed our friendship from a distance, I saw that the clues to its demise had been there from the start.”

The Sunday Story Club brings a wonderful group of women into your life, their voices rising from the pages with clarity and ease. I recommend this to female readers, and regular readers of non-fiction. Each story is relatively short, so it’s the perfect read for the daily commute.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Sunday Story Club
Doris Brett & Kerry Cue
July 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

GUEST POST: Bronwyn Eley, author of Relic

Every author I’ve ever met has had a different process when it comes to writing. Some things are commonplace and others aren’t. I know some authors who like to write multiple books at a time, as it gives them the opportunity to switch projects when inspiration for one is lacking. This is essentially to make writer’s block a thing of the past. Does it work? Apparently! I am thinking of trying this myself, which might be a tad ambitious considering I only just started writing professionally.

Writing professionally. Wow. Still feels weird to say!

I’m not exactly sure what kind of writer I’d be if I was writing full-time. It’s nice to dream about it, of course. When I went on a three-week beach/writing holiday, I noticed that I got a lot of work done. I was rather strict on myself and made sure to be at my desk every morning to write by a certain time. You have to treat it like a job; otherwise I can’t imagine the work ever getting done!

Right now I have three jobs, including my authoring. I work a five-day, full-time job in the book industry and I work one weekend day at a cafe. My writing fits in everywhere else. When on deadline I write every evening that I can and on the weekends. I become that person who works seven days a week and has to say no to social plans.

A huge difference is that I love writing more than anything, so doing it after work and on my weekends doesn’t bother me. I’m working towards my dream, right?

It comes down to discipline, it really does. Discipline and great snacks. I do know this… If I’m ever lucky enough to become a full-time author, I will have to avoid having snacks around or I will definitely get fat. At this very moment I’m munching on some delicious Belgium chocolates as my kind-of entree before dinner. Oops.

The actual writing is a whole other story. Sometimes it can be so daunting putting together a whole novel – whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, there are always challenges. I was talking just today with Heather Morris, the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and she was baffled at the idea of having to write fantasy. I explained to her that the feeling was mutual! How on Earth does she write historical fiction – with all those facts she has to get right? Where does she start?

It’s the same for all books. Where do you start?

When it comes to fantasy, do you start with the idea? The characters? The world? There are no rules. For Relic I started with the idea, the stone, the fear, the toxic magic that destroys lives. From that, the city of Edriast – and the world beyond – grew out of this one little spark. My protagonist had to fit the idea – so Kaylan was born and I moulded her to suit the kind of person I would need to tell this story – this idea.

There’s another story I’m tinkering on at the moment and for that particular story, it is the world that came to me first. A single vision, a single location, a single spark… and from that an entire world came to life. Literally. In my mind, I could see that one location surrounded by darkness. Then suddenly, it’s as if the world flooded out of that one single spot. The characters fell into place – like dropping a Sims character into a big, beautiful house that you just used all the cheat codes to build.

After those decisions have been made – and, trust me, not all of them have been made and not all will stay the same – I move onto asking myself how big the story is. Is it a standalone? Duology? Trilogy? A fifteen-book series?

For Relic, I knew it was a trilogy. I can’t explain why but I did. This other story I’ve mentioned feels like a duology to me. So once you’ve decided to write a series, what comes next? Writing a standalone fantasy sounds so hard to me because I can’t imagine doing all that world-building for a single novel. There is so much in the world of Relic that I want to tell… and only a fraction of it will make it into the story. That’s when sequels and spinoffs emerge, which some already have for me!

If you choose to write a longer series you are faced with other challenges, such as maintaining an interesting plot and creating a story arc that encompasses the entire series. Each book in the series has to have its own arc and then there has to be this big arc over the top of them all. I’m exhausted just thinking about it! I have no idea if I can do this, as this is my first attempt. Wish me luck!

Then I have to think about what kind of author I want to be. What do I want my writing to mean to people? What messages do I want to communicate? Each story will be different in this regard – the message – but I know I want to write stories that sink deep into people’s hearts. I want people to ask questions when they read my books. I want them to question what they know, what they feel, what they want. I want to challenge myself as a writer but I also want to challenge my readers.

I was speaking with Australian author Jay Kristoff the other day and he was talking about how his Nevernight series has affected his readers’ lives. People get his characters and quotes tattooed on their bodies (GOALS!), while others contact him to thank him because his books got them through a difficult period of their lives. As he was saying this, my mind was exploding. How incredible to think that people out there – strangers – could connect so deeply with something that a person has written on their couch (as Jay does). Here I am now in my pyjamas with wet hair and a sore shoulder… but maybe one day I’ll write something, in this dreary state, that will resonate with people for the rest of their lives.

Unfathomable.
I hope I can be this kind of author.

What I love most about writing fantasy though is that feeling of freedom and wonder I get when I write. I’m sure it’s the same across most genres of fiction but with fantasy it’s as if someone has taken the shackles off my imagination and said run free!

RELIC, Bronwyn Eley’s debut fantasy novel, is slated for release September 12.

About the author
Bronwyn joined the military right out of high school, where she learnt (among other things) to disassemble and reassemble a rifle blindfolded. After that she spent a lot of her time travelling around the world. Her favourite places (so far) are Scotland, Mongolia, Iceland and Ireland.

Bronwyn finally found her natural habitat when she landed her first job in the publishing industry. While she has always been a writer, it was only when surrounding herself with books that she realised her life’s dream was to become an author. Relic is her first novel.
Bronwyn lives in Sydney and spends her time eating chocolate, reading and practising her martial arts.

You can add Relic to Goodreaders HERE, and visit Bronwyn’s website HERE

The Girls by Chloe Higgins

In 2005, Chloe Higgins was seventeen years old. She and her mother, Rhonda, stayed home so that she could revise for her exams while her two younger sisters Carlie and Lisa went skiing with their father. On the way back from their trip, their car veered off the highway, flipped on its side and burst into flames. Both her sisters were killed. Their father walked away from the accident with only minor injuries.

This book is about what happened next.

In a memoir of breathtaking power, Chloe Higgins describes the heartbreaking aftermath of that one terrible day. It is a story of grieving, and learning to leave grief behind, for anyone who has ever loved, and lost.

The Girls by Chloe Higgins is a memoir about the death of Chloe’s two sisters in 2005, and the aftermath.

While Chloe was studying for her HSC at the family home in Western Sydney, her father and her two sisters were on their way from an annual trip to the snowfields. On a highway near Canberra, Chloe’s father veered off to the other side of the road — presumably falling asleep — and he hits another car. Their vehicle flips and the back of the car bursts into flames. Chloe’s two sisters are killed, but their father walks away with minor injuries.

This is a memoir about grief, and what comes after a tragic event. It’s about how Chloe’s life went down a very different path than what she’d have planned as a young girl.

The Girls is tender and well-written, but also just very heartbreaking. People all over the world experience heartbreak, grief, and death every day, but when you focus on one person’s story and read beyond the tragedy, you realise the effect such events can have on a person’s health and wellbeing. We read about Chloe’s life beyond the death of her sisters, and we experience how her and her parents have attempted to move past the car accident.

“I am ashamed by how little I remember them. I’ve been reading books lately where people write their memories of losing a husband to cancer, their eyesight at eighteen, their father to the Vietnamese/American War.”

Chloe turns to sex work, drugs, alcohol and self harm to cope with her loss. In a way, focussing on these activities helped her avoid thinking about or remembering her sisters.

It’s stomach-dropping to read about Chloe’s father’s reaction to the accident — his guilt, his tears, his mental deterioration. Chloe does her best to maintain a relationship with her mother and father, but it’s complicated for all parties. They’re coping in the only ways they know how, and Chloe — being the only child left — sometimes finds it easier to not be at home.

“Sometimes I am well for weeks at a time: my head is clear, it is easy to smile, I feel less tension than usual around other people. I spent years working out how to get to this place, and often it comes down to routine.”

The plot jumps around a little, and at times feels a little uneven and jolting. The first third of the book centres around the girls, the accident, and the aftermath of the accident. The middle third of the book is years later when Chloe is in psychiatric care and is then working as a prostitute. The final third focuses on the girls again. The back and forth did feel a little inorganic, but the writing is beautiful and lyrical — poetic, even.

One of the toughest sections of the book is reading Chloe’s father’s diary entries from after the accident. He regained very little memories of that afternoon, and so he relies on information from others to understand what happened.

At first, they thought it was a car fault. But then after eye witness statements, it’s clear that Maurice fell asleep at the wheel. This information is incredibly difficult for him to swallow, and even in the present, he tries to find other reasons why the accident may have happened.

“We have a good day at the beach, Kris and I. I am glad Mum made him get the razor off me, but I like the little scab that is forming across my wrist. I don’t want anyone else to see it, just my parents and Kris, so they will know I need help.”

An exploration of grief, family, understanding and identity, The Girls is a devastating, harrowing read. It’d be a tough read for anyone, even if you don’t have children yourself, but the messages within its pages are important, relevant and universal.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Girls
Chloe Higgins
September 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Quest Diaries of Max Quest by Jules Faber

Hi everyone! I’m Max Crack and this awesome book is all about me and my quests and my best friend Frankie!

Max Crack is new in Piddown.

He decides that a new town means a new beginning and resolves to embark on a series of quests, such as:
Make a new best friend
Win a trophy.
Solve a mystery.
Find hidden treasure.

He meets Frankie on his first day in town (Quest No. 1: tick). Now all he has to do is win a trophy, solve a mystery and find hidden treasure… The story is presented as Max’s diary, and it’s a visual feast: full of speech bubbles, doodles, asides, highlighted words, and crossed-out words.

Buried treasure, new school, doodles, peanut butter and honey toast, best friends, horrible blobs, mysteries, Meddlyslop, spelling bees (hard words, harder words), more doodles, comics, World War Undies … this book has it ALL.

The Quest Diaries of Max Quest is the debut children’s book from cartoonist and illustrator Jules Faber. Faber is well-known as the illustrator of WEIRDO.

This is a great read for a child aged approximately 10-12. The Quest Diaries of Max Quest definitely reads like it’s skewed more towards male readers, but female readers will find a lot to enjoy about this series.

The writing is very much stream of consciousness — chaotic, manic and fun. Young readers will be able to relate to the style of voice, and many parents will recognise the language and the dialogue.

Scattered throughout the book are detailed comics with speech bubbles and intricate diagrams. A lot of the humour actually comes from the drawings, rather than just the text.

“Frankie’s learned how to hide from attacks in his cool hideout. His hideout is in the attic past his bedroom and the upstairs lounge room. His house is really HUGE too. His dad built it using bricks made by convicts when the country was first settled by Europeans. Frankie showed me some THUMBPRINTS and POSSUM FOOTPRINTS still in the bricks.”

Max and Frankie are both really sweet, thoughtful, and imaginative. They’re kind and considerate, and their creativity knows no boundaries.

Even for an adult, it’s fun to follow Max’s quests. The comics are fun to explore and the chaotic nature of the storyline is enjoyable for all readers, not just young.

“Even with his eye problems he might win it. Especially if he does get super spelling powers. I’m going to have to work extra hard if I want that trophy, and I do. It’s the second quest on my list and, because I’ve ticked the first QUEST off already, I want to keep the streak going.”

I think the illustrations are the biggest strength of this book. The writing is good, but the illustrations are what will really entertain a young reader.

A solid children’s book debut, full of laughs and joy for young readers. Parents should feel confident buying this for their young child, and kids will find enjoyment reading the book and scanning the illustrations and comics.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Quest Diaries of Max Quest
Jules Faber
September 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

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