2025 Top Ten Wrap-Up

It's that time of year again, in which I look back over all of the books I've reviewed in 2025 to choose ten stand-outs. This year, I was delighted that five of these picks, a full 50 percent, come from the Aussie Book Challenge I set myself. It is solid proof that to me, our national literature holds up against the rest of the world's. The other thing I noticed is that tales set around the time of the Second World War or just after also made a strong showing on this year's list.

Without further ado, here they are. 

1) Stone Yard Devotional

The setting is an abbey in the remote Australian bush where fruitful reflection flows naturally from the pen of the main character, who chooses to remain anonymous. Sudden epiphanies come in the form of a horrific mouse plague and a face from her past. And all through the story, we're invited to take a step back and ponder the significance of our own reactions. (My review is here.)

2) Wuthering Heights

This is a re-read but deserves its place up here. It isn't the intensity of Heathcliff's relationship with Catherine that plays on my mind, but the devastatingly sneaky way in which he unleashes his spleen on the children of the generation that wronged him. Heathcliff's total focus and secrecy would be admirable if it was channeled differently. (I wrote a couple of discussion posts in which I delve deep. They begin here.)

3) Small Bomb at Dimperley.

This one is an awesome post WW2 story with a hodgepodge manor house as unstable as the positions of the landed gentry who try to hold it together. It's all about having to improvise new solutions for a totally new era, with the bonus of a sudden, satisfying romance that undoubtedly wouldn't have happened in any other time period. (My review is here.)

4) Dark Quartet

Lynne Reid Banks' 1973 biography of the Bronte siblings deserves a spot for her sheer zeal of research, and how she manages to slide around between the headspaces of all four, placing herself in each of their shoes. I'd challenge any fan to read this without wanting to travel straight to Haworth where it all happened. (My review is here.)

5) The Melendy Quartet

I'm cramming four books into one here, because it's impossible to choose a series favourite. Elizabeth Enright uses a perfect balance of sensory detail and droll family interaction to engage us with Mona, Rush, Randy, and Oliver. Technically this expands my list to 13 rather than 10. Consider it a cheat if you will, but if I gave each of these books the space they deserve, my list would be dominated by the Melendys as they so thoroughly deserve. (My string of reviews begins here with The Saturdays.)

6) Agatha Christie - An Autobiography

The queen of crime takes us on a fascinating trip through the twentieth century and across the world as she tells her own personal story. Her stubborn enjoyment of life never wavers throughout two world wars and a messed-up first marriage. Nothing dims her sparkle for long, her sense of humor is second to none, and I came to the end resolved to be an 'acceptor' and 'enjoyer' in the way she sets forth. (My review is here.) 

7) Playing Beatie Bow

I suspect nostalgia evoked by holidays to Sydney and memories of living in the 80s comes into play for me here. I was an Aussie teen during the same 'modern' time period as the heroine, Abigail. It's a fun time travel adventure back to the Victorian era too. Ruth Park stirs together romance, mystery and a bitter-sweet twist. This novel also helped make Year 9 English one of my favorite subjects back in the day. (My review is here.)

8) Pennies for Hitler

This evokes an innocent child's experience of WW2 in a most awesome way, when my own parents were young like the hero, Georg. Through this boy's eyes we get authentic snapshots of the war in three countries; Germany, England, and Australia. I'm in awe of Jackie French's sensitive depth of detail while keeping the story moving. And the cognitive dissonance and imposter syndrome her young protagonist grapples with all by himself is staggering! (My review is here.) 

9) The Dickens Boy

Young Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, aka Plorn, lived such a full and eventful life in the Land Downunder, but few people really know about him. The fact that he was a 19th century nepo-baby who couldn't shake off his father's mantle even down the bottom of the world stirs our sympathy for him. I'm certain Tom Keneally stuck to facts to thresh out this story, because it's so fascinating he wouldn't need to deviate. (My review is here.)

10) Evan and Darcy 

It's a modern, gender-reversed Pride and Prejudice set in the Aussie bush. Need I say more. This is a very clever story that kept me smiling early on this year. (My review is here.) 

So there we have them, done and dusted for yet another year. I do hope you'll keep following this blog in 2026. Meanwhile, I wish you a very merry Christmas with plenty of time to read.  

'Elsewhere Girls' by Emily Gale and Nova Weetman

It is Christmas holiday time in Australia, and here is the first of several beach reads I hope to do. I picked this one up at Orchard Bookshop in the heart of Adelaide Arcade, with a voucher that was a gift from family members. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

The two authors, Gale and Weetman, aimed to write an interesting YA Aussie timeslip tale. The setting is Sydney, featuring Wylie's Baths, a terrific tidal swimming pool still open to the public. Perhaps the title might more accurately be Elsewhen Girls, yet it wouldn't sound as good.

13-year-old Catherine (Cat) Feeney, attends Victoria Grammar School on a swimming scholarship in 2021. She's fast and talented, but having her future set with such rigid boundaries makes her rebellious. Cat's not convinced she has the dogged passion to aim for the Olympics. Fanny (Fan) Durack is an older teen in 1908. She's a strong swimmer who has set her heart on training for the Olympics but must squeeze it in around household chores. Her parents are pub managers, and Fanny and her siblings work flat out helping with hands-on work that never ends. 

The main twist is that one protagonist is drawn straight from history. Fanny was a real person, along with every member of her family. 

The timeslip catalyst is an ornate stopwatch coupled with a perfectly synchronized swim 113 years apart. It's a body swap story as well. Not only must they bluff their way through each day, but they must do it in each others' skins and try to fool each others' families rather than risk being thought crazy. 

Cat is appalled by the limitations placed on women in 1908. 'I can't believe washing sheets comes before everything else a girl might want to do.' Fan's head is totally turned by all our 21st-century labor-saving devices and fast food. 'I keep imagining what Ma would do with all the spare time.' (This begs the questions, what do we do? How would we justify to a person from the earliest 20th century that we still consider ourselves time poor with way too much on our plates?)  

Although Fan quickly appreciates how much easier she finds life in the 2020s, I'd argue that Cat's plight might still be far preferable in other ways. Technological bafflement is real. We surely all have at least vague inklings of the olden days from TV and books. Cat's instructions to, 'check the copper' might be more intuitive than Fan's being told to, 'Google it on your laptop.' 

I found one sad oversight. Fanny Durack, from her vantage point in 2021, never discovers that not only did she win Olympic Gold, she was destined to become the world's greatest female swimmer across all distances for a period of time. If Gale and Weetman intended to incorporate a real-life celebrity into their fiction, at least they might have done her a favor similar to the memorable Dr Who episode with Vincent Van Gogh. They could have written it in so easily. But I guess this sort of prior knowledge might impact Fan's motivation to succeed back in her own era, which is probably wise not to meddle with. Time travel can have so many awkward ripple effects.

It's nice to see them mention in their endnotes such inspirations as Charlotte Sometimes and Playing Beatie Bow. This book doesn't have the melancholic atmosphere of Charlotte Sometimes. It's fairly upbeat for such a puzzling swap, but at least the authors give equal airplay to both Cat and Fan's experiences, while Penelope Farmer's classic focuses solely on Charlotte, completely omitting poor Clare's bewilderment. And the mysterious family prophecies in Playing Beatie Bow gives Ruth Park's work an urgency this book lacks. 

Overall, I think the swimming venues have more depth than the story itself, but it's still a fun, quick read.   

🌟🌟🌟½

'Stone Yard Devotional' by Charlotte Wood

This is my modern/21st century choice for my 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge. It surely fits the bill, for the intriguing action (and non-action) takes place against the lockdowns, border restrictions, and social-distancing of 2020. 

 MY THOUGHTS: 

First off, what great descriptions of the Aussie landscape we get within these pages. 

'I stopped, as I sometimes do, to get out and stand looking down across the threadbare velvet-covered brown bones of this land. Stones and low yellow grasses and the delicate strings of barbed-wire fencing tracing long into the distance. Hot dry air zinging with grasshoppers. The sky a vast, white striated haze.' 

The burned-out main character, who never once divulges her name, tells her story in the form of free-journaling vignettes. Still grieving her parents' deaths, and having recently split from her husband, she's in a mood to lick her wounds. She retreats to live in a small, rural community of Catholic nuns on the Monaro plains of New South Wales. There are zero expectations on her as far as the wider world is concerned, and an open invitation to attend liturgies and meals. The MC considers herself an agnostic when it comes to religion, yet can't deny a spiritual pull that keeps her there. 

Even in such a pared-down lifestyle, challenges pop up, some of them quite daunting. First comes a mouse plague of almost Biblical magnitude. Although killing any living creatures isn't part of these women's creed, the sheer number of mice becomes a destructive menace. (We had an influx in the last house I lived in. The little blighters decimated the inner working of our dishwasher and cost us a new one, so I relate to these Sisters when similar wreckage happens to them.) Their live-and-let-live policy fades fast in the face of such horrific intrusion.

Next the murdered body of a former resident is discovered in Thailand. Although Sister Jenny had started to reject the validity of such a tucked-away society as theirs, her bones are on their way home for keeps. And the person bringing them is Sister Helen Parry, whose very name stirs guilt and awkwardness in our MC. As High School students, the MC had been part of a gang that mercilessly bullied Helen, who is now a super-nun, always working hard on behalf of some minority group. 

The story swings back and forth between what's currently happening in the abbey and sundry reflections from the past that get triggered. It is all fascinating, yet challenges us to discern any clear conclusions. The MC herself admits that sitting with questions that are never answered is something she's grown used to. She writes, 'It always feels that I am on the edge of some comprehension but never breaking through to the other side.' Perhaps it's no wonder we readers share the same sense of elusiveness. Inability to pin down the point of this novel may actually be its point.

For someone like me, who loves clear-cut themes in stories and absolute answers in life, I would have expected to find this super frustrating. Yet somehow, it's quite freeing to read. If we can't figure everything out, it's okay. 

In a way, the novel might function as a magnifying glass, highlighting for each of us something we most need to focus on.

Some readers might grapple with the conundrum of whether religious feelings are always based on a great reality outside of us, or are they sometimes simply the result of neurological activity firing within? And is choosing a life of contemplation over action a morally good fit for some of us? Impossible to find adequate, one-fit answers to satisfy everyone. 

Most memorable for me is the character of Helen Parry, for I shared poor Helen's plight all through school. The flashback scene in which she's viciously attacked while the teacher ducks out of the classroom is also something that happened to me. Now, although we only ever see her through the MC's eyes, I'm left with the admirable image of Helen Parry as a survivor - a former victim of severe bullying who's learned to find strength from within herself. If my devastating, long-ago experience is ever tied to a similar breakthrough, then maybe it's okay that it happened after all.

For showing me that, I can't help but give this slippery book a high ranking.

Oh, and a group of school kids can gain the same cruel malevolence as a group of mice, even though individually they may be more innocuous. That's another thing I sadly already knew, but which this book reinforces. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟