LIONESS
By Emily Perkins Bloomsbury $32.99
Emily Perkins, a New Zealand writer, has composed a fun and engrossing page-turner about a modern middle- class woman from humble beginnings. As a seemingly benign and successful owner of a lifestyle store, Therese – the protagonist – gets caught up in a scandal that is none of her doing. It explores marriage burdened with family entanglements from the point-of- view of a younger restrained wife to an older established business man.
Downstairs from Therese’s luxury apartment, her eccentric neighbour Claire provides the space for questioning and testing what is important. Therese begins to veer towards breaking free in her own way when she is taken for granted over and over again. The book explores compromise, privilege, authenticity, freedom and desires. The writing is sharp and enjoyable and zings with observational awareness and irony, especially when Therese reflects on or interacts with her spoilt step-children.
What a fun read!
TOM LAKE
By Ann Patchett
$32.99
When taking any Patchett novel you know from the first page that you are in expert hands. Her latest novel, TOM LAKE, does not disappoint!
Laura is in lockdown on her family’s cherry farm in idyllic rural Michigan with her sturdy husband, Joe and her three adult daughters. Here she finds herself recounting her heady youth as a budding actress enjoying a passionate affair with the utterly wild and gorgeous Duke, a fellow-actor who would go on to become one of the greatest heartthrobs of his generation. Mirrored through her daughters’ youthful and unformed perspective on life, Laura tries to convey how her choice to spend her life with a gentle farmer and not a famous actor was the right one.
This is a beautiful story about moving through life and recognising how the meaning of what happiness looks like changes over a lifetime. It is a gorgeous, perfectly crafted book on family, love, and the many gifts delivered to us by the march of time. TOM LAKE is contemporary American fiction at its best.
Get Your Act Together, Doris Kozlowski
By Jo Dabrowski
‘Get Your Act Together, Doris Kozlowski’ is a delightfully funny and heart-warming middle- grade novel by local author Jo Dabrowski.
Doris Kozlowski’s life is anything but normal but Doris is good at pretending to be just like everyone else, and she has a plan to get through Year Six: keep her head down, keep her family away from the school, and keep her best and only friend, the perfect Felicity.
So when Felicity ditches her for the popular girls she figures if she can win the talent show, Felicity will want to be friends again, and Doris can get her life back.
That is, if her family can stop embarrassing her! Who is she kidding? Doris is DOOMED.
Doris’s quirky family, her pursuit of friendship, and her plan to win the talent show create a rollercoaster of hilarity and hijinks. This tale captures the struggle of self-discovery and the magic in being true to oneself. It has become a firm favourite with the Younger Sun staff!
Ages 9–13
Hello Twigs
By Andrew McDonald and Ben Wood
Have we got a treat for our younger readers! From the creators of Real Pigeons comes a joyous early graphic novel series that is perfect for fans of Narwhal and Jelly, School of Monsters and Elephant and Piggie.
Stump is having a feeling. A feeling he calls ‘GREAT SADNESS’, because he used to live in the Big Tree, until a bolt of lightning struck him out. Poor Stump!
He bravely tries to stick himself back onto the tree, but his twiggy friends have a different idea.
They’ll help you out, Stump. That’s what twigs are for!
We have all four books in this fun new series and they are an absolute delight.
Ages 4–8
If you have any great reading suggestions for young or older, please send them to editor@thewestsider.com.au
