Bogormen

Title: One of Us is Lying
Author: Karen M. McManus
Genre: YA
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 360
Date read: March, 2022

What happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive? Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose?
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.


I've been wanting to read this for several years, and with good reason as it turned out. I could not put it down and just wanted to know both what happened next, and the reason why everything was happening.

Fortunately it did not disappoint. Karen McManus managed to keep me guessing until the very end, while still providing a believable and satisfying conclusion to everything. I'm not usually a fan of the unreliable narrator writing style, but thanks to the nature of the book (and the characters) it totally worked here.

The characters have been compared to those from "The Breakfast Club", and I totally get that. There are definitely shades of some of them (Bender especially), but I think they did a better job of bending stereotypes here - although that's probably because the plot was stretched out over more than just a Saturday.

I did have a few issues here and there, which pulled the rating down a notch, but I still really liked it, and will definitely be looking into more books by this author.

Title: The Inagural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club
Author: Sophie Green
Genre: Cultural, fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 432
Date read: March, 2022

In 1978 the Northern Territory has begun to self-govern. Cyclone Tracy is a recent memory and telephones not yet a fixture on the cattle stations dominating the rugged outback. Life is hard and people are isolated. But they find ways to connect.

Sybil is the matriarch of Fairvale Station, run by her husband, Joe. Their eldest son, Lachlan, was Joe's designated successor but he has left the Territory - for good. It is up to their second son, Ben, to take his brother's place. But that doesn't stop Sybil grieving the absence of her child.

With her oldest friend, Rita, now living in Alice Springs and working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and Ben's English wife, Kate, finding it difficult to adjust to life at Fairvale, Sybil comes up with a way to give them all companionship and purpose: they all love to read, and she forms a book club.

Mother-of-three Sallyanne is invited to join them. Sallyanne dreams of a life far removed from the dusty town of Katherine where she lives with her difficult husband, Mick.

Completing the group is Della, who left Texas for Australia looking for adventure and work on the land.


I basically picked up this book because of the title, and stayed on because of its setting. The atmosphere is very much "Cooper's Crossing" (from the TV show "Flying Doctors"). It's a bit slow to start, but I soon ended up absolutely loving it.

You follow the lives of 5 women and their families over the duration of 3'ish years - share in their joys and sorrows, their hardships and their successes. It doesn't shy away from describing the hardships of an Outback existence, but never becomes a depressing book, even if not everybody gets the HEA we could have wished for.

The book is written in vignettes and jumps from character to character, but with enough of a red thread that it never feels disjointed, and I grew to love all the women of the book club - even if Kate did quickly become (and remain) my favourite).

An unassuming book, that I ended up loving a lot more than I had expected to.

Title: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Author: Roald Dahl
Genre: Childrens
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 121
Date read: January 2011, March 2022

For the first time in a decade, Willy Wonka, the reclusive and eccentric chocolate maker, is opening his doors to the public--well, five members of the public to be exact. The lucky five who find a Golden Ticket in their Wonka chocolate bars will receive a private tour of the factory, given by Mr. Wonka himself. For young Charlie Bucket, this a dream come true. And, when he finds a dollar bill in the street, he can't help but buy two Wonka's Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delights--even though his impoverished family could certainly use the extra dollar for food. But as Charlie unwraps the second chocolate bar, he sees the glimmer of gold just under the wrapper!

The very next day, Charlie, along with his unworthy fellow winners Mike Teavee, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Augustus Gloop, steps through the factory gates to discover whether or not the rumors surrounding the Chocolate Factory and its mysterious owner are true. What they find is that the gossip can't compare to the extraordinary truth, and for Charlie, life will never be the same again.

This was my first introduction to the works of Roald Dahl, and remains my favourite. I love reading about the Chocolate Factory, and wish there had been time to visit more rooms... In fact, that was my main problem with the movie as well, but I guess they couldn't add rooms to the movie that weren't there in the book ;)