With This Fling... by Kelly Hunter
This book proves that finely tuned character development and emotional honesty can turn even the most maligned clichés in romance fiction not just into an enjoyable read, but a story worth savouring.
The more I read Kelly Hunter’s work, the more I admire how well she’s able to make each couple and each story fresh, interesting and fun.
With This Fling… features what seems to be Hunter’s favourite type of heroine—a rich one. Charlotte Greenstone invents a fiancé to reassure her dying godmother that she won’t be alone. When said fiancé fails to turn up at the funeral, Charlotte concocts a story in which he’s killed in the wilds of Papua New Guinea.
But in series of spectacular coincidences, she finds herself in possession of Grey Tyler’s, well, office. Her fictional fiancé is not only not dead, he’s back from PNG, he’s hot and it seems he may just have need of a fictional girlfriend of his own.
If you’re looking for an elaborate external plot, you’re in for disappointment. With This Fling… is romance distilled.
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Red-Hot Renegade by Kelly Hunter (The Bennetts, Book 5)
This RITA-nominated book is sexy, angsty and deeply moving—everything we love about modern category romance. Oh, and the heroine? She’s the tycoon. This one’s a keeper.
You may have noticed that I’m in the middle of a Kelly Hunter glom. How I missed this awesome Aussie author boggles my mind, but Red-Hot Renegade (published in the US as Her Singapore Fling) is the book that made me first try Hunter’s work. Nominated for this year’s RITA awards, the book also features an Asian heroine with an Australia hero.
The back story for this novel is set up in the previous books of the series, which features the romances of Jacob Bennett’s siblings. Jacob’s estranged wife Jianne is being stalked and, having run out of options, she reluctantly comes to him for help.
Jacob is a martial arts champion who runs his dojo in Singapore. For reasons neither he nor Jianne want to acknowledge, they’re still officially married even though Jianne walked out on the marriage twelve years ago. What makes this reunion story different is that neither of them blame the other—instead, they remind each other of the guilt they feel about not having fought hard enough to save their relationship.
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How Now Brown Frau by Merridy Eastman
If you like funny, heartfelt memoirs, this one is for you. Meredith Eastman seems to have lived out her dream—successful career, great guy and a lovely family—and it’s always lovely to see that come true for someone.
At 41, Merridy Eastman had accepted that she would be single (and happy) for the rest of her life. Then she meets a lovely German while visiting Europe. A year later—also preggers—she moves to Bavaria to be with him and start a new life together. This is the story of her adventure.
I have to admit this book caught my eye based on the title alone. In real life I say ‘How now brown cow?’ to people instead of ‘What’s up?’ sometimes, a legacy of my school days when they had Hershey’s Brown Cow commercials. I read the back blurb and the first chapter and, always a sucker for funny travel memoirs, I got it.
Eastman, a former Play School presenter, writes a comedic, sometimes bittersweet tale of what it’s like to uproot yourself to a new country, learn a new language and fall in love with the country and its people, even if you can’t understand what they’re saying.
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Triptych by Krissy Kneen
This anthology is not for readers with a weak stomach for pushing sexual boundaries in fiction. The stories are challenging and absurd, the relationships unconventional, almost as if the author is daring us to keep reading.
This is a very strange book. I loved Australian author Krissy Kneen’s memoir, Affection, and after hearing her read excerpts from her new book, Triptych, I felt prepared for the confronting sexual situations I was about to encounter. And yet at the end of it all, I just felt…dissatisfied.
Triptych is a collection of three novellas inspired by works of art. The three stories are linked, but each looks at different types of sexual expression.
In ‘Susanna’, inspired by the painting Susanna and the Elders by Gentileschi, a woman googles her ex-lover and discovers the world of ChatRoulette. Susanna, also the protagonist’s name, finds comfort and sexual excitement in this world, and begins to suspect that her online lover lives in her building.
This story starts off beautifully and has, depending on your sense of humour, a spectacularly funny end. Susanna’s attempts to discover her lover’s real identity are alternately sweet, funny and more than a little creepy. It’s not your conventional romance, but I found it quite romantic in a mad kind of way.
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Untameable Rogue by Kelly Hunter (The Bennetts, Book 4)
If you can overlook the daggy warrior references and underutilised Asian setting, there’s enough depth in the central relationship to make this book a pleasure to read. If you enjoy the daggy stuff…well, that just makes it even better.
This was my first Kelly Hunter book, but it won’t be my last. I don’t care what anyone says about the super daggy Karate Kid-style set up at the beginning of the novel, or the constant references to Chinese zodiac signs (I am the warrior tiger, hear me roar!), this book was thrilling!
From the outside, Madeline Delacourte seems a bit…suss. Her late husband plucks a much younger wife off the streets of Jakarta, and she later inherits and now runs his multi-million-dollar business. But like all Mills and Boon trophy wives, Maddy has a heart of gold. She rescues stray kids from the streets and brings them to her friend Jacob’s dojo to become his apprentice.
As she drops off her latest street kid, she meets Jacob’s brother Luke, who’s in between missions. Luke is a bomb disposal expert and he’s quick to judge Maddy, who doesn’t rise to the bait because, frankly, she’s heard it all before.
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Anonymums by Anonymous
A stocking filler for any mum struggling to remember who she was before she had kids or who one day realises she has a brand preference for cleaning sponges. Anonymums reveals some of our unspoken insecurities and fears with charm, wit and honesty.
The premise of this non-fiction book is simple. In an attempt to rediscover who they are outside of their roles as mother, wife and housekeeper, three mums agree to complete a dare and reveal a truth of the others’ choosing each month for two months. On the third month, they assign themselves a Big Dare. All the while, they reflect on their experiences and share it with the other two…and now with us.
Anonymums doesn’t try to be more than it is, and that’s its charm. Mums A, B and C—they remain anonymous to us—do things that any woman with kids, a husband and a mortgage may be prepared to do. As mid-life crises go, theirs are fairly inexpensive, harmless and non-fattening.
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Affection: a memoir of love, sex and intimacy by Krissy Kneen
Sometimes you find a book impossible to put down, not because of what it says about the world, but because of what it knows about you. Affection is that kind of book.
In Affection, Krissy Kneen intersperses past and present in brief but intense vignettes that readers of her blog, Furious Vaginas, may recognise. And yet the story flows—and does so lyrically, beautifully and at times enigmatically.
It begins with a playful tease—Kneen is bound, at her own request, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly domestic Sunday morning. ‘And that was just the sex part,’ she breaks off cheekily.
Kneen describes her childhood in Blacktown (NSW) and her teen years in Gladstone (Qld) almost always framed against the discovery of sexual pleasure—lying on the carpet, in a crawl space under the house, under her grandfather’s desk, on the beach—and her memories burst with texture.
When she leaves home to study in Brisbane, Kneen’s sexual exploration becomes more uninhibited and more complicated.
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Shadow Kin by M. J. Scott (Half-Light City, Book 1)
Shadow Kin straddles urban fantasy and paranormal romance. If you’re not fussed about first person narrative and POV shifts, this book introduces a fresh voice in the genre that won’t have any trouble finding an audience.
When Shadow’s attempt to assassinate a sunmage fails, she knows she’s in big trouble. First, there’s her boss, the Blood Lord Lucius, for whom failure is punishable by death…or worse. Then there’s Simon, the sunmage, who persuades Shadow to betray Lucius.
Shadow is a wraith, and all her life Lucius’s protection—such as it is—has been her only sanctuary. It’s also a dark prison she’s desperate to escape, and Simon’s offer of protection is the first real chance she’s had since her Fae family abandoned her to the Blood Lord.
The story gets off to a fantastic start—fast-paced and intriguing, with a kick-arse but vulnerable heroine. Perfect urban fantasy fodder, and I couldn’t put it down.
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On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
This is a book to be sped through, then read again and savoured and, when it’s tattered and the pages are curling, passed on to your kids.
This is the Melina Marchetta I thought I wouldn’t finish.
The story begins with a shocking scene of children trapped in a car wreck on the Jellicoe Road. But this isn’t the main story.
Twenty-two years later, Taylor Markham is elected to lead Jellicoe School in the annual territory wars against the Townies from the local public school, and the Cadets, who camp out in town for the summer holidays.
But Taylor has other things to worry about. Her dreams are filled by a boy in a tree who whispers in her ear. Hannah, the closest person she has to a mother, has mysteriously disappeared, and Taylor’s teetering on the brink of a breakdown—or worse.
What happened to the kids in the car accident and the boy on the bike who came along to save them? And what do they have to do with Taylor?
I was so confused, I killed a fairy before I even reached page 50.
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Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
A book for anyone with a sense of adventure, whether you’re an armchair traveller or someone who wants to see more of the world.
While working overseas in San Francisco for a year, Australian girl Torre DeRoche meets a hot Argentinian in a bar. Their romance is meant to be just a temporary thing, but somehow she ends up sailing around the South Pacific with him, despite a complete fear of sailing. Will their love survive the open water?
I first heard of the fearful adventurer by following a series of links and connections via Twitter. DeRoche’s book had not yet been published, but her story seemed so interesting. I immediately tried to get the ending out of her via Twitter but no, I was not allowed to kill a fairy and had to wait for the book to come out. When it did, I promptly downloaded the book, loaded it on the Kindle on my iPhone and, mid-book, left my phone on a bus…but not before skipping to the ending and killing a fairy!
What I love most about this book is that it combines two of my passions—travel and romance.
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