Aussie Book Review: Redstone Station by Therese Creed

 Redstone Station by Therese Creed

Paperback

Review copy provided by publisher

Allen & Unwin, April 2013

 Synopsis- Alice Day is happy to be returning home to Redstone Station after two years at Agriculture College. During various placements at farms and stations during her time at college she was shocked at the second-class status of women workers, whereas her grandfather, Sam, who owns Redstone, has always treated her as an equal. For his part, Sam is delighted to have his granddaughter back on board. In shaping Alice he tried to avoid the mistakes he’d made with her mother, Lara, and she has lived up to his high expectations, graduating from Ag College with flying colours. He now sees Alice as his last chance to preserve his beloved station and successfully take it into the future. Exceptionally hard-working, with great horsemanship, an instinctive understanding of animals and a natural aptitude for farming, Alice is determined to justify her grandfather’s faith in her. But will her budding regard for one of the stockmen throw her, and the future of Redstone, off track?

Review- Alice Day is a young woman who has finished her agricultural studies and has returned home to Redstone Station to work on the farm run by her grandparents. The farm is struggling financially and Alice has plenty of new ideas of how to turn around the viability of their livelihood in the long-term. Alice was abandoned by her young mother Lara as a child and was raised by her grandparents who were determined to not repeat the same mistakes with the next generation. Alice’s estranged father is of Aboriginal heritage and there’s much curiosity on Alice’s part about her the instincts she has with the land and animals that were thought to be inherited from her father. There’s an interesting relationship dynamic between Alice and her grandfather and her grandmother, which evolves throughout the story.

I suppose, for me, what let this story down was the characterisation of Alice. She’s a young girl, about 18 years old at the beginning of the story and she’s quiet and reserved. I can certainly relate to a shy protagonist, but I think Alice was quite difficult to work out because she was so guarded throughout most of the story. It was hard to really know how she felt about Jeremy, about her grandparents and about any situation that would normally invoke an emotional reaction. But Alice just kept her head down and kept working. This lack of emotional expression made it difficult for me to connect with her at these times. In some ways, she was a little too perfect. Her only flaw was guarding her emotions but the conflict within her as a character and that she faced in her day to day life was quite weak. Much of her time is spent on the farm, and though I enjoyed reading about her lifestyle there was no pressing suspense or tension.

Jeremy on the other hand is Alice’s polar opposite. He’s loud, boisterous and he speaks before he thinks. He’s not the typical hero I’d warm to in part because of his emotional immaturity and his promiscuity (he has a lot of lady ‘friends’) but I did think he was a robust and likeable character. I must admit, I did secretly want to see him reformed in some way… but that wouldn’t be fair to Jeremy’s character. Alice’s influence (and that of her grandparents) certainly challenged Jeremy’s priorities and how he viewed himself and the world and his developing maturity was a pleasant surprise. On the other hand I’m kind of glad that he didn’t have to change the essence of who he was to be eventually accepted by Alice (apart from the absence of his promiscuous behaviour- obviously that would be a deal breaker in a relationship!) though his behaviour did become quite destructive near the end. Jeremy is a flawed hero, but he brought life to the story and there were many times I laughed out loud when he would say aloud what everyone else was probably thinking in a scene but didn’t have the guts (or perhaps were to wise) to say.  Jeremy was a great character who sometimes dominated the story, leaving shy Alice Day in the backdrop much of the time.

*Possible ending spoiler: I enjoyed seeing Alice step up and being open about her feelings at the end… I just wish it didn’t take 18 months (or 2 years?) for them to get their act together. I have a pet hate for prolonged separations between the hero and heroine during the last leg of a story and in the case of Redstone Station I just didn’t see what purpose it served compared to a separation of say 6 months.*

Overall, I really enjoyed Redstone Station.An engaging rural tale that does a great job at highlighting the realities of life on a farm and living in a rural town with a satisfactory happy ending for the romance fans.

Overall Rating

3.5/5

“I really liked this”

Redstone Station can be purchased from Fishpond and other leading book retailers

This book was read as part of the AWW2013 challenge:

Book Review: A Room with a View by E.M Forster

 A Room with a View by E.M Forster

Paperback

TBR pile

Signet Classics 2009 (originally published 1908)

 Synopsis- A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman, Lucy, in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century.

 Review- I really wanted to like this story more but I was quite disappointed with it. A Room with a View is a classic that is set in Florence, Italy, as well as England. I ordered a copy because it was on my TBR list of books set in Italy that I wanted to read before my honeymoon to Europe.

Lucy Honeychurch is on holiday with her cousin in Florence when she meets George Emerson, a mysterious character whom she has intense feelings for… she interprets them as negative feelings; that of dislike and disdain. She winds up dumbfounded when George kisses her and has no idea how to process the event. She puts it down to George having some kind of problem… even though it seems he has had an effect on her. She is persuaded by her cousin to keep moving on their trip where Lucy subsequently becomes engaged to the pretentious Cecil Vyse who seems to think, unbeknownst to her, that he can mould Lucy into the perfect wife. George ends up back on the scene and takes the opportunity to kiss her again. Lucy is left feeling flabbergasted and begins to wonder what her true feelings are for Cecil and George before deciding on whom she wishes to marry.

Although I enjoyed the writing style and the Jane Austen era that seems to enjoy gossiping and obsessing over social class and expectations, I did have issues with the structure of the story and the characters. Firstly, George is in the story far too little in the beginning for me as a reader to have developed any real connection or warmth toward him, in fact his father seemed to be a more prominent figure in the story. For a romance novel, this element wasn’t a strong point. He does make a re-entrance in the second half of the novel, but by then I felt it was too late and wasn’t too fussed about whether they got together or not. I really didn’t want Lucy to end up with Cecil which obviously wasn’t going to happen since the author chose not to even share their meeting and their decision to marry- I assumed this was a ploy for the reader to not become too fond of Cecil, which I didn’t. Then there was Lucy who was sweet in a naïve kind of way but really was quite a weak character for a heroine. She had little sense of who she was, she didn’t even know she had feelings for George, she was easily persuaded by those around her and it wasn’t until the very end that she actually spoke up and actively made decisions about her life instead of passively going along with whatever was decided by others. For that reason, the ending kind of saved the story for me because I felt that at least it got somewhere. At least Lucy learnt something, even if I have no idea whether George is a good fit for her or not.

A Room With  A View certainly won’t become a favourite among the classics for me, but I may check out the movie and see if my view can be persuaded!

Overall Rating

3/5

“It was okay”

A Room with a View can be purchased from Fishpond and other leading book retailers.

Book Review: A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

 A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

Paperback

TBR pile

Penguin 2008, (originally published 1989)

 Synopsis- Who hasn’t dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône and fleur-de-lis?  Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Provençal domesticity.

Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year’s Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. “We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers,” he writes, “looked with an addict’s longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window.” He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool–its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rhône valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that’s just January.

 Review- A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle was a book on my TBR list of books set in France in preparation for my European honeymoon. Published in the 80’s, this delightfully witty and observant memoir by Englishman Mayle provides a cultural insight- from an outsider- into the rural lifestyle in Provence, France.

I am so glad I picked up this book, though it wasn’t a good idea to attempt to read just one chapter prior to meeting friends for dinner because I didn’t want to put it down! I wanted more and then I had it at the back of my mind for the entire evening. I love Mayle’s style of storytelling and his detailed observations never lacking in satire as he tries to make sense of the language, eating habits, the people and of course the seasons of one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations. He places the reader directly into the setting and had me fantasising about being on that very property, eating those meals and chatting to his quirky neighbours.

I’ve read an abundance of travel memoirs (I love to live vicariously through the storytellers) but what is quite unique about A Year in Provence is the absence of backstory and self-disclosures usually characteristic of this genre. The story begins on New Year’s Day and the chapters are divided into months spreading out across the course of the year. Peter and his wife are already in their purchased farmhouse in Provence, there’s no background as to how they came to be there, I have little information about his family, and I don’t even have a picture of what he looks like. But I learnt about the author’s personality through the way he saw the world, the little nuances he picked up on when interacting with the locals and though at times he was rather sarcastic he’s doesn’t shy away from pointing out the flaws of the English either. I’ve read some reviews of A Year in Provence that weren’t privy to the English sense of humour and perhaps found his accounts condescending but I actually found him quite clever and had many moments where I laughed out loud and just had to share passages aloud to my partner.

I really enjoy learning about new cultures, how people live, what they eat, their habits and traditions, their language and superstitions and so I found Mayle’s annotations quite fascinating and perceptive. I’ve read so many memoirs set in Tuscany that I always thought I wanted a farmhouse in rural Tuscany… but after reading this story my fantasises of living abroad are now leaning toward rural France even though I’ve failed miserably at trying to learn the language. In fact I could wholeheartedly relate to this passage in the first chapter of A Year in Provence:

“We had been here often before as tourists, desperate for our annual ration of two or three weeks of true het and sharp light. Always when we left, with peeling noses and regret, we promised ourselves that one day we would live here. We had talked about it during the long grey winters and the damp green summers, looke dwith an addict’s longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting thorugh the bedroom window. And now, somewhat to our surprise, we had done it. We had committed ourselves. We had bought a house, taken French lessons, said our goodbyes, shipped over our two dogs and become foreigners.”

My partner and I are the kind to browse real estate window fronts whenever we are away… just to have a look at what’s available (not that we could afford it!) Then we spend weeks or months fantasising about having a holiday home at that place until we become distracted by another holiday destination. I enjoyed this book so much I convinced my husband to cancel our accommodation in Nice and visit Provence instead!

A Year in Provence is a charming, witty account of how an English couple made a farmhouse in Provence their home, how life evolves with the seasons and how to learn to let go of our expectations and stay in the present moment. Highly recommended!

Overall Rating

4.5/5

“Fantastic!”

A Year in Provence can be purchased from Fishpond and other leading book retailers

It’s my birthday!

It’s my 28th birthday today!

It’s managed to slip in subtly just days after our Wedding day and a day before we depart on our honeymoon.

I intend to have a small dinner with family tonight and spend the day packing!

I also wanted to thank everyone for their well wishes over the weekend. Our wedding day was truly beautiful and Bowral, (Southern Highlands, NSW) was a stunning backdrop for our wedding photos- hope to share some when I get back!

A Wedding, a Honeymoon and New Beginnings

So the day has arrived… Today I get married!

Obviously this post was written in advance since I’ll be busy being transformed into a bride! The Southern Highlands NSW is looking beautiful at this time of the year with autumn changing the tree-lined streets shades of orange, red and yellow. I hope the weather remains clear.

As you all probably know I’ve been going on about my honeymoon to Europe for awhile now so you know I’ll be M.I.A for more than five weeks and I intend to make the most of my time away. Of course I’ll be reading, but I probably won’t be reviewing… I’ll save all that for when I get back. What better way to get back into the swing of things than with a backlog of reviews to write!

So, I’ve managed to schedule ahead some reviews, ones from my ‘Reading on Location’ TBR list. These are the books you can expect to see:

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (France)

A Room With a View by E.M Forster (Italy)

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (France)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Germany)

There will also be a couple of Aussie authors stopping by including Juanita Kees and Helene Young.

And if you’d like updates on my travels, then hop over to my other blog, An Aussie Girl Travels and subscribe via email. I hope to put up a few posts there while I’m away.

Bye for now!

Aussie Book Review: Taking a Chance by Deborah Burrows

 Taking a Chance by Deborah Burrows

Paperback

Review copy provided by publisher

Pan Macmillan, May 2013

 Synopsis- This historical romance/crime is set in Perth during the Second World War. Nell is an Australian journo, and quite the fashionable lady, and Johnny is a captain with the American Press Corps who has a bit of a shady romantic past.

Johnny’s ex-lover, Lena Mitrovic, has been convicted of the murder of caddish artist Rick Henzell. Convinced of Lena’s innocence, Johnny ropes Nell in to help him find the truth. During their investigation, they uncover a seedy and unsavoury side to wartime Perth. British, Australian and American servicemen are in the city looking to have a good time and many of the local girls are seeking excitement and romance. What they find is less wholesome. Some of these young girls fall into prostitution and become “Lost Girls”.

Nell hopes to improve conditions for these Lost Girls and for the women in Fremantle Gaol. Johnny hopes to find the true killer of Rick Henzell. The chemistry between the two main characters is immediate. They are both attractive, witty, sassy and willing to throw themselves into the fray. But Nell is “engaged” to an Australian lawyer and suspicious of Johnny’s reputation. As well she might be…

 Review- Taking a chance is Deborah Burrows second novel set in Perth, Australia during wartime featuring an intriguing crime element. It’s the 1940′s and Nell Fitzgerald is an aspiring journalist, currently working on a fashion column for The Marvel.

Nell’s quite content with life, writing her column and awaiting the return of her boyfriend Rob until she meets war correspondent (and her idol) John “Johnny” Horvath at a local murder trial where they are both reporting on the outcome of the defendant, Lena Mitrovic.  There’s an instant connection and attraction between Jonny and Nell even though Nell doesn’t want to admit it at first. The two inquisitive minds agree to work together to uncover the truth behind the murder of Lena’s wife and to delve into the Perth underworld to discover the “Lost Girls”.

During their investigations Nell and Johnny discover brutes, runaway young girls and a prostitution ring. Nell and her Aunt adopts the “uncontrollable child” Evie whose an orphan and at risk of detention. Some dangerous situations draw Johnny and Nell closer together as emotions run high and there’s pressure to not only solve the case but potentially save some young women’s lives.

Nell’s increasing attraction to Johnny and their obvious connection on an emotional level and an intellectual level causes her much confusion. Her head tells her to marry the sensible, financially secure Rob, but her hearts telling her to follow the passion and uncertain future that Johnny could offer. He’s a bit of a flirt and she has her reservations about whether she can really trust him.

Nell and Johnny are great characters. With Nell who hides her shyness behind her sophisticated attire, she fears failing the big feature story and she’s seriously reconsidering what she wants in a relationship, does she want to be sensible or does she want passion? Nell is strong and ambitious but also feminine and nurturing. Then there’s Johnny who is quite vague about his past but he is completely open about his feelings for Nell at the outset and he proves time and time again that he is reliable and trustworthy and will treat Nell as his equal. Once I got past the first chapter of adjusting to the first person viewpoint, I was hooked.

If you enjoy old school mysteries and examining a time period where so much societal and political change around women’s rights and roles was taking place, then take a chance on this book (pun intended!). I really enjoy Burrows’ writing style and how she brings her characters to life. After reading her first novel A Stranger in My Street and now Taking a Chance I think it’s safe to say that she’s making a stand in the historical genre and drawing on elements of mystery, suspense and romance to make it even more enticing. I’m looking forward to what she brings out next!

Overall Rating

4.5/5

“Fantastic!”

Taking a Chance can be purchased from Fishpond and other leading book retailers

This book was read as part of the AWW2013 challenge:

Q&A with Australian Romance Author Fiona Lowe

 I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Australian romance author, Fiona Lowe who has dropped by to chat about her latest release with Carina Press, Saved by the Bride. Fiona Lowe is a RITA^® and R*BY award-winning, multi-published author with Harlequin and Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or in the mid-west of the USA, they feature small towns with big hearts, and warm, likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she’s not writing stories, she’s a weekend wife, mother of two ‘ginger’ teenage boys, guardian of 80 rose bushes and often found collapsed on the couch with wine.

 Welcome Fiona!

Hello! It’s lovely to be here.

How would you describe Saved by the Bride in five words?

Fun and flirty with heart.

What inspired you to write this story and why did you choose to set it in the USA?

My family and I lived in Wisconsin for quite a few years and loved it. In fact, we’ve been back to visit twice recently. Small town Australia and small town USA are similar in many ways so it wasn’t a huge leap to set a book there.

Whitetail, Wisconsin is a small town on the brink of financial ruin (the global financial slowdown was the inspiration for this novel and the Wedding Fever trilogy). But as Finn in Saved By The Bride says, “No matter what, people keep getting married.” And since Whitetail residents have always thrown great weddings for their own, they decide to open their doors and make the area a wedding destination. Annika, the heroine and acting mayor, is not so sure.

What do you enjoy especially about writing stories set in small towns, whether they are in Australia or the USA?

Small towns are a close knit community generally used to getting by with a lot less bells and whistles than their city counterparts. Everybody knows your name and usually every indiscretion you ever committed.  For some people that’s enough of a reason to flee to the city but for others, it’s why they stay. I  live in a moderately sized town but even so, every time I go shopping I run into someone I know, which means I really should rethink dashing into the grocery store for milk wearing my gardening clothes or my sweat pants…please don’t tell my mother! I love creating a community and exploring what makes the residents tick.

Saved by the Bride is book one of the Wedding Fever series, can you tell us what else we can expect from this series?

There are three books in the series and Saved By The Bride introduces the town and a cast of characters whose stories feature in subsequent books. Each book has a primary and secondary romance as well as a minor character story.

Picture Perfect Wedding is about a Luke Anderson, a 6th generation farmer who’s having a quarter life crisis which is exacerbated by the arrival of Erin Davis, a wedding photographer who wants to shoot a wedding in his sunflower field so she can boost her fledgling business. Luke reckons sunflowers are a crop and covered bridges are to protect against ice and there’s nothing romantic about any of it. Nicole Lindquist, the town’s wedding planner is a young war widow trying to live her life in a town where everyone owns her husband’s memory.

In the third book, Runaway Groom, Ben is an Australian on a road trip from Antarctica to Alaska running from the fallout of his own wedding. He finds himself stuck in Whitetail with Amy who’s busy running from her own demons. The secondary story in this novel belongs to Melissa, the owner of the dress shop. With her biological clock ticking, she has very firm opinions on who she is looking for in a life partner and now that Luke Anderson is no longer available, she’s having to start over. Each book has an element of fun as well as a more serious side and of course, they all have a happy ever after.

Have you felt pressured to write something equally successful as Boomerang Bride since you won the RITA® and R*BY awards? If so, how do you manage this?

Reading is very subjective. For as many people who read and loved Boomerang Bride, there were as many who didn’t love it. I am still wondering what it was about it that made it an award favorite and part of me thinks it was the breast cancer survivor story…or not. That’s the thing, if you ask ten people what they liked about the book, you will get ten different answers. I think some of my Harlequin Medical romances have been more emotional a read than Boomerang Bride but none of them have ever been nominated for a RITA although two have for a R*BY. As an author I would drive myself around the twist if I analyzed this too much so I just write the next book and I always aim to write the best story I can.

And just for fun, when writing do you prefer…

Coffee, tea or hot chocolate?  TEA! And a girl can never just have one cup. I always  make a pot with leaf tea and have three cups.

Plotting, pantsing or both? BOTH!

Quiet solitude or background noise?  SILENCE, I write wearing earplugs even when it’s quiet.

A warm, sunny day or a rainy day?  Both have their joys. I hate the heat. Give me a cold night with an open fire and a glorious day of no more than 25 degrees Celsius.

Typing or pen and notepad? I write on a computer, but I always have a notepad and pen in my bag to jot down ideas.

Thank you for the chat Fiona!   

Thank you for having me!

You can find Fiona at her website, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

To learn more about Fiona Lowe’s Fever Wedding series, you can watch the book trailer here. Book #1, Saved by the Bride, is available now at Amazon, Nook, Carina Press and other online book retailers.

Welcome to Whitetail, Wisconsin, future home of Weddings that WOW!
As acting mayor, Annika will do anything to revive the economy of the town that’s been her refuge ever since her art career imploded and her fiancé walked out. Even if it means crashing an engagement party to talk business with the bride’s billionaire father. But the evening starts with a kiss from a gorgeous stranger—and ends with a night in jail.
Finn Callahan can’t believe his sister is getting married, not after their parents’ disastrous track record. And he’d rather be anywhere than working from his family’s vacation home. Until he catches a leggy blonde sneaking in the window, and suddenly telecommuting for the season is very appealing.
Unable to resist their mutual attraction, Annika and Finn are soon mixing business and pleasure—just for the summer. Too bad Annika’s heart missed the memo about not falling in love…
Book one of Wedding Fever.