Bogormen

Title: The Space Between
Author: Lauren Keenan
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 320
Date read: March 2025

A gripping historical novel set amidst the New Zealand Wars in 1860.

How do you choose between two sides, when you don’t belong on either?
Frances is an unmarried Londoner newly landed in colonial Aotearoa at the dawn of the First Taranaki War. Once well-regarded, her family’s impressive fall from grace sees them seeking their fortune in a raw, new country and struggling to learn the strange etiquette of settler life.

When Frances comes face-to-face with Henry White, the man who mysteriously broke her heart a decade earlier, he’s standing outside Thorpe’s General Store with a sack of flour in his arms. Flabbergasted, she is determined to find out why he ended their relationship.

Henry is married now, to the proud and hardy Matāria. Humiliated by her staunch sister Atarangi because of her controversial marriage and their painful past, Matāria lives at the edges of her papakainga. With conflict swelling between her iwi and English settlers, Matāria fears for the lives of her husband and their young twins.

When fighting breaks out, Frances and Matāria find their lives intersecting in surprising, and catastrophic, ways. Each woman must confront her past as she struggles to survive the present, both questioning whether they’ll ever belong, or if they’re doomed to exist in the uncomfortable space between.


I haven't read many books set in New Zealand - and especially not many historical novels set in NZ, so this made for a fascinating read about a period in time I don't know all that much about. It's very well-written, but naturally (given its subject matter) a fairly bleak book. It's ridiculous how horribly indiginous people were treated by colonizers no matter where they arrived. This book may have hit closer to home than most, as I've been to Parihaka Marae, and heard about not just the loss of land, but the loss of this land from people touched by it.

It was a bold move to use so much Te Reo Māori in Matāria's chapters, but I rather liked the fact that everything wasn't translated (even if I would have appreciated a glossary together with the bibliography and historical notes at the end of the book), and most things could be gleaned from context, so I don't feel like I missed out on much.

Title: Amorangi and Millie's Trip Through Time
Author: Lauren Keenan
Genre: Childrens, cultural
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 260
Date read: June, 2022

Amorangi and Millie lost their mum. Their only clue to her whereabouts is a carving on a tree that says I’m in the past! Rescue me! To do this, Amorangi and Millie must travel up every branch of their family tree and collect an object from each ancestor they meet.
They must then be back in the modern day before the sun sets, or they’ll all be trapped forever in the past. But can they do it in time?

In their travels, the children experience aspects of events in New Zealand history, such as the invasion of Parihaka, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Musket Wars and the eruption of Mount Taranaki. They also experience changes in the town and landscape, the attitudes of people and the way people live their lives.


A fun children's book involving time travel and just a tad of a history lesson - but so subtly delivered that the kids will never realize it ;-) I really enjoyed reading about how Taranaki changed throughout the years, and was once again saddened to be reminded just how badly colonizers tend to treat the original people :-( This one was extra poignant as I have been to Parihaka Marae, and it therefore seemed less abstract than such reminders often do (which is bad enough in and of itself...)

But I digress. Please don't get me wrong - the book is not depressing at all! This is the take-away my adult self took from it. Kids will focus more on the time travelling aspect and the siblings' adventure through time.

Title: Kaninjægeren (Joona Linna #6) (The Rabbit Hunter)
Author: Lars Kepler
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 576
Date read: July 2019

It begins with a nursery rhyme.
Nineteen minutes later you die…

There’s a face at the window.
A stranger wearing a mask stands in the shadow of a garden. He’s watching his first victim through the window. He will kill him slowly, make it last – play him a nursery rhyme – make him pay.

There’s only one person the police can turn to – ex-Detective Joona Linna – but he’s serving time in a high-security prison. So they offer him a chance to secure his freedom: help superintendent Saga Bauer track down the vicious killer known as The Rabbit Hunter, before he strikes again.

Soon another three victims have been murdered and Stockholm is in the grip of terror. Joona Linna must catch a disturbed predator, whose trail of destruction leads back to one horrific night of violence – with consequences more terrifying than anyone could have imagined…


Unfortunately not nearly as good as the other books in this series, and I think it might be time for me to say goodbye to Joona Linna and his friends. The story was still captivating, and made it easy for me to read 576 pages in less than 24 hours, but it had so many minor issues that by themselves would be no problem at all, but put together just served to annoy me.

First and foremost, the plot just seemed extremely far fetched. While I don't particularly doubt the premise, there were just certain aspects that really, really didn't work for me.

Secondly, I've gotten tired of the writing style. I don't mind a lot of really short chapters, but I draw the line when a chapter break might JUST as well have been a line break.

Thirdly, the amount of stuff that goes on between the lines. I keep worrying that I'll miss important plot points, because there are so many things just hinted at, where I have no idea if they turn out to be important or not.

That said, it did have a lot of good things going for it as well. I really loved Rex and his son and was happy that so much page-time was spent on the two of them. I also did like the concept of a spree killer as a plot point, and just wish the motivation and resolution had been better executed.

So 3 stars, and a fond farewell to the series.

Title: The Book of You
Author: Claire Kendal
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 363
Date read: April, 2015


Clarissa is becoming more and more frightened of her colleague, Rafe. He won't leave her alone, and he refuses to take no for an answer. He is always there.

Being selected for jury service is a relief. The courtroom is a safe haven, a place where Rafe can't be. But as a violent tale of kidnap and abuse unfolds, Clarissa begins to see parallels between her own situation and that of the young woman on the witness stand.

Realizing that she bears the burden of proof, Clarissa unravels the twisted, macabre fairytale that Rafe has spun around them - and discovers that the ending he envisions is more terrifying than she could have imagined.


Terrifying from pretty much the very first page. I picked it up at 11pm on an evening where I was home alone, which was less than intelligent, as it got me on high alert. Perfect for a read-a-thon where I needed to stay awake though ;)

The book is about 360 pages, and I absolutely LOVED the first 330. It was at turns frustrating, intriguing, terrifying and satisfying. Totally unputdownable.

But unfortunately the last 30 pages didn't work for me. Without giving too much away, I thought I found a plothole, and the ending itself employed one of my biggest pet peeves in suspense novels, which unfortunately subtracted a couple of stars.

I still think I'd recommend it though, because for most of the book I was totally captivated. Could just have wished for a less stereotypical ending.

Title: Ildvidnet (Joona Linna #3) (The Fire Witness)
Author: Lars Kepler
Genre: Crime
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 579
Date read: December, 2014

Flora Hansen calls herself a medium and makes a living by pretending to commune with the dead. But after a gruesome murder at a rural home for wayward girls, Hansen begins to suffer visions that are all too real. She calls the police, claiming to have seen a ghost, but only one detective puts aside his skepticism long enough to listen: Joona Linna.

Linna has spent more time at the scene of the crime than any other detective would. The case seems obvious on the face of it: One of the girls at the home escaped in the middle of the night, leaving behind a bloody bed with a hammer under the pillow. But why does Hansen insist that the murder instrument was a stone, not a hammer? And what's the story behind the dark red grain of sand, almost like a splinter from a ruby, stuck beneath the dead girl's fingernail? As Linna refuses to accept easy answers, his search leads him into darker, more violent territory, and finally to a shocking confrontation with a figure from his past.

Slow to start, but when it took off, it did so with a vengeance, and I read the last half in just one day. It was somewhat interesting to read this after having seen so many episodes of "Criminal Minds" though - there were definitely times where I just waited for Garcia to show up ;)

I have no clue how realistic the story is, but my theory is - not very. And the side plot with the internal investigation just annoyed me, as it seemed to serve no other purpose than to give Joona a reason to be insubordinate. There were other issues as well that bothered me while reading the book, but they all turned out to have a reasonable explanation and/or serve a real purpose, so I was cool with those.

But definitely a pageturner, and a very readable book.