Tag Archives: Book Club Kit

Book Review: Lost & Found by Brooke Davis

Posted on by

 

Lost & Found

Brooke Davis

Summary

At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn’t to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too.

Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers. Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street.

Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different.

Three lost people needing to be found. But they don’t know it yet. Millie, Agatha and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about.

Comments

This book is a little quirky with a strange sense of humour.  While we enjoyed parts of the story; in particular, Agatha Pantha’s Chair of Discernment, on the whole we found it hard to engage in it fully. We found it hard to believe in the characters.  While this was a nice and easy ready, that we think would make a good holiday read, we found the ending just left us with too many questions. 

6.5/10

Read by Cutcha Club

Book Review: The Dry by Jane Harper

Posted on by

The Dry By Jane Harper

Abstract

Who really killed the Hadler family? Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife and child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily. If one of their own broke under the strain, well… When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds are reopened. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret… A secret Falk thought long-buried… A secret which Luke’s death starts to bring to the surface.

Comments

Fantastic read!  Gripping storyline, well written characters, many our readers could sympathise with, and a beautiful setting.  This was another great read by an Australia author for our group.  Beautifully written, keeping us guessing at each turn.  A superb plot twist at the end that none of us saw coming.  A fantastic debut novel that would make a great holiday read.  We look forward to seeing what’s next from this author. 

Rating – 8/10

Read By Cultcha Club

 

Book Review: The Dressmaker

Posted on by

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham

the-dressmaker

The Dressmaker is a modern Australian classic, much loved for its bittersweet humour. Set in the 1950s, its subjects include haute couture, love and hate, and a cast of engagingly eccentric characters. It is now a major motion picture, starring Kate Winslet and fine Australian actors including Judy Davis, Hugo Weaving, Liam Hemsworth and extras from the author’s hometown of Jerilderie.

Comments

What a great read!  We thought this book was going to be a story of true love and redemption. Instead it was a pleasant surprise to find it was more about revenge with a little dark humour.  A very enjoyable read that was extremely well written.  Linguistically the book was beautiful. Allowing us to feel like the characters were real people and that the town of Dungatar was a real place.

While some of us found the start was a little slow and complicated with lots of characters to keep track off, the book soon found an easy rhythm.    We all loved the book’s heroine and the cleverness with which she sort revenge her fellow townsfolk.

Rating 9/10

Read by – Cultcha Club Book Club

 

 

 

 

Book Club: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Posted on by

xwild.jpg.pagespeed.ic.79Gom6znNI

Wild: a journey from lost to found by Cheryl Strayed

Summary

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America – from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington State – and to do it along. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise – a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet.
Comments

Off the back of two books that had divided our group, we were hoping this one would reunite and inspire us.. Unfortunately it did not.  We again had 2 distinct groups, those who liked and enjoyed the book and those who did not. For as many of us who liked the main character, finding her journey inspiring and showing us we can all find strength when we need it the most; there were just as many members in our group who found her a little whiny and annoying.

The book was well written, with the flashback scenes breaking up the long hiking sections. For those of us who did like the book, we found it an enjoyable read with enough interesting characters to keep us turning the pages.

Rating – 7/10

Read by Culcha Club

 

I Came to Say Goodbye

Posted on by

i-came-to-say-goodbye

I Came to Say Goodbye by Caroline Overington

A young woman pushed through the hospital doors. She walked into the nursery, where a baby girl lay sleeping. The infant didn’t wake when the woman placed her gently in the shopping bag she had brought with her. There is CCTV footage of what happened next, and most Australians would have seen it, either on the internet or the news. The woman walked out to the car park, towards an old Corolla. For a moment, she held the child gently against her breast and, with her eyes closed, she smelled her. She then clipped the infant into the car, got in and drove off. That is where the footage ends. It isn’t where the story ends, however. It’s not even where the story starts.

Comments

A disturbing and at times, harrowing read, that was heart-breaking because of its reality.  A very well written story that had us turning the pages quicker than an Aldi catalogue wanting to know what else could possibly happen or go wrong for this family.

While we liked the way the writer told the story, in letter form to a judge, some struggled to sympathise with him and other characters.  We all felt like they all could have done more or should have done more for each other.  This is the first book in a little while that has generated a lot of discussion within our group.  Over who did and why they did it. And who was at fault. And if the grandfather had intervened earlier, like he had always intended too, would any of this have ever happened.  We wondered where the mother went and why she seemed to have had no contact with anyone after she left.  Did some of the blame lay with her for simply disappearing from her children’s lives.

We found it a difficult to rate this book.  While we all agreed that while the writing was well done, we found the subject a little heavy and depressing and not something we wanted to scale too highly as to mislead other readers.

Read by  – Cultcha Club

Rated – 6/10