Review: 17 Years Later - JP Pomare - May 2024 One of my 2025 reading goals is to clear my physical bookshelf and as I also have my e-reader, what I have decided to do is to alternate between physical books and ebooks. So as my first read of the year was an ebook, that means my second read is a physical book. Being on a thriller buzz for the first day of January, I grabbed this New Zealand fiction - 17 Years Later by JP Pomare. One of the things I love about reading New Zealand fiction is being able to imagine the places that the book is set as I know the areas and that helped with 17 Years Later being set in Cambridge, just over the hill from where I live in Tauranga. The book starts with a crime podcaster Sloane Abbot winning an award and then googling herself, she reads a few comments that talk about how she is a one-trick pony and only covers white cases. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, there are talks about a case Bill Karamea who was convicted of murder 17 years ago of an English famil...

  Review: Dolly Doll - Leo Schulz - March 2014 Set in the early 1970's starting at the top of the North Island, we meet two Pakeha teens Dolly and her boyfriend Freddie.  Freddie is supposedly bad news and Dolly's parents warn her away from him , but of course Dolly knows best and she is head over heels for Freddie. So the pair of them take the car and start driving with the hope of running off together into the sunset and living happily ever after. Things don't always go that way as Freddie has a bit of a temper and during a stop in Hamilton almost beats a guy half to death for starring at Dolly.  This lands the couple in the world of the life of Maori gangs, drugs and even worse in the middle of a gang war between the Mongrel Mob and Black Power. Growing up in NZ and also watching Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors / What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted Fims , made me wonder if the author has used that as some of his inspiration for the novel and maybe some o...

Famous NZ Historical Author Deborah Challinor and her  novel Isle of Tears, which explores the Maori and Pakeha Land Wars – seen through the eyes of the Maori perspective. She chats about her writing and background..                       What is the inspiration behind the book Isle of Tears ? I decided to tell the story through Isla’s eyes as she quotes “I don’t believe that I have the cultural capital to accurately portray the New Zealand Wars from a purely Maori perspective”. By using Pakeha-Maori characters it meant that I could observe the war from both points of view, but with an emphasis on the Kingite experiences (supporters of the Maori King). I also wanted to try and convey what it might have been like for the Maori to be faced with the loss of their land and consequently their economic and spiritual resources, mana etc. And to have to go along to war for so long and at such costs they had to risk. Y...