JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

If Avery Chambers can’t fix you in ten sessions, she won’t take you on as a client. She helps people overcome everything, from domineering parents to assault. Her successes almost help her absorb the emptiness she feels since her husband’s death.

Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple, until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things, both because she loves her husband and for the sake of their 8-year-old son. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her license due to controversial methods.

When the Bishops glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.

The Golden Couple is the latest psychological thriller from writing duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen — another intriguing, entertaining tale that crime and thriller readers will enjoy.

Written in third person but moving between two perspectives — disgraced therapist Avery Chambers and polished but deceitful client Marissa Bishop — The Golden Couple felt interesting in that there actually isn’t a crime, or even the hint of a crime, for most of the novel. In the beginning, Avery is merely employed to help Marissa and her husband Matthew process recent betrayal in their marriage. Sure, there are some suspicious elements to the story — Marissa’s assistant is a little clingy and doesn’t quite seem truthful, and Matthew also doesn’t seem to be entirely honest — but other than that, I couldn’t help but wonder where this story was going. And that was what made it so enjoyable. Avery acted as some sort of private investigator, tailing the Bishop family in an effort to help bring them back together. And over the course of the novel, suspicious events arise that give way to criminal elements.

“Avery will be here in less than thirty minutes. Matthew still isn’t home. Marissa desperately wants the half glass of crisp white wine she left on the kitchen counter, which she intended to sip while she finished tidying up.”

Greer and Sarah do well to establish quite a large cast of characters, all of whom seem suspicious. Marissa and Matthew are both withholding secrets, Avery is crossing a lot of ethical lines in an effort to achieve results, Marissa’s assistant Polly is acting suspicious and establishes herself quite early on as a red herring, and there’s also a mystery from Marissa and Matthew’s past that continues to haunt her in the present.

The Golden Couple feels very commercial. Whilst some of the twists feel a little forced and atypical, I think Greer and Sarah know how to craft intriguing premises and engaging characters. This is perfect for a beach or aeroplane read, and a great gift for a reluctant reader.

“Avery already seems to have Natalie’s number. Maybe the marriage consultant knew of Natalie’s existence even before her name came up during the session. Marissa was more than a little unsettled to learn that Avery was skimming through the details of their lives, but if Matthew is okay with it, how can she object?”

The characterisation did seem to waver a bit in the beginning before the story found its groove. Marissa and Matthew’s initial session with Avery felt a bit caricature, and dialogue a little unnatural. But once the suspect built, tensions rose, and the psychological thriller aspect of the novel started to make itself known, the characterisation solidified and it finished on a really strong note.

Additionally, there’s a subplot with Avery and the drug company Acelia which felt a little unnecessary in the book and like it didn’t actually gel within the story. Prior to the events in the novel, Avery acted as whistleblower and divulged to the FDA about Acelia, and now they’re intimidating her into giving up her source. Whilst there is an element of relevance to this at the conclusion of the novel, it feels rather flimsy and far-reaching for most of the book.

“Could this be true? Marissa realizes that in the month or so that Polly has worked for her, Polly has never mentioned a boyfriend or a night out with friends. Her parents live in Milwaukee, and as far as Marissa can tell, they’ve never visited.”

Recommended for readers of psychological thrillers and crime fiction. Readership skews 25+

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

The Golden Couple
Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
March 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers Australia

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

From the Booker-shortlisted, million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family. Charmers, liars, drinkers and dreamers, they will change history forever.

Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise – but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history – the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Karen Joy Fowler’s recent offering Booth pivots around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but at its core is about family and loyalty, and the threads that tie us together even during tragedy.

Written in third person but moving perspectives between members of the Booth family, we’re thrust into the theatrical 19th-century setting. Junius Booth is a well-renowned Shakespearean actor, but his children are just as complex and interesting to read as he is. Even after he passes, his legacy tails them wherever they go. Each child grows into a very different person, some plagued with addiction, some a little bit more fortunate.

“Enter Edwin. He’s walking alone, carrying, in secret rebellion, a set of foils that belong to his father. June has been giving him and Johnny both lessons in fencing when he visits, not real fencing, but stage fencing, and Edwin is desperate to be better at this than his athletic little brother.”

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, Booth is more about the fraught and complex dynamics within a family than it is about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. After all, this novel explores the dysfunctional family responsible for the creation and upbringing of Lincoln’s killer.

With such a large family founded on bigamy, there are bound to be moments of both surprise and humour woven throughout the story. Junius himself offers quite a charming, upbeat element to the novel — I felt like his daughters inherited more of his charm than his sons did. Rosalie, in particular, was my favourite. She’s resilient, determined and observant, and attacks as caretaker for almost everyone except herself.

Karen Joy Fowler’s writing is always strong — taut and clean, with stark observations and notable dialogue. Interspersed throughout the novel are excerpts of Lincoln’s movements — his speeches and actions. It builds tension, allowing the inevitable to bubble away under the surface of the page.

“Rosalie knows about Harriet because Aunty Rogers has told her. Poor Mother couldn’t bake biscuits and she couldn’t manage a slave. Aunty Rogers could have mentioned Harriet during that quarrel they’d almost had about slavery.”

Pacing does lag during the middle of the book. Lincoln’s assassination occurs in the final chapters of the book, and it feels like it comes through too late. I know this novel is more about the people who surround the assassination, and so I would’ve loved more of an exploration into how the assassination ripples through the family in its aftermath, rather than just the era that precedes it.

At first I felt like Johnny’s characterisation in the lead-up to his assassination was thinly developed — there were moments where his murderous intent was being crafted, peppered moments where you could see what he would become. But ultimately, I felt he was too ‘quiet’ in the book, and then I realised that was intentional. Johnny went largely unnoticed in the family, as did most of the Booth children. They were hopeful and hopeless, and no one was going to save them.

“She’s become so attuned to her mother’s moods that there are times when Rosalie can’t be sure what she’s feeling belongs to her. Her mother complains that her back hurts, and Rosalie begins to feel an ache just below her neck, a cramping in her shoulders, a twisting of her spine.”

Recommended for readers of literary fiction. Readership skews 30+

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

Booth
Karen Joy Fowler
March 2022
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Secrets. Betrayal. Seduction. Welcome to the Alexandrian Society.

When the world’s best magicians are offered an extraordinary opportunity, saying yes is easy. Each could join the secretive Alexandrian Society, whose custodians guard lost knowledge from ancient civilizations. Their members enjoy a lifetime of power and prestige. Yet each decade, only six practitioners are invited – to fill five places.

Contenders Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona are inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds. Parisa Kamali is a telepath, who sees the mind’s deepest secrets. Reina Mori is a naturalist who can perceive and understand the flow of life itself. And Callum Nova is an empath, who can manipulate the desires of others. Finally there’s Tristan Caine, whose powers mystify even himself.

Following recruitment by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they travel to the Society’s London headquarters. Here, each must study and innovate within esoteric subject areas. And if they can prove themselves, over the course of a year, they’ll survive. Most of them.

Olivie Blake’s fantasy novel The Atlas Six is the first in a planned series, centring around the elusive but esteemed Alexandrian Society, inheritors of lost knowledge. When six of the most promising young magicians are recruited to join their ranks, they’re told only five will be accepted into the society. And it’s not guaranteed that all of them will make it out alive…

The setting is deliberately claustrophobic — we are confined inside the walls of the society for most of the novel, and so we experience as the characters’ world grows smaller and smaller. For twelve months, they can only confide in each other, largely inside the same walls that surround them. Characters who normally wouldn’t have anything to do with each other suddenly seem to form unacknowledged alliances as they work together in this strange new environment.

“That sneaky little monstress. This was Nico’s punishment, then. Forced communication with people who mattered to him — which she knew he loathed — all for implying that her boyfriend was precisely what he was.”

The characters’ magic did feel creative and interesting, and certainly like their abilities were outside the realm of usual fantasy tropes. Early chapters of the book very much function as an introduction to each of the six characters, as we move through their perspectives and come to understand who they are and what their magic encompasses.

Action scenes appear intermittently throughout the book, breaking up the slower chapters where it’s mainly conversation and world-building. Admittedly, the world-building did feel quite complex, certainly at the end of the book as the climax unfolded. But with morally ambiguous and multi-layered characters, tension in this dark academia novel run high and stakes are maintained throughout the novel.

“So this, too, came with strings. That was obvious. Reina had never liked this sort of persuasion, but there was a logical piece of her that understood people would never stop asking. She was a well of power, a vault with heavy doors, and people would either find ways to break in or she would have to simply open them on occasion. Only for a worthy purchaser.”

For a lot of the book, the chapters consist of dialogue between the young magicians — bickering, fighting, or flirting. There’s a lot of scene-setting and exposition, and characters hooking up with each other. It all felt a little inconsequential for a while there. Even if you like the characters, after a while, you’re desperate for something more to happen! I definitely think this novel could’ve benefited from more plot.

The ending did feel satisfying, as Olivie tied together the mystery and revealed what was really at stake here — what the society is attempting to achieve and what the true purpose of these six magicians has been. In saying that, I do look forward to subsequent novels when the true nature of this society is more deeply explained — quite a few moments in the book went over my head, and explanations around magic and physics and certain characters’ true intentions were a little lost on me.

Moments of humour pepper the novel, keeping conversation light and enjoyable whilst maintaining tension and stakes and this impending build-up of dread. You know something is about to happen, you know the bubble is about to burst, you’re just not quite sure what or how.

“Lust was a colour, but fear was a sensation. Clammy hands or a cold sweat were obvious markers, but more often it was some sort of multisensory incongruity. Like seeing sun and smelling smoke, or feeling silk and tasting bile. Sounds that rose out of unseeing darkness. This was like that, only stranger.”

Recommended for YA fantasy readers. Punchy and imaginative, the readership for The Atlas Six skews female, 16+

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

The Atlas Six
Olivie Blake
March 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Remember Me by Charity Norman

A heartfelt, page-turning suspense novel from the author shortlisted for Best Crime Novel in the Ngaio Marsh Awards for Crime Fiction, and for Best International Crime Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards

They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth.

A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman’s disappearance twenty-five years ago.

After years of living overseas, Emily Kirkland returns to New Zealand to care for her father, Felix, who suffers from dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time – and to glimpse shattering truths about his past. Truths she’d rather were kept buried.

Charity Norman’s Remember Me is a hybrid novel — part thrilling cold case mystery story in a small, close-knit town, and part literary story that explores the relationship between a father and daughter, recently reunited in close proximity while one progresses through a debilitating diagnosis.

When Emily leaves the UK and returns home to New Zealand to take care of her ailing father, she struggles with this new role as caretaker. Her siblings, who admittedly have helped their father in recent years more than Emily has, are nowhere to be seen, and Emily feels she cannot put her father in a home or institution. This is his home, and she feels she must stay for the foreseeable future. As her father’s memory starts to muddle and fade, he reveals truths about the past that have Emily questioning his connection to a missing local woman from two decades earlier.

“The study was his sacred domain; we children rarely set foot in there. He’d always been pedantic about keeping it tidy, everything in its place. I grabbed what I could, followed him down the corridor — and stopped dead in the doorway.”

Charity Norman does well to craft a dysfunctional family, not just between Emily and her father but also her siblings. They’ve cared for the father previously and there’s a feeling of exhaustion there, but also misunderstanding about their father’s diagnosis. There are bickering phone calls and heated conversations that any readers who have siblings will be able to relate to.

Additionally, other relationship dynamics include Emily’s mother, who left many years earlier and doesn’t appear to hold regrets, and the townsfolk, who hold significant love for Emily’s father but are also still riddled with despair from the disappearance of Leah two decades earlier.

I think the ending might divide some readers but I rather liked it — despite the truth about Leah’s disappearance initially seeming a little hard to swallow, I think Charity captured a poignant resolution that readers won’t suspect. Leah’s fate also ties in well with the journey of Emily’s father, who has been holding on to his secrets for too many years.

“Then I prowled around the car in the harsh light, cursing myself for throwing away the moral high ground. Why did I always do that? I’d been doing it since we were children. Well, I wasn’t going to call back and apologise. Never had. Bloody well wasn’t going to start now.”

Sensitivity is given around Felix’s Alzheimers, which Charity crafts with compassion and care. She also illustrates the emotions that can come with Alzheimers — the lack of understanding from the person but also their family and friends, the frustration. There is also a sense of community that can result when someone is going through this illness, as people rally together to help the person (and the family) in need.

One other notable mention includes the way that Charity captures the experience of ageing parents and watching your parents age with each passing month — that can be something we all understand, or will come to understand.

“I made my decision at three o’clock in the morning. It appalled me, but it was the only one I could make. Then I law awake, thinking about the practicalities and dreading Mum’s reaction. I finally fell asleep as the first birds began to stir.”

Heartfelt and captivating, with an engrossing mystery at its core, Charity Norman’s Remember Me will appeal to fans of family sagas like Jodi Picoult. Whilst the crime keeps the story propelling forward, I wouldn’t classify this as your regular mystery novel. Literary readers will also enjoy Charity’s writing and characterisation. Readership skews 25+

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

Remember Me
Charity Norman
March 2022
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Loveland by Robert Lukins

Amid the ruins of a fire-ravaged amusement park and destroyed waterfront dwellings, one boarded-up building still stands. May has come from Australia to Loveland, Nebraska, to claim the house on the poisoned lake as part of her grandmother’s will. Escaping the control of her husband, will she find refuge or danger?

As she starts repairing the old house, May is drawn to discover more about her silent, emotionally distant grandmother and unravel the secrets that Casey had moved halfway around the world to keep hidden. How she and Casey’s lives interconnect, and the price they both must pay for their courage, is gradually revealed as this mesmerising and lyrical novel unfolds.

Tender and heartfelt, Robert Lukins’ novel Loveland explores humanity, family, history, and the secrets that bind generations together. Its two main characters, May and Casey, are the vulnerable among the volatile.

After her grandmother dies, May flees her abusive husband and travels from Australia to Nebraska to claim her inheritance — a loved but long-empty house aside a poisoned lake. Written in third person, Loveland moves between perspectives: primarily May and her grandmother Casey, but we’re also privy to one of Casey’s neighbours and once close friend, Jean.

“Casey thought the flower was quite beautiful. She had none of them on her side of the fence. The husband could be watching from the big house but what crime was there in collecting a weed? Without pausing to reconsider, she acted.”

Like other novels that centre around a woman searching the depths of their grandmother’s past, May comes to realise quite quickly that she didn’t really know her grandmother at all. Mystery surrounds her marriage, her youth and her connection to the Nebraska town she once lived in as a young wife and mother. Over the course of the story, we witness what appears to be history repeating itself — a young woman, loyal and trusting, trapped in an abusive marriage with little opportunity to extricate herself from it.

A common thread in each storyline is Jean — when a young teenager, she’s a friend and confidante for Casey, and when older, she’s the caretaker of Casey’s home and the person who helps May reconnect with the grandmother she’s struggling to understand.

May and Casey’s lives seem to parallel in a way that haunts the reader, keeps them engaged as each chapter ends. Both women almost seem tethered to each other, much like the men they’re married to. But whilst those marriages seem to be a detriment — a physical and emotional toll — the connection between May and Casey almost seems necessary for May, and also Jean, to resolve each of their demons.

“Jean’s house was among the final few on the curve before the decline to the lake. Hers was the least well kept. Not a wreck, but certainly not the tamed exhibitions of the others…Tate had made her put her hand to her heart and swear an oath that she understood her debt. The personal, unbreakable contract into which they had entered.”

An underlying theme of the book is intergenerational trauma — do we inherit trauma? Does it plague a family and its descendants, no matter what?

Whilst at times I felt the significance of the land and lake was a little lost on me, perhaps the imagery not quite as perfected as I would’ve liked, I found the characters compelling enough to continue reading. Jean was the necessary element to keep the story progressing and to keep May and Casey connected — as predicted, she held the secrets that explained why Casey liked to keep her connection to Nebraska hidden, even later in her life.

“May had flown six times in her life. To and from Sydney, once. To and from Cairns, twice. Each a family holiday that would be christened with Patrick’s disapproval over the size or state of the hotel room. He had always been the one to book.”

Steady and measured with a haunting undertone, Robert Lukins’ Loveland is recommended for literary readers. Reminiscent of Kristin Hannah, whom I love. Readership skews female, 30+

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

Loveland
Robert Lukins
March 2022
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers