I can’t recall ever recommending to read a novel twice!
Once read, you will return to the beginning and start again – such is the monumental shift and collision of all you thought this story to be...
Layla literally looks to the constellations, wonder and awe of the night skies to make sense of the world around her and find personal motivation or affirmation. “North is always North…” is her personal mantra for life, her scientific lens on the world and throughout her training as an anaesthetist that has emboldened her life. It is her way of clinging to the fragile memories of her father, the local doctor. It is how she has built barriers to her disconnected, strange mother.
Despite her strained bonds with her mother, Layla is always drawn to her side each Christmas. From Queensland to the rugged, coastal Tasmanian town. This year is different and her mother’s rambling conversation is desperate and dire. Layla hastens to her childhood home…but will it be too late?
As stormy, moody, broody and wild the childhood town can be – it is no match for the unleashed fury and flurry of raw emotions that Layla unpacks in the few days before Christmas.
This is Megan Rogers’ first novel – raw, confronting and a woman facing a shift of all things stable in her life.
I have a particular joy in discovering that moment in a novel of why it has the title it has, and this is one is most satisfying; a resolve and galvanising of a woman finding sure steps in her life.
Be sure to discover this debut novel – a wildfire of a woman’s mid-life revelation as she pulls at the threads of blurred truth within a small town and its buried secrets.
I devoured this – not once, but twice.
Perfect for fans of Holly Ringland or Hannah Richell