Review: The Wife and the Widow - Christian White - September 2019 Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and The Widow is an unsettling thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by the secrets she uncovers about her dead husband's hidden life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she's forced to confront uncomfortable truths about her own husband. Only when these two women come together does the full, unsettling picture emerge. For me, this was a borderline read  and possibly the most confusing of Christian White's books that I've picked up. I went in feeling confident I had it figured out. The dual narrative pulled me along, the island atmosphere was genuinely eerie, and White's writing kept me turning pages. But then the final act arrived and completely threw me. I found myself thinking, how can this even be? and not in the satisfying, jaw-dropping way a good ...

Review: The Nowhere Child - Christian White - June 2018 There’s something extra special about receiving a book as a gift , especially a birthday Bookstagram surprise and The Nowhere Child by Christian White felt like exactly that kind of treat: one that invites you to curl up, get cosy, and disappear into its pages for a few blissful hours. A couple of years ago, I read The Ledge by Christian White and was instantly hooked by his knack for tension and twists. Since then, I’ve slowly been working my way through his backlist, and this one had been sitting on my radar for a while particularly because it features one of my absolute favourite tropes: missing children who are later found as teenagers or adults. Think Finding Carter vibes or Angie Stanton’s Don’t Call Me Greta , stories where identity, truth, and memory all collide in the most compelling ways. In The Nowhere Child, we begin in a small, cult-like town in the US, where a baby named Sammy Went disappears without a trace. It’...

          Review: Wild Place - Christian White - October 2021 After devouring The Ledge with Tandem Collective 's readalong, I was absolutely hooked on Christian White's ability to craft those delicious Australian suburban settings with unexpected twists that leave you reeling. So when a gorgeous fellow bookstagrammer gifted me Wild Place for my birthday, I was excited to get stuck into it. Set in 1989, Wild Place follows Tom Witter, a high school teacher living what appears to be an idyllic suburban life in Camp Hill with his wife and teenage sons, Marty and Kieran. His summer break routine involves DIY projects, neighbourhood watch meetings, and the usual parental vigilance. But when local teen Tracie Reed vanishes, everything shifts. The community forest known as Wild Place once a backdrop to everyday life suddenly transforms into something menacing. Tom becomes convinced that Tracie's disappearance is somehow linked to this dense woodland, and his deter...