![\"What](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Kate-Forsyth-top-blog-banner.png\" "\\"What")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kate Forsyth, one of Australia\u2019s favourite novelists and the author of books including The Impossible Quest<\/a> series, Bitter Greens<\/em><\/a>, The Wild Girl<\/em><\/a> and The Beast\u2019s Garden<\/em><\/a>, continues her blog with us, giving her verdict on the best books she read in February 2018.<\/p>\n I am a big fan of Liane Moriarty\u2019s books, and was eager to read her latest exploration of the dark side of suburbia. She always has razor-sharp insights into contemporary life, cleverly wrought and suspenseful plots, and enough warmth to balance out the dark undertones. Truly Madly Guilty<\/em> has a BBQ at its heart, with three couples torn apart by what happened that sunny afternoon. There is Clementine and Adam, a cellist and a marketing executive who have two gorgeous little girls. Erika went to school with Clementine and has to deal with a difficult mother who refuses to ever throw anything out. She and her husband Oliver cannot have children but lavish love on Clementine\u2019s daughters. Their neighbours, Tiffany and Vid, are rich, flamboyant and colourful, and their ten-year-old daughter Dakota has her nose in a book all the time. Something happens that day that shakes all their worlds\u2026 but Liane Moriarty skirts around the cataclysmic event, keeping the reader guessing. Love, sex, hurt, betrayal, unkindness, and misunderstandings abound. A great holiday read. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n Set during the Great Depression, The Secrets at Ocean\u2019s Edge<\/em> tells the story of Lily Hass and her daughter Girlie who have just moved to the small West Australian town of Dongarra, where Lily\u2019s husband Ernie hopes to kick-start a new business running a guest house. Both Lily and Girlie struggle to make new friends and adapt to their new home. Secrets from the past shadow their lives, and things are complicated by the arrival of Lily\u2019s brother, Tommy, who struggles to deal with shellshock from his experiences in the war. The narrative moves between these four points-of-view, allowing the reader a deeper knowledge of true events than any one of the characters. Themes addressed by the story include the casual racism of Australia in the 1930s, the horror of war, and the difficulties of holding a family together in tough times. Girlie was my favourite character \u2013 shy, unsure of herself, yet filled with compassion for others and a true desire to help. Simply and beautifully told, this is a poignant and memorable novel. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n Celine Kiernan is an Irish writer, illustrator and animator best known for her wonderful Moorehawke fantasy series for young adults, which I read and loved many years ago. Begone the Raggedy Witches<\/em> is aimed at a younger readership, but it shares the vivid and atmospheric world-building, the strong and empathetic characters, and the powerful plot engine which keeps the story whizzing along.<\/p>\n The story begins when Mup realises that their car is being followed home from the hospital by a troop of dark, raggedy, malevolent-looking witches. Her great-aunt has just died, and the raggedy witches want to seize Mup\u2019s mother Stella, who is the heir to the throne in a magical land that presses close against our own.<\/p>\n Celine Kiernan\u2019s writing is exquisite, but done with such a light hand it does not impede the progression of the plot at all: \u2018The witches were gone. That was certain. There was no taint or tincture of them to the night, no trace of them in light or shadow.\u2019<\/p>\n The ghost of her great-aunt saves Mup\u2019s mother, although she is \u2018nothing but a silver outline\u2026 filled in with the night.\u2019 The witches then kidnap Mup\u2019s father, to set a trap for Stella. Mup sets out with her mother, baby brother and pet dog to save him. Yet the magical world is ruled by a cruel and terrifying witch \u2013 Mup\u2019s grandmother.<\/p>\n Mup is a delightful character. Funny, quirky, kind-hearted and brave, she stands up for what she thinks is right. After deciding to cross into the other world, she dresses herself in rainbow-striped tights, lime-green gumboots with frog faces, a pink tulle tutu, and an orange hat with rabbit ears. As Celine Kiernan writes: \u2018There was something about the witches \u2013 their cold, dark eyes, maybe, their fluttering black clothes \u2013 that made Mup want colours.\u2019<\/p>\n The action hurtles along, with lots of surprising twists and revelations, culminating in a petrifying denouement with the queen, in which Mup triumphs because of her goodness and kindness and trust in the world.<\/p>\n This is the loveliest children\u2019s fantasy book I\u2019ve read in a while, with a delightful heroine supported by memorable characters (including a tongue-tied raven who is really a boy), and the promise of more adventures to come. Wonderful in every sense of the word. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n A charming romantic comedy set on the Camino Trail, Two Steps Forward<\/em> is told in alternating chapters between the voices of Martin, an engineer from Yorkshire, and Zoe, an artist from California. Both are struggling with hurt and bereavement in their lives. Martin is in the midst of a messy divorce, and trying to rebuild his relationship with his teenage daughter. Zoe\u2019s husband has recently died, leaving her exhausted in mind and body, and not sure how to go on in her life alone.<\/p>\n The couple first meet in Cluny, France, and each decide independently to walk the ancient pilgrims\u2019 way to Santiago in north-western Spain. Their paths cross and part and cross again, along with those of various eccentric and sometimes exasperating minor characters. The tone is light and amusing, with running jokes about Zoe\u2019s difficulty in eating vegan food in a country that adores its food, and Martin\u2019s struggle to learn to take advice. Along the way, however, deeper issues emerge. Each must learn a few lessons about life and their own inner demons before they are ready to embrace a relationship together. Their story is told in alternating chapters by this husband-and-wife writing team, with Graeme Simsion writing in the voice of mechanically-minded Martin, and Anne Bruist writing from the point-of-view of zany Zoe. This is the sort of book that you can easily imagine being filmed, with strong set pieces, gorgeous scenery, and lots of heart and humour. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n A deeply moving examination of two sisters\u2019 entwined lives in Tasmania during the 1930s & \u201840s, The Sisters\u2019 Song<\/em> is an assured debut from Western Australian writer Louise Allan.<\/p>\n The story begins in 1927, with two little girls shocked and grieving the death of their father. Ida is the elder of the sisters, and thought of as the \u2018bad\u2019 one, being outspoken and unruly. Nora, golden-haired and musical, is the \u2018good\u2019 one, always doing as she is told. The death of their father and the deep paralysing grief of their mother changes everything. The girls are sent to stay with their grandmother, who encourages Nora to sing. She is soon starring in the school musicals, while Ida feels left out and envious. Her jealousy causes a rift to widen between the sisters, and eventually Nora runs away to pursue her dream of being an opera singer.<\/p>\n Ida, meanwhile, falls in love and marries, but her longing for a child is cruelly denied as miscarriage follows miscarriage.<\/p>\n Then Nora returns, a child in her belly and her career in tatters. Married to a man she does not love, mother to children she does not want, she bitterly resents the mistake which destroyed her dreams. Ida, meanwhile, cannot help but feel that her golden sister has everything she ever wanted, and fails to appreciate it.<\/p>\n The story unwinds over the span of the two sisters\u2019 lives, as they struggle with the consequences of their choices. Love, grief, loss, betrayal, and the enduring love of the two sisters weave a heart-breaking story that lingers long in the memory. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n A wonderfully intriguing murder mystery within a murder mystery, the structure of this latest offering by UK writer Anthony Horowitz is both boldly unconventional and fiendishly clever. The story begins when Susan Ryeland, an editor at a small London publisher, received the latest manuscript of their most successful author, Alan Conway.<\/p>\n Entitled Magpie Murders<\/em>, the novel tells the story of the latest investigation by Conway\u2019s fictional detective, Atticus P\u00fcnd. He is a German-Greek Jew who has survived the Nazi death camps to make his living solving mysteries in small English villages. Atticus P\u00fcnd is clearly a homage to the detectives created by the queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh, and the story that Susan Ryelands reads follows the pattern of these much beloved old-fashioned mysteries.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a manor house owned by a much-disliked local squire, a vicar who rides an ancient bicycle, a nosy parker who spies on her neighbours and writes all her observations down in a notebook, an antique dealer with a shady past, an under-appreciated artist supported by his adoring doctor-wife, and a pair of young lovers tainted by suspicion.<\/p>\n Then Susan reaches the end of the manuscript and realises the final chapter \u2013 with the traditional revelation of the murderer\u2019s identity \u2013 is missing.<\/p>\n And then the author turns up dead.<\/p>\n Susan must try and find the missing pages and solve the murder, the motive for which lies within the pages of the manuscript she has just read.<\/p>\n Like all murder mysteries, to say any more would be to spoil the story. But this is a cracker of a mystery, and a must-read for anyone who loves a good old-fashioned murder mystery with a twist. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n A contemporary family drama set in Alabama, Before I Let You Go<\/em> is a powerful and heart-wrenching examination of the lives of two sisters and their shared love for a tiny baby. The story begins when Lexie Vidler \u2013 a doctor with a carefully built perfect life \u2013 hears her younger sister\u2019s voice for the first time in years. Annie is a heroin addict who has caused a great deal of harm to Lexie\u2019s life before. Lexie had sworn to have no more to do with her, but this time Annie is really in trouble. She\u2019s pregnant, and going into premature labour. But that\u2019s not the worst of it. Under Alabama\u2019s draconian \u2018chemical endangerment\u2019 laws, Annie could have her baby taken away from her and be sent to prison.<\/p>\n In her struggle to help Annie and her tiny, fragile baby, Lexie finds her own world spinning out-of-control. She may lose her job, her fianc\u00e9, her future. Annie has been ordered into rehab, and Lexis must look after her newborn child, who is undergoing her own terrible withdrawal from her mother\u2019s heroin use. Meanwhile, Annie struggles with her demons, born out of long-hidden secrets from their childhood living within a fundamentalist religious sect.<\/p>\n This is a fast-paced page-turner of a novel, written in spare straightforward prose that moves between Lexie\u2019s point-of-view and the journal that Annie writes while in therapy. The choices the sisters must make are agonising and heartbreaking, and so very relevant in the world in which we live. A humdinger of a novel. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n I loved Richard Fidler\u2019s earlier book, Ghost Empire<\/a><\/em>, about his journey to Constantinople with his son, which entwined travel writing with history and legend in a very personable and beguiling way. And I\u2019ve been interested in Iceland and its astonishing sagas for quite some time. So, I was keen to read Saga Land<\/em> from the second I heard about it.<\/p>\n Subtitled \u2018The Island Of Stories at the Edge of the World\u2019, Saga Land<\/em> is the story of how ABC broadcaster Richard Fidler became friends with one of his guests, the author and academic K\u00e1ri G\u00edslason. After his interview on Richard\u2019s show Conversations<\/em>, the two stood chatting by the lift for more than an hour. They shared a deep interest in the sagas of Iceland \u2013 \u2018true tales\u2026 of blood feuds\u2026 dangerous women, and people who are compelled to kill the ones they love the most,\u2019 as the blurb describes these ancient and eerie stories.<\/p>\n Eventually Richard and K\u00e1ri travelled together to Iceland, to explore the landscape and history and folklore of this bare fierce country. K\u00e1ri was born in Iceland, but did not know his father or his father\u2019s other family until he was an adult. So, for him, the journey is a homecoming and a chance to explore his ancestral roots. For Richard, it\u2019s an adventure and a discovery.<\/p>\n Like Ghost Empire<\/em>, the book weaves together memoir, travelogue, history and mythology, which is one of my favourite types of books to read. The memoir and travelogue sections of the book feel real and warm and intimate. The recountings of the ancient sagas are fresh and clear and simple, bringing them back to powerful and immediate life. And the history of Iceland is bloody and fascinating. I also really loved the photographs included in the book.<\/p>\n Usually I read non-fiction in small bites, squeezed in between my reading of novels. I read Saga Land<\/em> in one big gulp. It was utterly mesmerising. Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kate Forsyth, one of Australia\u2019s favourite novelists and the author of books including The Impossible Quest series, Bitter Greens, The Wild Girl and The Beast\u2019s Garden, continues her blog with us, giving her verdict on the best books she read in February 2018. Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty I am a big fan of Liane Moriarty\u2019s books, and was eager to read her latest exploration of the dark side of suburbia. She always has razor-sharp insights into contemporary life, cleverly wrought and suspenseful plots, and enough warmth to balance out the dark undertones. Truly Madly Guilty has a BBQ at its heart, with three couples torn apart by what happened that sunny afternoon. There is Clementine and Adam, a cellist and a marketing executive who have two gorgeous little girls. Erika went to school with Clementine and has to deal with a difficult mother who refuses to ever throw anything out. She and her husband Oliver cannot have children but lavish love on Clementine\u2019s daughters. Their neighbours, Tiffany and Vid, are rich, flamboyant and colourful, and their ten-year-old daughter Dakota has her nose in a book all the time. Something happens that day that shakes all their worlds\u2026 but Liane…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":66576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[24,6678],"tags":[8004,8672,8673,8667,8668,2265,8666,8035,2987,8674,3222,8670,8671,4484,7524,8034,8665,8669,8664,8070,6491],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/What-Katie-Read-Social.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79767"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109448,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79767\/revisions\/109448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Truly](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TrulyMadlyGuilty.jpg\" "\\"Truly")
<\/a>Truly Madly Guilty<\/strong>
\nby Liane Moriarty<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheSecretsatOceansEdge.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/a>The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge<\/strong>
\nby Kali Napier<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Begone](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/BegonetheRaggedyWitches.jpg\" "\\"Begone")
<\/a>Begone the Raggedy Witches<\/strong>
\nThe Wild Magic Trilogy: Book 1<\/strong>
\nby Celine Kiernan<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TwoStepsForward.jpg\" "\\"Two")
<\/a>Two Steps Forward<\/strong>
\n by Graeme Simsion, Anne Buist<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheSistersSong.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/a>The Sisters’ Song<\/strong>
\nby Louisa Allan<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Magpie](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/MagpieMurders.jpg\" "\\"Magpie")
<\/a>Magpie Murders<\/strong>
\nby Anthony Horowitz<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Before](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/BeforeILetYouGo.jpg\" "\\"Before")
<\/a>Before I Let You Go<\/strong>
\nby Kelly Rimmer<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Saga](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SagaLand.jpg\" "\\"Saga")
<\/a>Saga Land<\/strong>
\nby Richard Fidler, Kari Gislason<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/forsyth-kate.jpg\" "\\"Kate")
Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel aged seven and has now sold more than a million books worldwide. Her most recent book, Beauty in Thorns<\/em><\/a>, is a reimagining of Sleeping Beauty<\/em> set amongst the passions and scandals of the Pre-Raphaelites. Other novels for adults include Bitter Greens<\/a><\/em>, which won the 2015 American Library Association award for Best Historical Fiction; and The Wild Girl<\/em><\/a>, which was named the Most Memorable Love Story of 2013. Kate\u2019s books for children include the collection of feminist fairy-tale retellings Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women<\/em><\/a>, illustrated by Lorena Carrington, and The Impossible Quest<\/a> fantasy series which has been optioned for a film. Named one of Australia\u2019s Favourite 15 Novelists, Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a doctorate in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring Atkinson, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"