Author: Fiona Lowe
ISBN: 9781489257338
RRP: $32.99
Publication Date: 18 February 2019
Publisher: HQ Fiction
Copy: Courtesy of the Publisher
Fiona Lowe is a talented and prolific Australian author, she writes in multiple genres and though I haven’t read a lot of her work though I have read the Australian sagas, and loved them.
Life gets well and truly on top of me sometimes and I am still reading this book. I started with such great intentions, way too long ago, and I hope to finish it sometime this month.
Lowe has written a complex story of the long road to recovery after devastating bushfires wreak havoc on a small town. The rebuilding has begun and there are lots of bright new business buildings but the damage to people and their relationships are much harder to heal.
I’m about two thirds of the way through and invested in the story, connected to the characters and wishing I could reach in and slap some characters.
It is difficult for me to review too extensively because I am still in the midst of this story, still living with these characters and waiting with some semblance of patience to find out how it’s all going to end.
The narrative jumps through a number of leading ladies in both the past and the present. We get to know them through snippets of life in the time before the fires, before their worlds were completely torn down and in need of rebuilding as well as navigating the post-fire life they have been left with.
Julie is a community stalwart who has spent decades working for the town and now she wants to bring in some fresh faces to hand the baton to and help bring the tourists back to the struggling town. She handpicks a craft group of unlikely allies who meet once a week and slowly begin to forge more than just a civil working relationship.
Fiona Lowe has written strong and believable characters who will certainly flex all of your empathetic muscles, and those that will test all of your nerves.
Home Fires is a tale of home, loss, heartbreak and renewal. Lowe has explored small town communities with intricate care and sensitivity resulting in a story that is driven by it’s strong female characters; a story about the people and their relationships more than the events taking place around them.
I can’t wait to finish and sit back to really think about this one, once everything is said and done. If I’m really lucky someone will get what’s coming to them.
******
UPDATE: So I gave myself the night off and curled up with this book, and stayed up way past bedtime reading until I finished.
The final third of the book pulled together all the threads to give a comprehensive picture of the whys. We get an in-depth look at the day of the fire through the eyes of our leads and it goes a long way to help us understand the long term trauma they are still dealing with two years later.
I loved this element of the story and it totally tugged my heart-strings thinking of what these characters lived through, and ultimately had to live with.
There were a couple of interesting twists that I didn’t see coming and a satisfying ending that saw me close the book with a smile.
I’m also really looking forward to hearing what our members have to say about Home Fires.
Fiona Lowe can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and her Website.
Thanks to HQ Fiction 15 of our Beauty and Lace Club members are reading Home Fires and you can read what they thought in the comments below.
Home Fires is available now through HQ Fiction and where all good books are sold.
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!
Home Fires is a story around a small country town called Myrtle and the lives of the people living there.
The story begins eighteen months after a devastating bush fire that has flattened the town and it’s people. They have mostly picked up and rebuilt their town and their lives as best they can.
Story lines go back and forth from before the fire to after the fire and to the present moment.
These crossed time lines give a more in depth look into the character and you get to understand more as to who they are now and what life was like then to life now.
When the town decides to bring back the tourists some of the women start a craft group. This group brings 5 women together who would not usually be together and it’s here friendships are make and secrets are exposed.
There are many strongly written characters in the book and sometimes that many characters makes a book a bit confusing but Fiona has given each character a stage and a voice and never do you get lost or overwhelmed.
Fiona has the ability to make each character so real and believable that you fall in love with the good and you won’t always like the bad.
If you are looking for a strong story with love, loss, friendship and secrets then this is the perfect book for you.
Thank you Beauty and Lace and Harlequin for giving me this book to read.
Home Fires. By Fiona Lowe
The town of Myrtle, in Victoria’s Otway Ranges, was demolished by Bush fires. The story begins with the Public opening by a political Minister of the newly built Indoor Sport Stadium. We are introduced to a crowd of characters as the Opening occurs, and the ribbon is cut. Trying to work out who was who had me wondering if this book was a sequel to something that I hadn’t read, and this was confusing. But as the story goes on, we begin to pair up the couples, and follow their lives both before (BF) and after (AF) the fires.
Claire, Bec and Sophie and their partners and families are the main characters. The book jumps back before the fire, forward 18 months, and then to the time of the bush fires, so it is important to the reader to note at the start of each chapter what time we are reading about. Once this becomes a habit, the story begins to make more sense, and the characters fill out and we learn why they react as they do. The fire fractured their lives and their relationships, and they all suffered differently. The scar tissue of trauma runs deep, and we agonise and cry as we follow the experiences of the townsfolk.
Many lives were lost, only 2 buildings were left standing. The flurry of national attention means that Myrtle is rebuilt with shiny and new buildings. But the people cannot be restored like that, they all have their secrets, and Post Traumatic Stress is oh so very real.
An exceptional, thought provoking account of life after a catastrophe. Once I got into this, I could not put the book down. At 487 pages it is a long read, but well worth it.
Thank you to Beauty &Lace Book Club, and to HarperCollins books for the chance to read this. To the author Fiona Lowe, Thank You. This is the first of your books that I have read, but I have now bought Daughter of Mine and am ready to start that one.
I was lucky enough to be chosen to read Home Fires by Fiona Lowe. I must admit I was having some trouble at the beginning of the book but once I got a few chapters in I was hooked and sorry that I was worried I would not enjoy it! The only thing I wasn’t 100% keen on was the way the book jumped around but this just required more concentration
I really liked how you learned snippets of each of the ladies lives in the present and in the past. Each character really spoke to you in their own way whether you felt what they were feeling or you were the complete opposite.
Home Fires made me laugh, it made me cry and it really made me think about things in my life and how I handle them
Thank you Beauty and Lace and Fiona Lowe for a great read!
Quite a good book and story once you really get into it. A bit back and forth but overall Fiona Lowe continues to be a wonderful story writer. Very relatable, touching on emotions close to myself.
Thanks so much for this book.