JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Fool Me Once by Karly Lane

Farmer Georgie Henderson manages a cattle property in the New England region of New South Wales, but her dream has always been to buy back her family farm, Tamban.

When an unlikely meeting with Michael Delacourt at a rowdy B&S Ball sends them on a whirlwind romance, Georgie can’t believe it’s possible for life to be this good. For the first time ever, her dream of buying back Tamban takes a backseat to her happiness.

But her world shatters when she discovers the shocking secret Michael has been trying to keep from her.

Can Michael convince her they still have a future? And after having her heart so thoroughly broken, can Georgie ever trust anyone again?

Karly Lane’s Fool Me Once is rural romance fiction, set in remote New South Wales and exploring one woman’s journey to buy back her family farm.

At its core, Fool Me Once explores the concept of family and how that can be different for every person. Family is the father Georgie has lost, and who she desperately misses. Family is also her best friend Shannon, and her close bond with Harry and Matt, who she trusts and respects greatly.

Fool Me Once also showcases the importance of women in management roles (particularly within farming). Georgie is strong-willed and determined, and working to carve a career for herself in a male-dominated industry.

Rural romance has the ability to immerse you in another world, where communities rally together, loyalty within friendship and family are key, and the prospect of building a life on the land with someone else is exciting and enthralling.

“Georgie let out a long breath. How did he shake her carefully erected defences and common sense with just a look? She’d had her share of romances, but nothing serious and few that ever went anywhere other than the occasional movie or dinner.”

The setting will transport readers to the dusty, hot outback where lives are vastly different to our own. This is one of the biggest strengths in the novel, capturing the isolated and secluded Australian bush, but also illustrating that close bond that farmers share with their land and their select family & friends.

Georgie is relatable and readers will find sympathy in Georgie’s plight, and her determination to run a farm by herself and one day buy back her family farm.

Because its fiction, many romance fans will adore the methods that Michael goes to in order to win Georgie back, although personally I found him arrogant. He’s forceful at times, a little over-the-top with his emotions, and in real life I’m not sure how his actions would actually be received by a woman.

“He’d pondered what to do with the information for the past two days. The right thing would be to tell Georgie and get it out in the open. That’s what he’d decided to do, face to face, which was why he hadn’t waited until the weekend to come out.”

Stylistically, the book is written in third person but switches perspective between Georgie and Michael.

The intimate third person perspective allows us to see all sides of the story, and gain a deeper understanding for each character. We come to understand Georgie’s driven nature, her passion for the land, her vulnerability, and her gentle soul. We also witness Michael’s inner turmoil, his intense love for Georgie, and his determination to fix his past mistakes.

Fool Me Once demonstrates an appropriate balance between prose and dialogue, not bogging us down too much with exposition or description. Karly moves through some scenes at lightning speed, and it always felt appropriate for the story. The novel itself spans quite a long time period, and Karly manages the transition through time effortlessly.

“She smiled a sad smile and Georgie thought about the photos of the woman Harry used to have on the fireplace mantle. She hadn’t known Vera — she’d died more than thirty years ago — but she felt as though she had.”

Admittedly, as a first-time reader of Karly’s work, I found the story a little slow to start — the tension and pacing picked up as soon as Michael’s secret was out in the open, and since his secret is mentioned in the blurb I thought it could’ve been revealed a little earlier in the book to really propel us into the story sooner.

Additionally, the secret wedding in Hawaii felt a little unrealistic and unnecessary. Did it need to happen? If you take it out, the story could still function as the same. Michael still could’ve desperately tried to reunite with Georgie.

Seductive and satisfying, Fool Me Once is recommended for romance readers. There’s a lot of sex mentioned in the book — and deliberately corny pick-up lines — but I think young readers will also enjoy this. 16+

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

Fool Me Once
Karly Lane
May 2020
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Chain of Gold: The Last Hours Book One by Cassandra Clare

Cordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior trained since childhood to battle demons. When her father is accused of a terrible crime, she and her brother travel to Edwardian London in hopes of preventing the family’s ruin.

Cordelia’s mother wants to marry her off, but Cordelia is determined to be a hero rather than a bride. Soon Cordelia encounters childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of glittering ballrooms, secret assignations, and supernatural salons, where vampires and warlocks mingle with mermaids and magicians. All the while, she must hide her secret love for James, who is sworn to marry someone else. But Cordelia’s new life is blown apart when a shocking series of demon attacks devastate London.

Trapped in the city, Cordelia and her friends discover that a dark legacy has gifted them with incredible powers – and a brutal choice that will reveal the true cruel price of being a hero.

Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare is the first instalment in The Last Hours trilogy, a new fantasy series for adult and young readers. Apparently, it’s a sequel to The Internal Devices trilogy, and a prequel to the Mortal Instruments series, but that doesn’t matter to me. I’ve only read one book from the Mortal Instruments series, and I know nothing about any of the other series. I went in blind to this (I imagine other readers will too).

Above all else, this book explores friendship, identity, legacy and love. There are many things in this book that readers will not be able to relate to — demon attacks, warlocks, ghosts etc — but the teenagers in this book experience things that all readers can understand. They go through love and heartbreak, heartache and deception, betrayal, and they uncover shock secrets from within their own family.

“Cordelia couldn’t understand why she was so worried about Lucie. Several withdrawing rooms had been opened up, and Lucie could have wandered off to any of those, or returned to her own bedroom. She really could be anywhere in the Institute.”

Set in the early 1900s, the book is approximately 600 pages. Does it need to be 600 pages? No it doesn’t. The pacing in the first half of the book is so slow, it’ll make you feel like you’re never going to get through it. It feels like a walking marathon. Once you pass the halfway mark and the demon attacks start ramping up, that’s when events start to get interesting.

Chain of Gold is told through the perspective of Cordelia, a brave, strong-willed Shadowhunter. She’s a complex character, but she’s also confident, self-assured and defiant to those who underestimate her. Over the course of the novel, the reader witnesses Cordelia at her best but also her most vulnerable.

Cassandra Clare has a way of capturing the entirety of a character, delving deep into their emotions and actions so the reader walks away feeling like they truly understood that protagonist.

“He looked away from Grace for the first time and searched the floor for Cordelia. He found her in moments — she was easy to spot. No one else had hair that colour, a deep dark red, like fire shining through blood.”

Chain of Gold features a large cast of core characters, and Cassandra takes the time to really illustrate them all (to be expected when the book is 600 pages). We come to understand motives, doubts, fears, and each character’s biggest desire. Sure, there are plenty of things left unsaid (this is a trilogy after all, we have two more books to go), but the ending to this book felt satisfactory. I’m intrigued to read the sequel.

Admittedly, there are so many teenagers and kids in this book it was easy to get confused about how they were related. Who were siblings? Who were just friends? Who were extended family? Sometimes it was easy to forget. Whilst the core characters were crafted with depth, sometimes it did feel like there were too many of them and perhaps…there didn’t need to be as many kids and teenagers?

“James had never seen the infirmary like this before. Of course he’d heard stories from his mother and father about the aftermath of the Clockwork War, the dead and the wounded, but during his lifetime there had rarely ever been more than one or two patients in the sickroom.”

Recommended for fans of fantasy fiction and young adult literature. 14+

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

The Last Hours Book One: Chain of Gold
Cassandra Clare
March 2020
Walker Books Australia

The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore

What if you lived every year of your life in the wrong order?

Brooklyn, 1982. Oona Lockhart is about to celebrate her 19th birthday and ring in the New Year. But at the stroke of midnight, she is torn from her friends and boyfriend, finding herself in her fifty-one-year-old body, thirty-two years into the future.

Greeted by a friendly stranger, Oona learns that on every birthday she will enter a different year of her adult life at random. Still a young woman on the inside, but ever changing on the outside, who will she be next year? Wealthy philanthropist? Nineties Club Kid? World traveller? Wife to a man she’s never met?

As she struggles between fighting her fate and accepting it, Oona must learn to navigate a life that’s out of order – but is it broken?

The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore is a time-travelling novel that explores the power of being alive, and the importance of living life to its fullest at every moment.

Oona jumps to a different point in her life every year on New Years’ Day. The pattern is random and there’s no way to tell what age she’ll be after her 12 months are up.

Whilst time travel is not a new concept, the premise of this book feels fresh and unique, taking readers on a journey through different eras — from the 1980s to 2017.

“Oona came to with a long gasp, as if breathing the surface after being trapped underwater, left to drown. A second earlier, she’d been surrounded by people and light and noise and warmth. Now she lay on a plush carpet in a dark room lit by a fireplace, silent but for the crackle of flames heating the drafty space.”

The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart is charming and sweet — the perfect beachside read or airport purchase.

The novel explores the conflict of knowing your future. If Oona knows where her life is headed, should she change what she’s doing in the present? What kind of effect will that have on her future life?

Oona faces this dilemma multiple times in the novel, each time questioning the reasons behind living the life she’s expected to live. If she knows where the next 12 months will lead her, how is this living? How is this fun? She should be allowed to make her own decisions and live her life spontaneously.

“Kenzie joined her when he didn’t have calls or errands, and she picked his brain about the modern world. She brimmed with endless questions like a hyper curious child, only instead of asking why the sky was blue or where babies came from, she asked why 9/11 happened and where society’s progressive attitude came from, still in awe that a black man was president and gay marriage was legal.”

Upon reflection, I feel that there isn’t much tension in this book. Sure, it’s disorientating and confusing for Oona whenever she jumps to another year in her life, because she’s never really sure where she’ll end up. But, she’s got an incredibly secure life and so there’s never a time where you truly worry for her.

Firstly, she’s rich. In every single year of her life. She never even has to work or find a job. Secondly, she has her mother’s help and guidance every time. Thirdly, there’s a letter waiting for her that gives her an update on her life, and an indication of how she should live the next one.

To be honest, Oona’s life is relatively easy. I never once worried for her. Or felt concern for her.

“Deep breath in, deep breath out. Oona tried to check the time, but found she wasn’t wearing a watch. A flash of colour on the inside of her wrist made her pull up her sleeve. She gasped and revealed a tattoo: an hourglass with swirls of galaxies in place of sand, a ribbon across its space spelling out M.D.C.R.”

Characterisation is one of the biggest strengths in this novel. Margarita captures Oona’s conflict incredibly well, but also her grief, her despair, and her doubts. Time travel would have its benefits but it would also be devastating knowing how your life ends up, without ever having the chance to experience that yourself. Oona’s internal dialogue is filled with depth, understanding, maturity, but also raw human emotion.

Recommend for fans of literary fiction, and women’s literature. The unique premise will draw you in and keep you engaged until the final chapter.

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

The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart
Margarita Montimore
March 2020
Hachette Book Publishers

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister Alison vanishes from the luxury resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X on the last night of her family’s vacation. Several days later Alison’s naked body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men, employees at the resort, are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. It’s national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved, but for Claire’s family there is only the sad return home to broken lives.

Years later, riding in a New York City taxicab, Claire recognizes the name on the cabbie’s licence, Clive Richardson – her driver is one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. The fateful encounter sets her on an obsessive pursuit of the truth, not only what happened on the night of Alison’s death, but the no less elusive question of exactly who was this sister she was barely old enough to know: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation. As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will uncover the truth, an unlikely intimacy develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by a tragedy.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin is a haunting crime novel about a young girl’s mysterious death and how the unsolved case still torments her sister eighteen years later. The book explores grief, family, sisterhood, and illustrates how our perceptions of someone — or our understanding of them — can be inherently misguided.

Claire was seven years old when her sister Alison died on a family holiday to the Caribbean. Her body was found in a nearby cay, but the crime remains unsolved. She’s haunted by the mystery, and she soon becomes obsessed with who her sister was, and what happened to her on that final night of their family holiday.

“The island is turned upside down with searching. Members of the civil service are given days off to join the search. Prop planes loaned from a larger island nearby scan the shallow seas. The lagoon into which, mere days ago, Alison watched the blond boy hit golf balls is trawled to no avail.”

Saint X plays with the concept of voyeurism. Claire thinks she knows her sister — she thinks she understands her. Until she dies, and she realises she never really knew her at all. When she’s older, she starts reading Alison’s diary from the time she died and Claire realises how complex and complicated her sister was.

The novel is multi-layered; it’s not just about Alison’s death. It’s also about social dynamics and human relationships.

Saint X explores Claire’s obsession with her dead sister, and how oblivious she is to her own obsession. The book also explores white privilege and wealth, because the two men who were suspected of killing her were both men of colour. We come to understand how their lives were affected after they were falsely accused of murdering Alison. Life was not kind to them in the wake of their interactions with Alison.

“The eleven-year gap between Alison and me is notable, and requires some explanation. I was not an accident, nor had my parents been trying for years to conceive again…those were her exact words: ‘We decided to have you.’ As if they had known, when they chose to have another child, that the child would be me.”

The pace of the novel is incredibly slow — snail’s pace. Claire weaves in and out of stories really abruptly, but also over-explains and indulges the reader in excessive description. Most of the time, this felt unnecessary and it just felt like Alexis was trying to prolong the story. It’s actually kind of incredible how there’ll be a chapter where nothing really happens and Alexis has managed to draw that out over thousands of words.

Saint X does a fantastic job of highlighting the media and the general public’s obsession with true crime and the murder of young women. After Alison’s death, the media feed off the mystery and there is even a true-crime documentary series created about the mystery. It doesn’t help Claire’s family cope with the tragedy and it doesn’t help the two men suspected of her murder move on with their lives.

“At some point, my father must have taken the rolls of film from our vacation to be developed, because a few months after our move to Pasadena I found the photographs in his home office, in the back of his desk drawer.”

Whilst engrossing at first, Saint X flounders throughout. Truthfully, I don’t think that the ending to this novel is explosive or thrilling enough to warrant such a slow-paced story. If I’m being perfectly honest, I thought this book was okay, but not amazing.

Crime readers will be disappointed with this. Literary readers will probably love the deep characterisation and the slow burn of the plot. I’m not sure any reader will feel satisfied with the ending.

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

Saint X
Alexis Schaitkin
March 2020
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Book of Overthinking by Gwendoline Smith

Overthinking, ruminating, worrying: bestselling author Gwendoline Smith explains this common form of anxiety and offers helpful advice for overcoming it.

Overthinking is also known as worrying or ruminating and it’s a form of anxiety that many people suffer from.

Psychologist and bestselling author Gwendoline Smith explains in clear and simple language the concepts of positive and negative overthinking, the truth about worry and how to deal with the ‘thought viruses’ that are holding you back.

She helps you understand what’s going on in your head, using humour, lots of examples and anecdotes, and she offers powerful strategies for addressing your issues.

Based on cognitive behavioural theory, this book will help you in all the key areas of your life: from your personal life to relationships and work.

The Book of Overthinking by Gwendoline Smith is a guide to worrying less — an instruction manual for those who are anxious and stressed, and who are looking for ways to calm their thoughts.

Filled with information, advice, exercises, and even homework, at the very least this book will make you feel like you’re not alone — like there are other people who worry as much as you do, and there are ways you can manipulate your mind to stop stressing so much.

Gwendoline fills the pages with plenty of modern day examples, so that even the most confused reader can understand the messages and advice in the book.

“Let’s take a look at negative overthinking. Studies show that getting stuck in your head, focusing on negative events (and therefore experiencing feelings of regret, self-blame), can be the biggest predictor of some of todays’ most common mental-health problems, such as anxiety and depression.”

The beginnings of the book are dedicated to how overthinking can have an impact on our physical and mental state — our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our relationships. Evidently, there is a strong connection between overthinking and anxiety, and also overthinking and depression.

There will be some moments where you recognise yourself in Gwendoline’s descriptions, and it can be a sobering moment. It’ll make you feel like picking up the book was the right decision.

Gwendoline has a really warm, inviting ‘voice’ in the book. Her language is easy to understand, and readers will find comfort in how she explains concepts and terminology.

The ‘homework’ in the book is structured like a therapy session — “It’s just you, me and the whiteboard” — and Gwendoline asks readers to reflect on what they’ve been worrying about. There are sections of the book where you’re encourage to write down your emotions and feelings, in an effort to confront your worrisome state of mind. This helps build a connection with the reader, and allows them to examine their own behaviour in a non-confronting manner.

“Look back on the worst situation you have ever been through in your life. You may have lost a parent, had a nasty divorce, lost your job. You are still here, so I’m guessing you got through it OK. It would appear that thinking based in truth could go more like this: ‘This isn’t great, but I’ve been through worse and made it to the other side.’”

Gwendoline acknowledges that there is a certain level of worrying that is healthy. If you’re a parent, for example, there are going to be moments when worrying about your family is natural. But it’s about understanding when that worrying tips over into the unhealthy, negative space.

I found the diagrams and accompanying visuals to be just as helpful as Gwendoline’s words. I’m a visual learner, so the charts or drawings really helped me understand how worrisome overthinking can be both understood, and confronted.

For any reader who feels overwhelmed by the content in the book, there is an appendix at the back with a lot of summary information, and there are summaries scattered throughout the book which will help ease readers as well.

“With endless overthinking the brain becomes hyper-vigilant, constantly on the lookout for anything it perceives to be dangerous or worrisome. This creates a state of living in fear and agitation.”

Truthfully, I read a lot of these books and I have yet to come across one that I really feel solves the problem. I’m not sure that any book — or multiple books — have the power to really stop a worrier from worrying all the time. I think it’s just important for people who are anxious and stressed to have these kinds of books on their shelves so they can pull them out in a moment of need.

I’m not sure that the homework in the book is necessary, and not sure how many readers will actually complete it. Instead, they may just follow it through in their minds, which could be just as helpful.

Recommended for the seasoned worrier. A quick read and suitable companion for a bookshelf.

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

The Book of Overthinking
Gwendoline Smith
February 2020
Allen & Unwin Publishers