Dear Amy

Posted 12:39pm Saturday 8th October 2016

Helen Callaghan’s debut novel Dear Amy is one hell of a ride. Callaghan writes from the perspective of Margot, a teacher at the local college and also the writer of the Dear Amy help column in the local paper. Typically she deals with mundane relationship issues until one day she receives a Read more...

Elizabeth is Missing

Posted 1:05pm Sunday 7th August 2016

Review: Hayleigh Clarkson Elizabeth is Missing is a haunting novel of love and mystery. Maud is a forgetful old woman who can’t remember where she is or why she went to the shops. She forgets her own daughter, doesn’t remember moving house and makes endless cups of tea that she Read more...

In Order to Live

Posted 1:36pm Sunday 31st July 2016

In Order to Live is an incredible real-life story of Yeonmi Park, a North Korean girl, who escaped into China and then into South Korea. Her epic fight for freedom is nearly unbelievable: Yeonmi survived starvation, abuse, trafficking, and near death just to have the simple freedoms we all take for Read more...

In Order to Live

Posted 1:35pm Sunday 31st July 2016

In Order to Live is an incredible real-life story of Yeonmi Park, a North Korean girl, who escaped into China and then into South Korea. Her epic fight for freedom is nearly unbelievable: Yeonmi survived starvation, abuse, trafficking, and near death just to have the simple freedoms we all take for Read more...

Bossypants

Posted 12:48pm Sunday 17th July 2016

Tina Fey’s Bossypants delivers everything you hoped it would. Humour, honesty, punchy one-liners and a whole lot of cleverly disguised feminism in the form of flatulent jokes. There is not one single dull page in this book and the jokes just keep rolling.  It is not so much a memoir as Read more...

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Posted 12:34pm Sunday 10th July 2016

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is the ultimate page turner. Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize as well as being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Joshua Ferris writes with fluidity, clarity and with a unique voice unlike any I’ve read before.  The novel settles around Paul Read more...

By the Book

Posted 12:57pm Sunday 15th May 2016

Edited & introduction by Pamela Paul, Foreword by Scott Turow Have you ever wondered what authors, actresses, scientists or professors read? If you have, then this book is for you. Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, has put together a collection of interviews of 65 Read more...

How to be Both

Posted 12:58pm Sunday 17th April 2016

This is an incredible novel full of wit, sarcasm, and characters that are a touch arrogant and temperamental. Ali Smith’s How To Be Both has won the 2014 Costa Novel of the Year award, the 2015 Women’s Prize for Fiction award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. It is a Read more...

All The Light We Cannot See

Posted 1:11pm Sunday 3rd April 2016

Rating: A+ Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See is the most stunning novel I have ever read. It is a beautiful tale of Marie-Laure, a young blind girl living in Paris, and Werner, a young orphan boy living in Germany on the cusp of the Second World War. Doerr intricately weaves the Read more...

The Chimes


Posted 1:34pm Sunday 20th March 2016

I had high hopes for this novel. Anna Smaill’s The Chimes was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015 and the New Zealand media went crazy for it, touting Anna as the next Eleanor Catton. Despite everyone else loving this novel, I found it to be dull and tedious with a shallow Read more...