Kathryn's Inbox

Like many kids in Australia who grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s I was familiar with an Australian sitcom titled Hey Dad...!  and would tune in every week--in fact to this day I can tell you that in Adelaide new episodes of  Hey Dad...! used air on SAS 7 at 7.30pm on Wednesdays, and remember the distinctive opening credits that used real photos of each of the actors. And just like the rest of the Australian public, I had no idea of the horrific abuse that took place on the set, until the story became public.  In fact, it was the first time in Australian history that a former child actor had come public with such a story--and, more shockingly, one that had been known on the set of Hey Dad...! for almost the whole of its eight year run, though no one would do anything about it. Sarah Monahan played Jenny Kelly, the youngest member of the Kelly family. She was abused by Robert Hughes, the actor who played Martin Kelly, her on screen dad and the star of the ...

On select Sundays I will be reviewing some of the old Apple Paperback titles from my childhood. These titles were published, or republished by Scholastic during the 1980s & 1990s and were written and set in the United States. In Australia, these books were typically only available from libraries or could be ordered through catalogues that were distributed through primary schools. Most of these titles are now long out of print or have been updated and republished for later generations ... Katie and Those Boys is one of the Apple Paperbacks that I can remember very clearly from my childhood. It was bought in the usual way--ordered from the Arrow Book Club catalogue that was distributed to my school, and arrived what felt like weeks later (in reality, about a fortnight). I remember, I was very, very excited to read this title. It was about a girl who, like me, only had brothers and some of the problems and situations that arose from that. Anyway, the book arrived at school f...

Joy Ride is a charming YA short story about two girls, Maji and Bubbles, who are trying to be good ... or at least trying not to get caught when they go on their adventures stealing cars and trying to return them to the spot where they found them. I picked it up because I was in the mood for something different and it did not disappoint. Joy Ride is the first instalment in a series that features Maji and is available free at Smashwords. Recommended.

It's comforting to know that ten, almost eleven years after Stephenie Meyer published Twilight that we still have these memes to remind us that real vampires do not sparkle ...

Prayers for the Stolen is a vivid and gut-wrenching tale of a reality that is all too real for many women who live in Mexico--the fear of being stolen. For these women, and especially girls and young women, the threat of being stolen and then trafficked and sold is all too real. They come up with innovative ways to keep safe--dressing their girls as boys, altering their appearance so that they may be considered too ugly to be stolen, and digging holes where the girls may hide when they hear the SUVs coming.  Set in the mountains of Mexico, the novel beings with a truly haunting sentence, Now we make you ugly, my mother said.  From there, the story focuses on the protagonist Ladydi, mother and their friends and neighbours as they suffer all kinds of hardships that the authorities care nothing about. There is Paula, who is stolen but eventually escapes, Ruth who was found in a garbage bin and grows up to become a beautician, Maria who is born with a hare lip and Estafa...

The Reluctant Jillaroo is fun story about a young woman persuaded to swap places with her identical twin sister. Heidi Gage is a surfer girl from Sydney who loves the beach and the water. Her identical twin sister Harper loves the land and dreams of getting a scholarship to an exclusive agricultural school. To get the scholarship, she must spend a week at a Jillaroo/Jackroo camp for teens in outback New South Wales, but on the night before she is due to go, Harper breaks her leg, and persuades Heidi that she must go in her place. Feeling guilty for causing Harper's accident in the first place, Heidi agrees and finds herself on an unpredictable adventure at a camp she is completely unprepared for. She is, quite literally, a surfer girl out of water. As I said at the beginning of the review, this one is a fun story. There are some funny bits and a touch of romance--I really enjoyed the love triangle between Heidi, Chaz and Trent ... and the outcome. The plot about the thief ...

No Hiding Place is a well-written short story about Francis and Estefani, new parents who are holding their child for the first time and wondering at the life he will lead. As they stare at their new son, each recount their lives--being born in a place where poverty and political turmoil are the norm, and only just managing to escape to the United States with their lives. The United States, supposedly politically stable, initially offers their son a better life until the family finds that here they will suffer all kinds of prejudices--those of race, and that of wealth. I found this story to be quite an interesting, in-depth look at the problems that real people face when moving--essentially against their will--to a different and supposedly safe country. The author has a real gift with his observations of humanity and human nature. The story felt unflinchingly real to me. Highly recommended.

Loving this funky bus/taxi shelter that I spotted down at the Bay.

Happy St Patricks Day ...

Eric Lindstrom's debut novel is a clever YA read featuring a protagonist who is just trying to survive high school, the loss of her parents and heartbreak the best way she knows how. Parker is funny, clever, a skilled runner who wants to try out for the track team and she and her best friend Sarah offer relationship advice to other students at the beginning of each day. Parker also happens to be blind, and she has a list of rules that she would like you to follow. The most important rule is this: There are no second chances. Violate my trust and I'll never trust you again. Betrayal is unforgivable. (Page 39.) This is not the first book that I have read that features a teenager with a disability, however, what makes this book stand out from the crowd, is that Parker isn't this perfect kid who we are all supposed to feel sorry for. Parker has her flaws. She's bitchy and arrogant, occasionally rule, plays on her disability at times, and can often be self-ce...

Amanda Ortlepp's second novel offers readers a glimpse into small town life in the Eyre Peninsula ... against a very sinister backdrop. Erin Travers has escaped an unhappy life in Sydney with her two teenage sons in tow and is looking forward to making a new life in the small, South Australian town that she remembers from her childhood. Her new neighbours are decent, a new lover may be on the horizon and most importantly she has returned to her childhood dreams of being an artist, and it would seem that she has real talent. But not everything about the move is happy, and something--or someone--from Erin's past is about to catch up with her ... As a reader from South Australia, Running Against the Tide  had one huge selling point for me and that was its sense of location. Even though Mallee Bay was fictitious it felt like this really could be a small South Australian town, and one that I would like to visit or at least read about. The story itself has a number of thread...

Well, well, guess who is back and has a brand new look. Recently, I decided to republish Behind the Scenes and thought that it was only fitting that the book got a bit of a makeover, so here it is! I'm loving the new, Virginia Andrews inspired cover, that gives the story a bit of a gothic feel. (Lets face it, any book that features abductions and dark family secrets isn't exactly going to light and fluffy.) The new eBook version should be available this week from most retailers (depending how often that the update their lists,) and a paper version should follow soon.

Not another teen book review is a semi-regular feature on this blog that comments on mass market fiction from the 1980s & 1990s that featured teenage characters and teenage themes ... and was lapped up by eleven year olds. This time around I am talking about Girl Talk, a series from the early 1990s. Published by Golden, the same company responsible for the Little Golden Books Girl Talk  was a chatty, gossipy series of books pitched at girls that was, surprisingly, inspired by a board game of the same name. These short books (all with similar pink covers,) featured a short 'meet the characters' at the front, a summery of what each character thought of the topic that was being explored in the book, and a chapter that was devoted to a telephone conversation between all (or occasionally, only some,) of the characters. At the end of each book, readers were invited to fill out a survey on what they thought about the series that, for the cost of a stamp, could then be post...

River Song was never my cup of tea. Even so, I thought this meme was pretty funny.

As a writer and a blogger, I spend far more time online that what I should. One thing I love the opportunities that it has provided to connect with many different people from across the globe, people who I may not necessarily have been able to meet and talk to in real life. Unfortunately, there is also a down side to all of this. Places that should be open to free discourse are often the haven for trolls, bullies, keyboard warriors and people who just flat out have nothing better to do at that particular point in time than to run someone else's opinion down, usually by means of heckling, pointing out any spelling or grammatical errors, or just saying, well, anything really, to make that person look foolish.  And you know what? I don't find it clever. I don't find it funny. I don't get why a conversation on the internet should go something like this: Person One: Great article! I support marraige equality. Person Two: Do you? Do you really support marriage ...

Young Widows Club is a story of a seventeen-year-old girl who find herself in an unusual situation. Tam Baird dropped out of school to marry her boyfriend Noah, who is an up and coming rock and roll star. Six weeks later, Noah is dead from heart failure and circumstance forced Tam to return to the home of her father and stepmother, so that she can start over. Caught in a world where she is no longer a child, but expected to return to school and to obey her parents, Tam struggles with grief and loneliness by finds answers in the most surprising of places. Set almost entirely on an island--Martha's Vineyard, where the author also lives--this novel had a real sense of location, and paradoxically, isolation, given the protagonists unusual circumstances. There were a few themes that I think could have been fleshed out--for example Tam's Dad did not approve of her marriage (at the beginning of the novel it is noted that he was not there, later, it says explicitly that he did...

Conflicting evidence, an unreliable narrator and a morally ambigious story make All These Perfect Strangers one of the most intriguing novels that I have encountered so far in 2016. Pen Sheppard is an unwelcome resident in her small town, and has recently left university under a dark cloud. The novel opens with Pen visiting her psychiatrist, before moving between the past and the present to tell of Pen's unusual--and traumatic--experiences at university, while also addressing the reason that Pen is hated by nearly everyone in her small town. The story is so complex that I found my feelings toward Pen ebb back and forth several times throughout the narrative. On the surface, it is a story about a young woman who is in the wrong place at the wrong time, suffers a trauma, is ostracised by the people in her home town and then lucky enough to win the perfect escape a scholarship to a university ... where she is unlucky enough to find herself in the middle of a situation that is ...

Salty Dog is a new addition to the Bay and sits, well ... just outside of where the old public conveniences used to be. There have been some big changes around that part of Glenelg in recent times, and the area feels a lot more open than it used to be.  Anyway, this pup is a friendly and fun, and it even doubles as a bench. 

Sharing this one, because it is quite possibly the only time that I have ever seen the "Kermit drinking tea/but that's none of my business" meme and found it even remotely funny. This is one is usually reserved for stupid passive-aggressive arguments on facebook, pointing out the hypocritical behaviour of others.

Although Lullaby is classified as YA there is plenty in this short novel to hook and, ultimately, challenge adult readers as well. Set in New Zealand, sometime in the near future, it opens with eighteen year old Rene, who is one of identical twins, at a hospital, speaking with a young psychologist who is tasked with checking if he is capable of making a decision to allow the hospital to undertake a procedure that is risky, unethical and of no value to his twin brother who is already classified as brain dead, though it might help him to gain a 'new life.' Most of the first half of the novel focuses on Rene's conversation with psychologist Maggie, as he reflects on his childhood and his relationship with Theo. Although identical twins, the pair have stark differences, and the novel has much to say on themes of duality and ego. Rene is not the nicest of teenagers, but then again, neither was Theo, though it is obvious that they care about one another. Despite the toug...

Actor Gillian Anderson, who is best known for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully in the X-Files and as Miss Havisham in the BBC adaption of Great Expectations , returns to her sci-fi/paranormal roots to write her first novel A Vision of Fire . With the help of prolific author Jeff Rovin, the novel is both page turning and unnerving, but it also has a unique sense of human compassion, one that immediately had me drawing comparisons with J.K. Rowling, though their writing styles are, of course, quite different.  Caitlin O'Hara is a renowned child psychologist is called in to help when the daughter of India's ambassador to the United Nations starts exhibiting strange--and dangerous--behaviours after witnessing an assassination attempt on her father. Meanwhile, there are young people in Haiti and Tehran who are both exhibiting similar behaviours. Is there a link? What Caitlin discovers is something far more complex and dangerous than she expected. I enjoyed reading t...