Cali Lyons is a writer who caused a sensation with her first prize-winning novel but is now struggling with her second. She lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney with her husband, Josh, and a cat, Killa.

After an argument with Josh and with a horror bushfire threatening her house, she takes shelter with her neighbour, Spike, and a mysterious elderly Frenchwoman known as Lady G. They survive the experience, but Cali’s house is destroyed and Killa is missing. Memories shared with her by Lady G releases Cali’s writer’s block, inspiring her next novel.

When Cali is interviewed on TV after the fire, she lets go with an explosive tirade about climate change and those in power who are responsible. This draws her to national attention and knowing that she is now homeless, the tech billionaire, Arlo Richard, gives her the use of a boathouse on Sydney Harbour. She is soon in demand in the media both for her books and her stance on global warming.

Josh then resurfaces in her life and creates problems regarding money. As her new book approaches publication, Cali is panicky about what it will mean when it is discovered that she has stolen Lady G’s story.

The basic plot and peppy narrative have all the standard ingredients of a lightweight contemporary chick-lit with its (mostly) rich and glamorous settings in exclusive Sydney suburbs, although it has its serious underbelly with climate change and the tragic effects of bushfires. The result is a mixed bag. Cali’s character is often irritating with her dithering self-absorption and over-thinking. She takes rather too long to realise that aligning herself with a controlling billionaire who chooses what she should wear is bound to come unstuck and will be at odds with her principles. 

 
Three stars
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Booktopia

amazon.com.au

It is September 1941 in London. Young Freddie Hackett earns extra money to help his family by running important government messages around the city. One night, he nearly stumbles into two men fighting. While he hides out watching them, one man stabs the other. Freddie's terror at possibly having been seen is increased when soon afterwards at a delivery address he encounters a man whom he is sure is the killer. The police are no help and so Freddie seeks out investigator, Maisie Dobbs.

Maisie is involved in her own secret government work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and has to step carefully once it becomes apparent that there is much more to the murder Freddie witnessed, that it involves the Free French, the intelligence services and possibly events that took place decades earlier in the Middle East.

None of the crimes solved by Maisie are ever cut-and-dried. Moral questions are always a major feature of her investigations and this particular plotline follows that pattern.

On a personal front, Maisie continues to juggle her work with trying to spend as much time as she can with her adopted daughter Anna, and also the new love of her life, the American, Mark Scott. She also spends rather too much time looking out for the many secondary characters who have played roles in other books in the series and who still remain in her life like some sort of massive extended family. 

It goes without saying that readers already familiar with all the previous novels in the series will get the most out of this one but it seems Maisie's stoic independence has gone off track. Much as I've loved her in the past, I feel it's time she retired. ​

Three stars

(With thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC)

amazon.com

​amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

​Miriam Duffy lives a successful and comfortable life. When her daughter, Ally, marries veterinarian, Nick, she is delighted and feels they are well matched.

After being widowed, Miriam is bereft and wonders why she’s rarely welcomed to help with Ally’s growing family. Even when Nick tells Miriam that Ally is having mental health issues, she doesn’t question him. Only when alerted to the truth by a therapist, followed by Ally’s desperate arrival on the doorstep, does Miriam realise how wrong she has been.

The law fails to protect the family as the situation escalates with Nick’s increasingly sinister tactics. A crisis point is reached. The lives of those she loves are on the line and Miriam decides to take matters into her own hands.

The narrative is brisk and well-constructed, but not easy reading: it isn’t meant to be. Although fiction, it reflects the reality of domestic violence in our community in which cunning perpetrators manipulate and skirt the law. On other levels, it also explores our perceptions of self, and whether events in our past can ever be an excuse for actions in the present.

A brave, confronting and dynamic novel that is bound to get readers talking.

4 1/2 stars

(With many thanks to betterreading.com.au and Allen and Unwin for the ARC)

(Links to book sites will be included after publication.)