carleesi's reviews
743 reviews

I loved the lore in this story, made all the more magical by the audiobook narration.

A heavy but important read. I expected to find it hard to get through but I demolished it. Reading words from survivors in all sorts of stages of trauma processing was beyond empowering.

I really enjoy Alice’s writing, I was drawn in by her storytelling throughout and felt buoyed along with her as she was tossed about in the waves of her young life.

I didn’t read much about this book, but I love Sofie so I wanted to give it a go and what a surprise this book turned out to be. 

So powerful, moving, thoughtful, reflective, foundation shaking. Sofie has brought together such big and important voices and ideas that has rewritten a lot of the scripts I hold about sex. They do it in such a gentle and kind way without pulling punches, by taking the reader’s hand and bringing us along on their journey.

I’d recommend this to absolutely everyone.

What a delightful book! Pure joy oozes from this story, with flecks of nostalgia and healing.

I looooved seeing Aboriginal English in a novel and loved the way Saward discussed Aboriginality in and out of so called Australia.

I wish we’d seen Brynn learn how to express herself instead of just disappearing when things get hard (not the abusive ex - fuck that guy) but she does it through the whole book and never properly learns to stand up for herself. 

Not really my kind of story. I was interested enough to keep reading. I would always lose the main character, she was such an empty vessel, which was maybe intentional but for me made it hard to get into the book. I also don’t enjoy unlikeable protagonists generally.

I’m torn on this one. I was hooked into the story and really wanted to keep reading, but there were some parts of the book I didn’t enjoy. 

This was my first foray into the history of the Romanovs (albeit fictional) but it’s inspired me to learn more about that period of Russian history. I really enjoyed the way the author wrote about Russian landscapes, it didn’t happen a lot but I felt I could see it for myself.

The timeline jumps were hard to keep up with. It was just a bit too frequent to have a clear narrative thread. It also relied very heavily on trauma porn. The ending was so unnecessarily brutal and graphic (HUGE trigger warnings for this book).

I also didn’t enjoy Anna’s chapters except for seeing the characters from Anastacia’s chapters reappear. I think this was maybe because the ending felt clear from early on so Anna felt very unlikeable. It was never explained why she couldn’t say her name and go back to her family. So while the choice to go along with the lie could make sense from a trauma perspective, it just didn’t.

I’ve been told to read this book so many times since it came out and I just assumed it was because I have 2 linguistics degrees but lo and behold it’s also anti-racist and decolonial speculative fiction! Ticking every box!

I found it a bit slow at times and I struggled with the long poetic writing style, but the plot, the story and the magical twist on colonial history were so beautifully done. The moral dilemmas and the depth we had in each character choice made me squirm at times, I didn’t want to relate or understand or forgive! But that’s the magic of writing like this - making us feel and helping us understand the depth of what it means to be human.

An incredibly important book for anyone with kids in their life! Beautiful reality based advice and examples that are grounded in theory. 

I listened to the podcast as it was released and this book was a very well written encapsulation of the feeling of being part of that story.

I am so glad we’ve seen some kind of justice for Lynn and so disgusted at all of the corruption that led to her murder being ignored for so many years. 

Love and power to Lynn’s family, friends and Hedley for working so tirelessly to make sure she was never forgotten.

My only qualm is how strange it was that hedley talked about how much he loved the name of the podcast and book. With all the discussion of protecting and respecting “Jenny” it’s odd to pick a title that makes her the subject. She was the teachers pet, but this is a story about a murdered mother, daughter, friend and wife, as well as a narcissistic pedophilic man and his evil deeds. The title suggests a lot more culpability for Jenny, and that’s never what Hedley was aiming for.