JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Dry by Jane Harper

The Dry is crime fiction set in the small country town of Kiewarra. Luke Hadler, a struggling farmer, has turned a gun on his wife and child, and then himself. It appears that the years of punishing drought had finally tipped Luke over the edge, causing him to murder his wife and child and leave one sole survivor: his baby daughter. Federal police investigator Aaron Falk, 36, returns home to Kiewarra for the funerals after twenty years away. After Luke’s parents plead with him to look into the case, Falk decides to stay on and investigates the deaths, just in case Luke’s family were actually murdered.

Jane Harper has done a wonderful job of illustrating a closed in environment – a small town where everyone knows everyone and secrets don’t stay hidden for long. Kiewarra is suffering a drought, causing all the farmers to struggle and tensions to rise. Jane Harper has written the dry Australian outback very well, drawing in the reader with this vast open setting. At times, the reader feels claustrophobic, their world getting smaller and smaller with each accusation or twist in the plot. We can feel the tension building between the characters and we start to suspect everyone who comes into the book.

The Dry is written beautifully. It’s a slow build, with sly comments and throwaway sentences that could just as easily be clues to the mystery, and the reader isn’t sure what to take note of and what to cast aside. It becomes a guessing game, suspecting everyone in the town. In a crime novel, it can be frustrating when the clues are too obvious but the detective can’t see it. But in The Dry, Falk is smarter than the reader. He joins the dots faster than we could and his character helps propel the story forward and keep the reader interested.

“When Aaron Falk was eleven, he’d seen Mal Deacon turn his own flock into a staggering, bleeding mess using shearing clippers and a brutal hand. Aaron had felt an ache swell in his chest as he, Luke and Elli had watched one sheep after another brawled to the ground of the Deacons’ shed with a sharp twist and sliced too close to the skin.”

I thought the ending to this book would be a massive twist. But the reasons why Luke Hadler’s family died really couldn’t have been guessed, so I felt a little cheated. I like to read thrillers like this and then get to the end and think ‘oh I can’t believe I didn’t guess that’. But you really can’t guess the ending to this book. There’s no twist or turn or surprise. Just an explanation.

One of my only criticisms of the book was that I did feel like the characters were a little too light. Falk felt like a cardboard cut-out to me, with so much information left out about him that I felt like I didn’t really know him well and in turn, I didn’t really care about him as much as I would’ve like to. I cared more for the mystery than the characters in the story, and I felt like I should’ve cared about both of those elements.

But, for any readers who love crime fiction and thrillers, this mystery will envelop you and keep you intrigued until the very last page. The writing is beautiful and the characters are realistic and the setting is brilliant. A fantastic premise for a crime fiction debut, and very well executed by Jane Harper.

The Dry
Jane Harper
May 2016
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Meet Me At Beachcomber Bay by Jill Mansell

Meet Me At Beachcomber Bay
Jill Mansell
January 2017
Hachette Publishers

I had never read any Jill Mansell before picking up this book, and now I’m desperate to read the rest of her backlist! Meet Me At Beachcomber Bay is a romantic and hilarious novel about a group of people living in St Carys, Cornwall.

The novel opens with Clemency meeting a man on a plane, and instantly having a connection with him. She gives him her number, but he reveals that he’s married and hurries off when they land. She’s disappointed and a bit confused, but she moves on.

Three years later, Clemency is still single and meets her stepsister’s new boyfriend Sam. The same Sam who sat next to her on that flight three years earlier. Drama ensues. Clemency’s colleague Ronan is in love with a girl in town, but she wants nothing to do with him and he feels helpless. Bella seems to have the perfect boyfriend, but something isn’t quite right and she’s not sure what it is. And then there is also Marina, an artist, who is harbouring a secret of her own that she’s struggling to keep to herself anymore.

Over the course of the novel, the characters cross paths and their intertwined lives start to unravel and secrets are revealed.

St Carys definitely has that isolated, closed off environment that you get with beachside romances. Everyone knows everyone and people run into each other on the street, and gossip is exchanged in coffee shops and there’s way too much drama for such a small place. Jill Mansell has done a great job of entertaining her reader with three dimensional, relatable characters. All of the characters are flawed in some way, but they’re still all likeable. Some of the situations that happen in the book could happen to people in real life, so readers will definitely feel like parts of this plot are realistic.

Every chapter is told from a different perspective, which allows for backstory to be woven in and for the different personalities to be unveiled. I liked the alternate point of views in the book, and felt that Jill really crafted her characters carefully so that they all felt different and their voices were illustrated really clearly in their respective chapters.

There was only one thing that bothered me about this novel. It all seemed easy. The tension between the characters seemed to blow over awfully quickly, and any issues that you thought would be catastrophic actually seemed to turn out fine. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but at the end of the novel, everything seemed to work out just perfectly for pretty much all of the characters. And Jill had set up this novel with a lot of conflict, issues and secrets, and yet it all resolved with happiness and ease?

This novel is definitely for the romantic readers out there. It’s sweet, heartwarming and a quick read. For those that love reading about soulmates and happy endings, this is the perfect novel for you.

Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

Truly Madly Guilty
Liane Moriarty
August 2016
Pan Macmillan

Truly Madly Guilty is the latest novel by Liane Moriarty, exploring the events that unfold at a family barbecue (and most of the crucial events we don’t find out about until later on) and the emotional and psychological baggage that all six of these characters have both before the events and as a result of these events.

The story begins when Vid, a rich electrician, and his gorgeous wife Tiffany, invite their neighbours Erika and Oliver over for a barbecue one Sunday afternoon. They also invite Erika’s friend Clementine and her husband Sam. Clementine is a cellist and her and Sam’s two young daughters attend the barbecue as well. The guests don’t really know Vid that well and aren’t too enthused about the barbecue to begin with. Clementine and Sam leave their daughters to play with Tiffany’s reserved, quiet daughter Dakota.

The book alternates between past and present until we slowly start to find out what happened at the barbecue. Liane subtly unveils layer upon layer of history and background into the novel. Liane uses the flashbacks and history to establish Erika and Clementine’s friendship and the stability of their marriages.

Something happens at the barbecue – something bad (no spoilers!). We learn that since that event, Sam and Clementine’s relationship is now on the rocks and that the two of them are struggling to move on from what happened. Sam has fallen into a depression and he is suffering from anxiety. Erika and Oliver are still stable, but Erika feels a sense of guilt for bringing Clementine and her family along to the barbecue.

Liane Morairty alternates chapters between the main characters in the book, with each couple struggling to come to terms with their role in the tragedy and how they could’ve stopped it. Erika can’t really remember what happened, and Dakota is feeling very guilty. The chapters take us to the months, days, hours and seconds before and after the incident, but we don’t actually read about the exact events of that tragedy until towards the end of the book.

Truly Madly Guilty is suspenseful and a real page-turner. Liane’s writing is poetic and lyrical, you don’t realise how fast you’re reading until you’re halfway through the book. The characters are all flawed in their own way, and their actions after the barbecue illustrate who they are and how different they are from each other.

There was a worry with this book that the ‘event’ that occurred at the barbecue wouldn’t live up to the suspense. After all, we know that all of the characters are still alive, so what actually happened? Liane Moriarty does manage to wrap it all up beautifully though, emphasising societal relations and the doubts and fears that all people suffer when something goes wrong. Whose fault was it? Was it me? What could I have done? Some blame others, and some blame themselves, and we see it all in Truly Madly Guilty.

It’s hard to review this book without giving away any spoilers, but I do really recommend this book to readers. The characters are relatable and believable, and the writing is effortless. This was the first Moriarty book that I picked up, and it was a great place to start. Her writing envelops you and keeps you enthralled.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites
Hannah Kent
May 2013
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Burial Rites is a historical novel based on the real life and death of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland. She was sentenced to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men, and she was beheaded on the 12th of January in 1830. She was aged 33 at the time.

It was not me they stared at. I understood that these people did not see me. I was two dead men. I was a burning farm. I was a knife. I was blood.
-AGNES

Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters, one of whom grows very fond of Agnes and believes her to be innocent. Toti, the young assistant reverend mysteriously chosen by Agnes’ to be her spiritual guardian, attempts to salvage her soul and spends considerable time speaking with her and attempting to understand her past and present. Slowly, Agnes’ story unfolds.

Burial Rites, set in 1829-1830, is melancholic and beautifully written. The story may be bleak but the prose flows effortlessly and Hannah Kent has captured the Icelandic setting in such a vivid way that someone who has never been there before can imagine it very easily. The tale has a real sense of place and this is developed really well throughout the book.

They have strapped me to the saddle like a corpse being taken to the burial ground … bruises, blossoming like a star clusters under the skin … I am tied like a lamb for slaughter … I wonder where they will store me, cellar me like butter, like smoked meat. Like a corpse … like a cow I go where I am led …
-AGNES

Burial Rites is written with lyrical, effortless prose and dimensional characters. The novel explores the notion that how we are perceived is very different to how we perceive ourselves to be, and Hannah Kent has set this plot again the backdrop of Iceland’s stark and harsh landscape. You feel like you’ve been punched in the guts when you read it, because of Agnes’ past and present and how her life has unravelled. We come to sympathise for her and it’s bleak that we know she will be executed, despite the circumstances that led to the double murder.

I loved reading this novel and finished it in two sittings. Hannah Kent is a masterful storyteller, using historical documents and her own imagination to weave together this story. She undertook an immense amount of research in Iceland to be able to write this novel, and it really comes through. The story feels authentic and it’s a really enjoyable read. This is the kind of book you’d give someone as a gift if you weren’t sure what kind of book they would want.

Don’t be put off by the haunting true story behind the book. It’s engrossing and a fantastic addition to the bookshelf.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks
September 2006
Adult Fiction

Max Brooks’ World War Z is an oral history of a fictional zombie war. It’s presented as an after-the-event account of what led up to and what eventually over the zombie war. World War Z is the compilation of conversations with survivors of the ordeal, and their recollections and experiences in the war. World War Z is narrated by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, and it makes for a unique book and an interesting stylistic technique. It’s hard to think of any other novel that presents a zombie war in quite the same way.

It goes by many names: “The Crisis,” “The Dark Years,” “The Walking Plague,” as well as newer and more ‘hip’ titles such as “World War Z” or “Z War One”. I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable “Z War Two”.

The zombie war that’s being investigated in the novel came very close to eradicating humanity. The novel features interviews with people all around the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty millions souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. These interviews are more like testimonies, with men, women and children who witnessed the zombie war and managed to survive it. Some of their accounts describe the resulting social, political, religious and environmental changes to the world as a result of the zombie war.

“The night it happened, I was walking home from the bus stop. It was around 5am and I’d just finished my shift waiting tables…maybe it was simply being so knackered, but I felt my body instinctively react before I consciously heard the shots.”

Max Brooks manages to piece together how it all started in New Dachang in China and how it then ravaged the planet to near-extinction. World War Z documents the full scope of the zombie war, from beginning to end.

“Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. Ignorance caused the Zombie War.”

World War Z is a bit of a social commentary on the world. It is a platform to criticise government incompetence, corruption and inability to act quick enough to solve a problem. Despite the lethargy that the reader feels towards the end of the novel because of too many interviews and no apparent end in sight, I did feel like I learnt a lot from World War Z. Battle tactics, medical practices and geographical information are woven throughout the ‘interviews’ featured in the book, adding to the story but also making the reader feel like they’re learning something. Max Brooks has also featured characters with sarcasm and wit, making for an entertaining read.

World War Z explores survival, death, fear and uncertainty. It definitely felt like a niche novel. If you love zombie movies and survival tales, then you’ll love this book. I did find it slow at times and I did find my attention lagging, but stylistically it is a well-written, entertaining novel.

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