I’ve read more than a thousand books since I started this book blog back in 2011. By now, I’ve forgotten what I wrote in most of the reviews and am left only with an residual emotional memory of the books, like cooking smells clinging to my clothes after a meal. So, I’ve decided to do a little time travelling by book blog and re-read some of the reviews I’ve posted.

This month I’m travelling back eight years to July 2017. Back then, I was living and working in Switzerand. I’d expected it to be a quiet year because I’d announced that I’d retire in 2018. Instead I found myself travelling to Germany, France, India and the UK on a regular basis. That summer, it seemed to me that everything was channging, The UK had just started the process of disembowling its economy by pushing through Brexit, The glaciers in Swiitzerland were melting fast enough to cause a landslide that burried a village.

I had very little time to read so I decided to focus on books by authors who I hadn’t read before. It was a decision that brought me these three great reads

One was a debut novel by someone who was about to become a globally known Australian crime writer. One was a quirky story about Alien First Contact and one was one a book about and for children that spoke powerfully to me as an adult

I’ve shared my impressions of them below. If you’d like to time travel with me, follow the links to the original reviews.

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WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY?
I just can’t understand how someone like him could do something like that.
Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn’t rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.
Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke’s death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend’s crime.

‘The Dry’ was my first Australian crime novel. Before then the only Australian genre writers I’d read were Joel Shepherd and Max Barry who both write Science Fiction.

It was Jane Harper’s debut novel but you’d never guess that from the quality of the writing. At the time, I described it’s impact like this:

‘The Dry‘ seeps into your imagination like a stain. It clings to you like a smell of something foul that you can’t wash out of your hair. It opens with a description of the aftermath of violent death that is steeped in a harsh indifference that sets the tone for the book.

“It wasn’t as though the farm hadn’t seen death before, and the blowflies didn’t discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse.”

This was a good mystery that kept me guessing about who did what but what made it stand out was that is was so distinctively Australian in the language that it used, the people it described and the harsh unforginving landscape that shaped them.

The impact of the story was increased by seeing things through eyes of Aaron Falk, a policeman from the big city who has returned to the drought-ridden rural town he grew up in to attend a funeral. He reluctantly become invovled in a murder investigation that makes him consider the impact that the harsh environment has had not just on the peole of the town but on his own personality.

I became a fan of Jane Harper’s books after reading ‘The Dry‘ and I think they got even better as her writing matured. Later in 2017 she published ‘Force Of Nature‘ which was even better than ‘The Dry‘. It also has Aaron Falk in it but he was instumental rather than central to the plot. What made ‘Force Of Nature‘ powerful was that it was mostly a book about a group of women hiking through the bush. My favourite Jane Harper book, which I think is pretty close to perfect, was ‘The Lost Man‘ which came out two years later.

My original review of ‘The Dry‘ is HERE

The world changed on a Tuesday. 
When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization everyone freaked out for a little while. 
Or almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door. 
Sixteen-year-old Annie Collins is one of the ship’s closest neighbors. Once upon a time she took every last theory about the ship seriously, whether it was advanced by an adult or by a peer. Surely one of the theories would be proven true – if not several of them – the very minute the ship decided to do something. Annie is starting to think this will never happen. 
One late August morning, a little over three years since the ship landed, Edgar Somerville arrived in town. Ed’s a government operative posing as a journalist, which is obvious to Annie – and pretty much everyone else he meets – almost immediately. He has a lot of questions that need answers, because he thinks everyone is wrong: The ship isdoing something, and he needs Annie’s help to figure out what that is. 
Annie is a good choice for tour guide. She already knows everyone in town, and when Ed’s theory is proven correct – something is apocalyptically wrong in Sorrow Falls – she’s a pretty good person to have around. 
As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.

‘The Spaceship Next Door‘ was fun all the way through. There was lots of insider humour for those of us who read and watch Science Fiction and Horror. The narrative voice doesn’t take itself too seriously but that doesn’t mean that the situation isn’t serios

The basic premise is that a spaceship lands in the small mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts in the middle of the night and then… nothing much happens… for three years.. long enough for the good folks of Sorrow Falls to get used to having a spaceship next door and even to take for granted the strong Army presence that is guarding the ship.

Then things do start to change and it seems the end of the world is at hand. At least, it will be if sassy sixteen-year-old Annie Collins doesn’t help the thirty-something government agent who absolutely no-one believes is the reporter he claims to be, to solve the mystery of what the ship wants and what it will do if it doesn’t get it.

Annie Collins is the heart of this book. If you don’t like her, then the book will just pass you by. Fortunately, she’s very likeable. She’s open, friendly, preternaturally smart, always has a clever question to ask and is hiding a hugely important secret from just about everyone.

I liked Annie Collins and I’m planning on visiting her again soon in the sequel ‘The Frequency Of Aliens‘.

My original review of ‘The Spaceship Next Door’, is HERE.

Everyone knows there are different kinds of teachers. The boring ones, the mean ones, the ones who try too hard, the ones who stopped trying long ago. The ones you’ll never remember, and the ones you want to forget. Ms. Bixby is none of these. She’s the sort of teacher who makes you feel like school is somehow worthwhile. Who recognizes something in you that sometimes you don’t even see in yourself. Who you never want to disappoint. What Ms. Bixby is, is one of a kind.
Topher, Brand, and Steve know this better than anyone. And so when Ms. Bixby unexpectedly announces that she won’t be able to finish the school year, they come up with a risky plan—more of a quest, really—to give Ms. Bixby the last day she deserves. Through the three very different stories they tell, we begin to understand what Ms. Bixby means to each of them—and what the three of them mean to each other.

I’d hoped to like this book but I didn’t expect to. Too many books that get labelled as ‘uplifting’ and ‘heart warming’ miss the mark for me. Then I learned that it has someone dying of cancer and wasn’t sure that I wanted to read it at all. Yet this is how my review of the book began in 2017:

I’m tempted to keep this review really short:

“Read this book. It’s wonderfully written, perfectly structured and shares the lives. problems, passions and fears of three young boys in a way that feels real and true without ever getting schmaltzy or maudlin.”

Except that doesn’t do justice to the impact this book had on me. It was one of the best reading experiences of thee year so far.

I still remember this book fondly. I don’t want to give the plot away but I do urge you to read it (although it will make you cry as well as make you laugh).

My original review is HERE.