New Released in May

Into My Arms by Kylie Ladd (Allen and Unwin)

“When Skye meets Ben their attraction is instantaneous and intense. Niether of them has ever felt more in synch – or in love – with anyone in their lives. What happens next will tear them both apart. Into My Arms is a searing love story and a gripping family drama – a shocking, haunting novel in the tradition of Jodi Picoult and Caroline Overington.
The kiss ignited something, blew it into being, and afterwards, all Skye could think about was Ben. One day a woman meets a man and falls instantly and irrevocably in love with him. It hits her like a thunderbolt, and she has to have him, has to be with him, regardless of the cost, of the pain of breaking up her existing relationship. She has never felt more in synch-or in love-with anyone in her whole life. So this is how it feels, she thinks to herself, this is what real love feels like.
It’s like that for him too; he wants her in a way he’s never wanted anything or anyone before: obsessively, passionately, all-consumingly.
She has found her one true love, her soulmate, and he has found his. What happens next will tear them apart and unleash havoc onto their worlds.
This brave, brilliant, electrifying novel from the acclaimed author of After the Fall and Last Summer, will move you deeply and shock you to your core. Love, lust and longing have rarely wielded such power, nor family secrets triggered such devastation.”

Reviewed by Marcia at Book Muster Down Under; Shelleyrae at Book’d Out; Monique at Write Note Reviews; Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best; Bree at All The Books I Can Read

The Rules of Conception by Angela Lawrence (Harlequin)

“Rachel Richards is ready to be a mother. She’s got a great job, a good income, a beautiful inner-cityapartment, and a great group of supportive friends. All she needs is a father.
But go-getter Rachel won’t let a little thing like that get in the way of her dreams. After investigating different options to become pregnant, co-parenting, adoption and anonymous sperm donors, Rachel finally settles on a method of conception – using a known donor. Making the decision to choose the biological father for her child, Rachel picks Digby. The single, softly-spoken Canadian with a complicated family background wants to have children, but not have a child.
After a few attempts, Rachel is able to conceive and begins to dream about the kind of life she will create for her and her child. But the well-established foundation for her dream soon begins to develop cracks. Lyndall, her nightmare boss, is becoming even more obsessed with ruining Rachel’s career, a desirable, but undeniably married, colleague is beginning to show inappropriate interest and the stress of her impending new life is starting to take its toll on Rachel’s health.
Now Rachel is beginning to question if she should have followed the rules of conception after all…”

Reviewed by Bree at All The Books I Can Read; Helen at Helen McKenna-Author; Shelleyrae at Book’d Out; Monique of Write Note Reviews

Peace Love and Khaki Socks by Kim Lock (MidnightSun Publishing)

“One sultry October morning in Darwin, hemp-wearing army wife Amy Silva grips a trembling fist around two pink lines on a plastic stick. Struggling to come to terms with her rampant fertility, disillusioned with a haughty obstetrician, and infuriated by an inordinate amount of peeing, Amy finds solace in a decision to homebirth. After all, it worked for the cavewomen, right? But as a tropical cyclone threatens to whip down the main street, Amy finds herself facing more than biology.
Peace, Love and Khaki Socks explores what it is to be a woman, an expectant mother, a lover and a friend in a patriarchy. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes hilarious and always honest, this unforgettable story is one woman’s struggle to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.”

Reviewed by Lara at This Charming Mum; Marcia at Book Muster Down Under; Bree at All The Books I Can Read; Shelleyrae at Book’d Out

The Yearning by Kate Belle (Penguin)

“It’s 1978 in a country town and a dreamy fifteen year old girl’s world is turned upside down by the arrival of the substitute English teacher. Solomon Andrews is beautiful, inspiring and she wants him like nothing else she’s wanted in her short life.
Charismatic and unconventional, Solomon easily wins the hearts and minds of his third form English class. He notices the attention of one girl, his new neighbour, who has taken to watching him from her upstairs window. He assumes it a harmless teenage crush, until erotic love notes begin to arrive in his letterbox.
Solomon knows he must resist, but her sensual words stir him. He has longings of his own, although they have nothing to do with love, or so he believes. One afternoon, as he stands reading her latest offering in his driveway, she turns up unannounced. Each must make a choice, the consequences of which will haunt them until they meet again twenty years later.”

Reviewed by Jenn J McLeod; Marcia at Book Muster Down Under; Shelleyrae at Book’d Out; Monique at Write Note Reviews;  Bree at All The Books I Can Read

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld (Random House)

“Who or what is watching Jake Whyte from the woods?
Jake Whyte is the sole resident of an old farmhouse on an unnamed island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. It’s just her, her untamed companion, Dog, and a flock of sheep. Which is how she wanted it to be. But something is coming for the sheep – every few nights it picks one off, leaves it in rags.
It could be anything. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumours of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is Jake’s unknown past, perhaps breaking into the present, a story hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, in a landscape of different colour and sound, a story held in the scars that stripe her back.
Set between Australia and a remote English island, All the Birds, Singing is the story of how one woman’s present comes from a terrible past.”

Reviewed by Heidi at …But Books Are Better

Letters to the End of Love by Yvette Walker (UQP)

“In a coastal village in Cork in 1969, a Russian painter and his Irish novelist wife write letters to one another as they try to come to terms with a fatal illness.
On Australia’s west coast in 2011, a bookseller writes to her estranged partner in an attempt to understand what has happened to their relationship.
In Bournemouth in 1948, a retired English doctor writes to the love of his life, a German artist he lived with in Vienna during the 1930s.
The simple domestic lives of these three couples are set against conversations about intimacy, art, war and loss. Told in a series of unforgettable letters, this is a novel about love and what it means when it might be coming to an end.”

Reviewed by Emily at The Incredible Rambling of Elimy

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About Me

My name is Shelleyrae Cusbert I am a mother of four children, aged 6 to 16, living in the mid north coast of NSW. I am an obsessive reader and publish my thoughts about what I read at my book blog,  Book’d Out.  In 2012 I read and reviewed a total of 109 books for the AWW Challenge (see obsessive!) and featured more than 35 Australian women writers. I juggle caring for my family with a part time job and volunteer at both the town’s local library and her children’s school library. While I have a degree in Education, I hope to gain a diploma in librarian studies in the near future.