The Little Wave: #LoveOZMG Review
The Little Wave by Pip Harry
Genre: Middle Grade Verse Novel
Publication: May 7th 2019
Publisher: UQP Books
Source: Review copy from publisher – Thank You
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Rating: ✵✵✵✵✵
When a Manly school sets out to bring a country class to the city for a beach visit, three very different kids find each other and themselves.
Noah is fearless in the surf. Being at the beach makes him feel free. So where does his courage go when his best mate pushes him around?
Lottie loves collecting facts about bugs, but she wishes her dad would stop filling their lonely house with junk. She doesn’t know what to do about it.
Jack wants to be a cricket star, but first he has to get to school and look after his little sister. Especially if he wants to go on the class trip and see the ocean for the first time.
The Little Wave was is a delightful Middle Grade verse novel. The POV switches between there year five students, Noah and Lottie from the beachy inner Sydney suburb of Manly, to Jack from the beach-less more rural town of Mullin.
Three different kids dealing with different things.
Noah is being bullied by the boy who is supposed to be his best friend and he doesn’t know what to do about it.
Lottie is on the outside at school, with no friends other than the insects she spends her time studying. And for the most part Lottie feels she has no father either as he has been emotionally absent since the death of her mother.
Jack’s woes are more socioeconomic and at one point in the story he and his sister are sleeping on the floor at his aunties place.
The Little Wave deals with grief, bullying, navigating new friendships and the struggles of low-SES families. Ultimately it is a book about the healing power of friendship and even though the book deals with some heavy things, it is an immensely enjoyable read.
Pip Harry has done a remarkable job putting so much story and heart into so few words.
The Little wave is well worth the read. Regardless of your age it will leave you with a smile on your face and warmth in your heart.
Pip Harry: Goodreads | Twitter | Website | Instagram | Booktopia | Amazon
River Stone: #LoveOZYA Review
River Stone by Rachel Hennessy
Genre: Dystopian #LoveOzYa
Publication: May 1st 2019
Publisher: MidnightSun Publishing
Source: Review copy from publisher – Thank You
Add to Goodreads
Rating: ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
We are not special. We are just survivors.
Pandora wants so much more than what her village can provide. When disaster comes to the River People, Pan has the opportunity to become their saviour and escape her inevitable pairing with life-long friend Matthew. She wants to make her own choices. Deep in her soul, she believes there is something more out there, beyond the boundaries, especially since she encountered the hunter of the Mountain People.
A story of confused love, difficult friendships and clumsy attempts at heroism, Pan’s fight for her village’s survival will bring her into contact with a whole new world, where the truth about the past will have terrifying reverberations for her people’s future survival.
River Stone by Aussie author Rachel Hennessy is the first book in a new dystopian trilogy. River Stone has a fresh and unique feel that drew me in right from the start and kept me hooked until the last page.
The protagonist Pan grows up not really knowing anything of the past, as it is too painful for most of the village elders to talk about – her mother especially.
River Stone is set on our earth in what could be our not too distant future. In the years before Pan’s birth Earth has been nearly destroyed; mass animal extinction, land becoming barren and unfarmable, people with wealth turning their backs on the rest of the world and the collapse of modern civilization as we know it.
The story mostly follows Pan as she undertakes a journey. A journey that I can’t really say much about without giving away the plot of the book. Hmmmm. Just know the journey tests Pan’s abilities to adapt and learn fast. It teaches her a lot about the world outside her village and she sees things that she never even knew existed.
The other part of the story is told through letters that Pan’s mum writes to her while she is on her journey. In these letters Pan’s mum writes of all the things she could never bring herself to talk to her daughter about. The letters allow us to gain the backstory of the world Pan is living in. In the letters Zaana tells her daughter who she was before the burning days and how she came to be with the River People. I especially enjoyed the letters, they allowed us to get to know Pan’s mother and understand why the River People behaved the way the did – which is almost cult like at times.
River Stone never becomes preachy, but there is a real lesson in there – one of the dangers of greed and environmental complacency.
River Stone is a story of survival, of adapting, of friendship, of being human, and of being a teenager living in the shadow of expectation.
I really enjoyed River Stone and am excited to see how the River People’s story continues in the next book.
‘A fantastic story for our times. Thilling. Chilling.’ – Seann Williams
‘An intelligent dystopian drama that is as addictive as it is thought provoking.’ – Winnie Salamon
Rachel Hennessy Links: Goodreads | Twitter | Website | MidnightSun Publishing
Booktopia | Amazon AU | Amazon US
April 2019 Bookish Summary
Total books read in April: 6
Comics/ Graphic Novels = 0 | #LoveOzYA / #LoveNzYA = 2 | the remainder = 4
Highway Bodies by Alison Evans #LoveOZYA
Highway Bodies is an utterly Australian and brilliantly Queer Zombie Apocalypse story with heart and soul. It is a story of survival and learning how to function in a new world. It is a story of friendship and finding a place with people where you feel you belong.
Published February 1st 2019 by Echo Publishing [View on Goodreads]
Winter Wishes of the Heart by Ashley Uzzell
Winter Wishes of the Heart is a short and sweet read for when you need a quick pick me up. It contains four holiday themed tales of romance that were a delight to read. All the stories centre around protagonists dealing with varying levels of social anxiety, I loved that part!
I commend Ashley for fitting so much heart into so few words.
Published November 30th, 2017 by Ashley Uzzell [View on Goodreads]
Stay With Me by Kira Hawke
I went into this thinking I was going to get a little snap shot romance between two guys. What I got was an intense and bitter sweet story of two strangers lives colliding. A bitter sweet short story that highlights some of the worst and best parts of humanity. Wow, just wow. I was blown away by this one! I need to find more works by Kira Hawke!
Published October 18th, 2014 by Kira Hawke [View on Goodreads]
Dig by A.S. King
A skilfully written, intense and at times extremely dark tale of terminal illness, poverty, physical & sexual abuse, parental neglect, racism, white privilege and the danger of family legacy.
If you put in the emotional effort and get to the end of the book, you will be rewarded – the ending if worth the journey.
Published April 2nd, 2019 by Text Publishing [View on Goodreads] [View My Full Review]
Lost in LA (The Bikini Collective #2) by Kate McMahon #LoveOZYA
Back with the three Aussie surfer girls again; Lost in LA is a charming tale of friendship and learning to appreciate the things we have, set to the back drop of the Malibu round of the World Junior Tour. There are surfing scenes that are written so descriptively you feel like you are out on the wave and there are friends sticking up for each other and woman banding together – A fantastic combo.
Published February 28th, 2019 by Kate McMahon [View on Goodreads] [View My Full Review]
Concrete Queers – issue 4 (romance), #6 (smut) and #7 (spec fic).
Concrete Queers is a zine made by queer people for queer people, edited by Katherine Back and Alison Evans.
I enjoyed all three zines very much, but there was a personal essay by Tegan Elizabeth in the romance issue that I really connected with.
Find out more at the Concrete Queers Website and Alison Evan’s etsy zine store.
Conclusion: April, oh April where did you go. You came in a rush and I don’t want to let you go. While I only managed to read 3 actual books this month (with some short stories and zines in between), it was still a fantastic month as the Newcastle Writers Festival took place. This year was my 5th year volunteering at the festival and yet again I had a great time. Friday was the highlight for me as I was ushering as part of the schools program and it was so fantastic to see the kids and authors engaging.
The Newcastle Writers Festival first ran in 2013, I heard about it through the Hunter Writers Centre, of which I was a member at the time, and attended the festival as a patron. I missed 2014 (baby drama), but started Volunteering in 2015 and will continue into the foreseeable future.
Past Monthly Summaries: Jan 19 ∣ Feb 19 ∣ Mar 19
Lost in L.A: #LoveOzYA Review
Lost in LA (The Bikini Collective #2) by Kate McMahon
Genre: Contemporary
Publication: February 28th 2019
Publisher: Self-Published
Source: Review copy from Author
Thank you Kate
Add to Goodreads
Rating: ✵✵✵✵✵
Three friends discover, surfing just got serious.
Pack your bags, the Bikini Collective girls are California bound to compete in their very first overseas surfing event. The LA sun is shining, Santa Monica’s shops are bursting with bargains and the point break is pumping. It should be happy days, right? Wrong! Mel has her party pants on and is ready to ravage this Hollywood scene, but her best friend and wingwoman, Jaspa, is welded to the hip of her new boyfriend. If Jaspa wants to be the Mayor of Lame Town, Mel figures she’ll just have to find someone else to get into trouble with. Swept along by the local celebrity brat pack, Mel finds herself on a wild ride that soon lands her in deep water, and she is way out of her depth. Will Mel be kicked off the World Junior Tour already? This is an adventure to rival any rogue set, so hold your breath and dive down deep … and pray you pop back up again!
In the first book we saw the three friends – Jaspa, Mel and Carolyn – competing in Australia, while learning how to navigate staying friends and competing against each other. The second book sees the girls head to Malibu to attend their first World Junior Tour as part of the Australian team. The first book focuses more around Jaspa, her awkward adorableness and her relationship with her brother. This book was all up in Mel’s head as she learns how to tell who her real friends are and learns to appreciate the things she has in life.
Hollywood baby! Mel gets caught up in the glitz and glamour and of wanting something more. She gets herself in a sticky situation that sees her nearly lose the things/people she cares about the most.
Lost in L.A. is full of all the things I loved from the first book. Fast and furious surfing action scenes that are written so descriptively you feel like you are out on the wave. It’s full of girl power; friends sticking up for each other and woman banding together to make the sport/world better for the next generation.
Lost in L.A. is a short and sweet ride, one that could probably be read as a standalone, but then you would be depriving yourself of book one and building a deeper connection to the characters.
Who would like this book: This is a clean book with a 15 year old POV. This book is perfect for the younger YA readers, even a high-level MG reader and hey I enjoyed it as an adult. I applauded Kate for managing to create an exciting series that doesn’t use sex, violence, or OTT romance to make it captivating. So many of the YA books coming out these days feature 17/19-year-olds doing things that 13/14-years-olds just cannot relate to, this is a perfect in-between.
I sincerely look forward to the next installment of the Bikini Collective and following these girls’ journeys onwards and upwards.
Kate McMahon: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
View my review of book one HERE.
Dig by A.S. King: YA Review
Dig by A.S. King
Genre: Contemporary YA, Magical Realism
Publication: April 2nd 2019
Publisher: Text Publishing
Source: Review copy from publisher – Thank you Text.
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Rating: ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
The Shoveler, the Freak, CanIHelpYou?, Loretta the Flea-Circus Ring Mistress, and First-Class Malcolm. These are the five teenagers lost in the Hemmings family’s maze of tangled secrets. Only a generation removed from being simple Pennsylvania potato farmers, Gottfried and Marla Hemmings managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now sit atop a seven-figure bank account, wealth they’ve declined to pass on to their adult children or their teenage grand children.
“Because we want them to thrive,” Marla always says.
What does thriving look like? Like carrying a snow shovel everywhere. Like selling pot at the Arby’s drive-thru window. Like a first class ticket to Jamiaca between cancer treatments. Like a flea-circus in a doublewide. Like the GPS coordinates to a mound of dirt in a New Jersey forest.
As the rot just beneath the surface of the Hemmings precious white suburban respectability begins to spread, the far flung grand children gradually find their ways back to each other, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name.
I finished reading Dig by A.S.King the other day and I still can’t figure out what I want to say about it.
I part hated it (some of the characters are truly disturbing and examples of the worst parts of humanity) and I part loved it (there were three characters I connected with and the last quarter of the book made up for the first three quarters).
It is skillfully written and tackles some dark stuff. I feel like it’s the kind of novel that should be read and dissected in a high school English class. King is a phenomenal writer and isn’t afraid to get dark with it.
The story jumps between six characters, with each short chapter alternating the POV. The jumps never get confusing, it is rest-bite from the not-likable to the likable characters. It created a balance and pushed the story along.
This is not a light read, it tackles: terminal illness, poverty, physical & sexual abuse, parental neglect, racism, white privilege and the danger of family legacy.
Dig is Intense and at times it gets real dark! It’ll make you uncomfortable, and if it doesn’t, there is something wrong with you. But the journey that is reading this book is worth it in the end.
Dig is a story about the way our actions tunnel down and affect those around us, generation after generation. A story about digging our way out from under our past and moving forward to better future.
A.S. King: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
March 2019 Bookish Summary
Total books read in March: 6
Comics/ Graphic Novels = 3 | #LoveOzYA / #LoveNzYA = 0 | the remainder = 3
The Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James.
A YA Sci-Fi tale that follows Lowrie and Shen, the last teenagers on earth, as they live in the aftermath of a virus that caused global infertility. There are plenty of twists and turns and plenty of moments that make you ponder life and what it means to live.
Published March 7th, 2019 by Walker Books [View on Goodreads] [My Full Review Here].
Runaways, Vol. 4: True Believers by Brian K. Vaughan, Adrian Alphona & Craig Yeung.
The teens get a grave visit from the future, fight off against some retired superheros and dodge a supreme bad guy. I wasn’t as into this one as the previous three, but it was still enjoyable and it ended with a cliff-hanger that has me keen for Vol.5.
Published November 29th, 2006 by Marvel [View on Goodreads].
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour.
A queer contemporary tale of a young woman drowning in, then dealing with her grief for the grandfather and life she’s lost and for the mother she never knew. A beautiful story that will break your heart, then turn around and heal it.
Published March 5th, 2019 by UQP [View on Goodreads] [My Full Review Here].
Long Macchiatos and Monsters by Alison Evans.
A sweet and heart-warming 44-page story set in Melbourne. It’s a meet cute and the two MAIN characters giving it Transgender and Nonbinary representation (woop woop). Alison is the bomb when it comes to inclusive queer YA, but I’d have to say this short would be considered an adult because of the sex.
Published January 28th, 2015 by Less Than Three Press, LLC [View on Goodreads].
Heartstopper Volume One by Alice Oseman.
I had a smile on my face the whole time I was reading this. It is just about the sweetest thing I’ve read. Two teen boys meet, grow as friends, one openly gay, the other not so much, and the ending leaves us with the hope they could be more.
Published February 7th, 2019 by Hodder Children’s Books [View on Goodreads].
Darcy Swipes Left (OMG Classics) by Courtney Carbone (Adaptor) & Jane Austen.
Pride and Prejudice told entirely through social media posts and emojis. I’ve previously read the Shakespeare retellings in this series and enjoyed them. This wasn’t bad, but how could you ever capture the beauty of P&P in so few pages.
Published September 27th, 2016 by Random House Books [View on Goodreads].
Conclusion:
March was an off month for me reading wise. I only actually managed to read two full length books, I just had too much going on.
I did however manage to write and publish a short poem, which i’m going to try and do each month and I got to do a fun Q&A with author Michael Earp.
Read I Can’t, a poem HERE
Read Michael Earp Q&A HERE
Past Monthly Summaries: Oct 18 ∣ Nov 18 ∣ Dec 18 ∣ Jan 19 ∣ Feb 19 ∣
Thanks for visiting The Adventures of SacaKat 🙂
Until next time, enjoy your shelves :-).
Christina Bauer: Guest Post
My Top Five Inspirational Books
By Christina Bauer
As part of the launch tour for my new book, UMBRA, the lovely Sarah at The Adventures of SacaKat asked me to share the top five books that inspire me as a writer. (Actually, they asked me for ten, but I got blabby).
So without further ado, here are the top five books!
Book Number Five. The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
This book had a massive impact on me when I read it for the first time as a teenager. This was back in the 1980’s, and the fantasy genre was a lot less developed than it is today. LOTR opened my eyes to a new kind of fantasy that was separate from fairy tales, and I loved it.
Book Number Four. Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brother’s Grimm
My first entrance to fantasy was through the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Now, I’m not referring to the sanitized Disney version, although I enjoyed those as well. I’m talking the gritty stuff where Snow White ends up dead, that kind of thing. My work is often classified as dark fantasy and this is where it all came from!
Book Number Three. Mythology by Edith Hamilton
This is not so much a story as a compendium of Greco-Roman myths written in the style of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Such an eye opener in terms of themes, character, magic and fantasy!
Book Number Two. The Egyptian Story of Isis
I read this one for a decade—in different translations—before I truly understood it. Isis was the original goddess story and stretches back in use at least 40,000 years. It’s a tale of power, sacrifice and intellect. For more analysis, check out my blog post on the subject.
Book Number One. The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The first time this crossed my path, I was in high school. Campbell writes about what he calls the hero’s journey. I then became interested in mapping out the heroine’s journey, which brings me to why I write today.
So there you have it—the five books that most influenced my journey as a writer! I enjoyed sharing this list with you and hope to return on a future tour!
Umbra by Christina Bauer
(Dimension Drift Prequels, #2)
Published by: Monster House Books
Publication date: March 26th 2019
Genres: Dystopian, Fantasy, Young Adult
A prequel novella to the new series from USA Today’s ‘must read YA paranormal romance’ author, Christina Bauer.
One day, eighteen-year-old Thorne will be the Emperor of the Omniverse, the single being who rules countless worlds. Trouble is, his father Cole–who’s also the current Emperor–is a sadistic freak.
In fact, Cole won’t even keep his promises to the very humans who got him his throne.
Thorne won’t stand for it. He decides to travel to the human world and make good on his father’s promises. What he doesn’t count on is falling in love….
“I love how Bauer manages to add some awesome new world building to each of her books.”– Woven Magic
This new series is perfect for: fans of urban fantasy, action and adventure, cool science, evil corporations, forbidden romance and hot new classmates who may or may not be aliens.
Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo / Google Play
Author Bio:
Christina Bauer thinks that fantasy books are like bacon: they just make life better. All of which is why she writes romance novels that feature demons, dragons, wizards, witches, elves, elementals, and a bunch of random stuff that she brainstorms while riding the Boston T. Oh, and she includes lots of humor and kick-ass chicks, too.
Christina graduated from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School with BA’s in English along with Television, Radio, and Film Production. She lives in Newton, MA with her husband, son, and semi-insane golden retriever, Ruby.
Be the first to know about new releases from Christina by signing up for her newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/CBupdates
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