Review: The Final Chapter - January Gilchrist - August 2025 I'll be honest—I dove into The Final Chapter with sky-high expectations. After devouring Julia Bartz's The Writing Retreat , I was hungry for another atmospheric writers' retreat mystery with that delicious locked-room tension . The premise had everything I wanted: creative egos clashing in isolation, dark secrets lurking beneath polite smiles, and a remote Blue Mountains setting steeped in Australia's most chilling criminal history. Unfortunately, what promised to be a page-turner ended up feeling more like a rough draft than a polished final manuscript. The setup is undeniably intriguing. Three women converge at an exclusive retreat, each carrying secrets heavier than their luggage. Desley Barron, struggling to revive her dying writing career, arrives desperate to prove herself. High-profile author Colette Halifax is hiding from a career-threatening scandal. And Maia McKenzie isn't there to write at a...

  Review : Love Letters to A Serial Killer - Tasha Coryell - June 2024 After a string of failed relationships, a degree she doesn't use, and a dead-end job in a not-for-profit charity as she keeps getting passed over for promotions, Hannah feels like her life is terrible and has nothing to live and is drifting through life like a plastic bag in the wind. That is until one night, she sees a Facebook post about a girl who has gone missing. Hannah reshares the post and creates her own one and it goes viral. When the female turns up dead, Hannah again posts about it and ends up joining a few crime blogs and forums. She has finally found a community of like-minded people and she feels like she is finally doing something with her life, and helping people. The thing though as she continues, she also starts to drift away from her reality and soon her world is wrapped up in true crime, missing and murdered people. The police finally catch the killer and Hannah starts writing to him. Soo...

Review: A Tale of Two Titties - Meg Vondriska - October 2023 "A Tale of Two Titties: A Guide to Writing Women Like a Bestselling Male Author" by Meg Vondriska offers a hilarious yet scathing critique of the portrayal of women in literature, particularly by male authors. With a title that grabs attention and a premise that promises both humor and insight, Vondriska takes readers on a journey through the often absurd and offensive representations of female characters in bestselling books. The book begins with a blunt acknowledgment of the dismal state of women's representation in literature, attributing much of the blame to male authors who reduce female characters to mere objects or plot devices. Vondriska's approach is refreshingly candid as she exposes the pervasive stereotypes, tropes, and objectification that plague female characters in fiction. Through a combination of literary analysis, interactive exercises, and witty commentary, Vondriska offers readers a toolk...

Review: The Fiction Class - Susan Breen - January 2008 Ever been stuck in a reading slump? After reading The Last Dragon King by Leia Stone last Thursday, everything I had tried since then was just blah and it took me four days to finally crack the reading slump even then as I typed this past week's reviews, I only read 5 books and for me that is still considered a bit on the quiet side. I have thought being near Christmas and that wind-down period from work as the near of the year arrives, we all get a bit tired and in a frustrated indescive mood. As a fan of books about books and writing, I figured this would be a safe bet to pull me out of the slump and it did. The book is set in an Introduction to Fiction Writing class taken by Arabella Hicks. She dreams of being a writer herself but spends her time writing reports and copywriting and teaching the class as well as visiting her mother in the rest home. This book is set during the class lessons where we get to know Arabella an...