Author: Fiona Palmer
ISBN: 978-1-921901-08-9
RRP:$29.95
I surprised even myself that this book took me 12 hours to read, and I don’t mean twelve hours straight either. I started reading this 12hrs ago and since then I’ve cooked, cleaned, watched swimming lessons, had coffee and procrastinated, as well as reading this entire book. 355 pages of flowing reading that easily swept me away, but I wouldn’t call it a light read!
This certainly seemed formulaic to me: boy meets girl, sparks fly but baggage makes him prickly, she’s attracted but wonders why he hates her, against their own wishes they fall in love and live happily ever after.
On the other hand, I am still relatively new to the broader romance genre (or I was until recently), it seems that romance novels have a formula. And I guess romance readers want that happy ending so you have to have boy meets girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after in some way shape or form.
Having said that there were a lot of other things going on in the middle that really were intriguing and kept me guessing. The back stories were rationed out slowly so you wondered what skeletons were lurking in the closet. Each new piece of information was like a piece added to the puzzle, slowly allowing the picture to emerge yet still holding on to some of the mystery.
Fiona Palmer is an extremely talented Australian author who painted a glorious picture of the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. I could see the sunsets and hear the thunder, and it made me reminiscent of WA.
There is one thing that didn’t seem to fit for me, but I knew there would be a reason so I went off and asked the question, now it makes perfect sense. It wasn’t something that impacted my enjoyment of the story but it did play on my mind as I read.
The Road Home is an emotional story of moving on from loss and overcoming grief, of the differing ways we all cope with loss but more than that it’s a story of HOME! The way we are attached to home, and the way that sense of home can sometimes define us.
I love that this is an Australian book, these are Australian places, these are Celsius temperatures and Aussie beers. I had never realized how much ‘Aussie’ I miss in my reading until I’m reading things that are familiar and recognizable.
Fiona Palmer’s leading lady Lara is a farm girl through her childhood then transplanted to city living to attend a boarding school for high school from the age of 13. Over the next 15 yrs Lara settled into city life until all traces of the farm seem wiped away – until it seems that the farm won’t be there waiting for her any longer.
Lara is gorgeous, successful and seemingly lost in her city life – until a visit home refreshes all her memories and leaves her with an ache she can’t explain.
The classic bad breakup sees her running for home to start a new life – or pick up the reins of the old life she had always envisioned for herself. But has the city buried her farming roots too far? Can her stubbornness and determination really see her through a task this mammoth?
All of the characters are vivid and likeable, even when you don’t want to like them, and some of them are decidedly unpredictable. I can actually picture them in my head as I sit here thinking about them.
Read along this bumpy ride for yourself, I’m glad I did. To be completely honest it would have been worth it just for the sunsets. Fiona Palmer you sure paint a pretty literary picture. I may be glad I came for the sunsets but I’m just as glad I stayed for characters and the story.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
That book sounds really interesting. How great to find a book though that is all Aussie – so you can actually relate to the places and our temps 🙂
Definitely interesting! There is actually quite a lot of all Aussie great books out there as I’m currently discovering. Keep an eye out next week for the next one 🙂
And the best bit is often these books find me, I don’t even need to look for them. 🙂
It is well worth the read if you get the chance.