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Strange Bliss
Strange Bliss by Katherine Mansfield. Pushkin Press While perusing books to read I came across the name Katherine Mansfield. It’s a name familiar to me but I couldn’t honestly say I was familiar with her work. And so I decided Strange Bliss could be my introduction. This book is a curated collection of six short stories. Both the first and last stories are the longest ones and feature the Burnell family. They both follow a similar format of being sequences of snapshots over the course of a day. In the first, “Prelude” the family is moving into a more rural location and we see the move through the eyes of…
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How to Talk to a Goddess
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker. Semrland Books Four years ago I read the first book in this series and fell in love with it. Since then I’ve reread it a few times and still go back and read passages I particularly enjoyed. As the book had been released four years earlier, I think it’s fortunate I didn’t have to wait quite so long as the first readers to find out the next part of the story. Earlier this year the audiobook was released and I managed to get a review copy of it. But being new to audiobooks, I…
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Servant Mage
Servant Mage by Kate Elliott MacMillan-Tor/Forge Due to the takeover by the Liberationists, Fellion has become an indentured servant mage with little prospect of another life until she is freed by a group of Monarchists. They need her fire skills and there's a possibility of a real future. Along the way, their priority shifts so they are saving a very special baby from being killed before moving on to the original mission. I must point out this is a novella rather than a full-length novel. I found this to be a super-easy and engaging read, finishing it in under three hours. The world-building is quite good and there are some…
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A Woman of Intelligence
A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe Simon and Schuster Australia Katharina Edgeworth was once a translator at the United Nations. She loved her life and then she fell in love with Tom Edgeworth, a pediatric doctor from a well-to-do family. They eventually married and when she had her first child she stopped working and became what would today be called a stay-at-home mother. Her life appeared to be just about perfect but the reality was anything but that. Her husband was almost never, home, more married to his work than to her. Meanwhile, she has lost herself to motherhood. As much as she loves her children, it’s not complete.…
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Would I Lie to You?
Would I Lie to You by Aliya Ali-Afzal Head of Zeus Faiza Saunders is a British woman of Pakistani heritage who has been married to Tom, a white British man for twenty years. They have three children and she’s a stay-at-home mum. They’re a happy family and the pair are still very much in love. Then Tom loses his job and wants Faiza to move some money from the emergency fund to the main account so they don’t end up in arrears. The problem is Faiza has been sneaking money from that account for years and it’s essentially empty. Faiza panics and the lies start coming more and more frequently as…
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The Other Side of Beautiful
The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Lock. Harlequin Australia Mercy Blain’s house burns down and her life is totally u[ended. In the best of situations, this would be a seriously difficult situation but it’s not the only problem for Mercy. She hasn’t been out of her house in the past two years and now she is outside and exposed to the world. She is taken in by her ex-husband Eugene who lives with his current partner, Jose. This is a truly uncomfortable arrangement so when a neighbour offers to sell his old Hilux to her, she accepts and begins a journey of discovery and healing with her beloved dog,…
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Winterly
Winterly: Dark Creatures Book One by Jeanine Croft It’s while Emma Rose is in London that Markus Winterly comes to her aid one night and she is both entranced and afraid. Winterly invites Emma and her sister to stay with him and attend a ball. It’s while at Winterthurse that Emma falls further under Winterly’s spell and she finds herself making a bargain with him to keep her sister Milli safe from harm. While she is afraid, it’s not so much of Markus as the darkness she fears that is inside her. I will say from the outset this is a pretty complicated book. It’s long and it goes on…
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Ancient History
Ancient History by Sophie Penhaligon BooksGoSocial Athena Duncan is the archaeologist daughter of an archeologist. It’s all she’s ever wanted to be and her life revolves almost exclusively around it. Life is good until her parents are killed in a car accident while they are holidaying in Crete. Her world collapses around her and she leans on close family friends for support. It’s as she starts to re-engage with the world that she is suddenly pursued by Patrice while in Paris. He’s a much older man who apparently wants to show her she might be wrong about a few things in life. Then there’s Jack, who also seems to have…
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Love, in Theory
Love, in Theory by Elodie Cheesman Pan MacMillan Australia Romy is a young lawyer working in employment law in Sydney with two failed relationships under her belt. She’s nearing her mid-twenties and feels it’s time she takes the scientific way to find her true love. She gets advice from family and friends and checks a few books that have a bit to say about the science of finding love. Then she tries to put it into practice. She meets Hans, an engineer from Germany and he truly meets her criteria. They hit it off from the start and soon end up in a relationship. But there’s also James, who she…
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The Accidental Gatekeeper
The Accidental Gatekeeper: The Accidental Midlife Trilogy Book 1 by Carla Rehse BooksGoSocial Everly Popa is a middle-aged mom of one who has informed the FBI on her husband and, for safety for herself and daughter, has returned to her hometown, Crossing Shadows. This town isn’t the usual sort of home town, but a border between other worlds and the earthly one. And Everly is from one of three families who are marked and who alternately act as gatekeepers between the worlds in order to keep the balance. Currently, it’s another family that is slated to take over the job but when Everly arrives it seems all hell has broken…