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Christmassy :: Q&A with Leife Shallcross
In the lead up to Christmas I’m sharing some mini-interviews with authors about some of their festive faves. Today Canberra author Leife Shallcross was kind enough to talk books, writing and Christmas with me! Read on below to see what she said =) Your debut novel, The Beast’s Heart, came out in 2018 (yay!). Can you please tell us a little bit about your book, and what inspired you to write it? It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, told from the perspective of the Beast. I’m a total fairy tale tragic, and Beauty and the Beast is one of my favourite fairy tales because it’s a story where…
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#loveozya :: Vasilisa the Wise :: Kate Forsyth
I am always up for a fairy tale retelling, and I’d had my eye on Kate Forsyth’s collection Vasilisa the Wise since it came out earlier this year. I finally read it in September, after I saw Kate speaking on writing historical fiction about womencat the Heroines Literary Festival. If anyone knows about fairy tales, and will inspire and intrigue you enough to want to know more it is Kate Forsyth! I strongly recommend listening to her on Richard Fiedler’s Conversations (Including this one where she talks about Vasilisa, but I think she has spoken with him on there three or four times) – she is sooooo good! Vasilisa the…
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Review :: The Girl in the Tower :: Katherine Arden
I always think it is a bit tricky to talk in isolation a book that is part of a series but not the first book – to much missing context, not to mention risk of spoilers for earlier books! So today, instead of just talking about The Girl in the Tower – book two in the Winternight Trilogy – I’m going to talk a bit more generally about the series and include book one – The Bear and the Nightingale – too. I read The Bear and the Nightingale in 2017, and picked it up of its beautiful cover. (I’m starting to wonder whether I should be embarrassed about how…
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Review :: The Ice Maiden’s Tale :: Lisa Preziosi
I love fairy tales, and this year have been going through a bit of an obsession with reading retellings of all kinds.My latest fairy tale read, middle grade book The Ice Maiden’s Tale, is a bit different – it’s an original fairy tale author Lisa Preziosi wrote after being inspired by this quote by Michelangelo: “I saw an angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free” Two siblings, Johanna and Casper, need to be babysat by their neighbor, Mrs. Kinder. She’s the weird old lady that all the neighborhood children think is a witch. She doesn’t have a TV and so tells the children a story…
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Review :: Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass Vault :: Candace Robinson
Some see it… Some don’t… People in the town of Deer Park, Texas are vanishing. There is a strange museum, known as Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass Vault, that appears overnight. Perrie Madeline’s best friend and ex-boyfriend are among the missing. Perrie, along with her friend August, go on a pursuit to search for them in the mysterious museum. Could the elusive Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass Vault have anything to do with their disappearances? My feelings about this book are a bit complicated. Overall, this wasn’t quite the right book for me right now. Call me a crabby old lady, but I’ve read a few books lately with a young narrator and…
