'The Penderwicks' by Jeanne Birdsall

This is the start of an award-winning, middle-grade, twenty-first century series about a set of sisters. The books have been hailed as 'modern classics' and likened to several beloved historical and vintage series from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I borrowed this from my library, willing and hoping to be wowed. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

The four Penderwick sisters, along with their widowed Dad and beloved pet dog, are on their way to spend three weeks at a holiday cottage. The stately property, Arundel Mansion, has a smaller cottage on its grounds, which they'll be renting for the duration.

Rosalind, aged 12, is domestic and responsible, and while at the Arundel estate, she develops a crush on the good-looking teenage gardener named Cagney. Blonde, blue-eyed Skye, aged 11, is adventurous and mathematical. She tends to lose her cool and say outrageous things. Dreamy 10-year-old Jane loves writing fiction and playing soccer. Batty, the very youngest, is a sensitive 4-year-old who adores animals and insists on wearing a pair of costume wings with her everyday clothes. 

Hmm, I'm sorry to say that I was underwhelmed by this pilot book. For this to have won the National Book Award strikes me as an overly generous decision. The pogo-stick plot keeps jerking us from ho-hum incidents to highly dramatic ones, then back again. And these girls have such sassy attitude! They take an instant loathing to their refined landlady, Mrs Tifton, who can't hide the fact that she doesn't want them always springing up wherever she happens to be. Yet the events of the story prove that Mrs Tifton is quite justified in her negativity.

She asks them to stay out of her formal garden for one very specific day while competition judging takes place. Do you think they can manage it? I can't help playing devil's advocate for this lady, who is presented as the story's villain. Perhaps I would've resented her cranky grumbling too, if I'd been the target age group, but my gosh, I can certainly see her point of view now. (Mrs Tifton might be one of those Boomer/Gen X ladies who are nicknamed 'Karen.' Perhaps I'm being a bit of a Karen myself by taking her part. I'm putting myself out there, since I'm the right age, but I really feel I'm making a fair point.) 

 I guess since the Penderwicks were only there for three weeks, Mrs Tifton might as well have sucked it up and got it over with, but the garden incident pushes me over to sympathy for her. Who can maintain equanimity while their passion projects get destroyed at crucial moments right before their eyes? I'm amazed she doesn't cut their father's contract short because of that.

The thing that sets the Penderwick girls apart from other story book families such as the Marches, Melendys, Moffatts, and Quimbys, is that they strike me as annoyingly obtuse and blinkered. They can't seem to understand that they are seriously putting Mrs Tifton out. Instead, they put up an aggrieved front as if she's the one who is putting them out.  

Then about two thirds through, the story finally takes off, because of Jeffrey, Mrs Tifton's 11-year-old son. Jeffrey is a musical prodigy. He longs to study piano, but his mother is keen to send him to Pencey Military Academy, to shape him up to be a soldier, in the footsteps of his celebrated grandfather. 

She's aided and abetted by her pompous fiance, Dexter Dupree, who radiates vibes that he doesn't want a stepson anyway. I wondered if there really is a Pencey Military Academy in Pennsylvania. Having googled it, I suspect Jeanne Birdsall might have adopted one of the horrific 'phoney' institutions Holden Caulfield was expelled from in The Catcher in the Rye. Brilliant move if she has.

Anyway, Jeffrey decides to run away, and the book suddenly becomes more interesting. 

The upshot is I'm going on with the series and hope it keeps growing on me. The Penderwick dad is a nice fellow, although a bit clueless and out of the loop. (Batty's life gets saved twice during their vacation, while he's off the scene.)

 I'll plow on but I suspect I can only take bad-tempered Skye in small doses. She's presented as some sort of Jo March-like crusader for justice, who deserves admiration, but strikes me more as someone who keeps doing her block because she has zero control over her own emotions. 

Anyway, til next time. 

🌟🌟🌟 

Note: I'm sure it's merely a coincidence, but the Penderwick Dad shares the same given name as the Melendy Dad. They are both called Martin. And both Martins are beloved, academic, and understanding young widowers. This is a bit disconcerting. I thought, 'Hey, haven't I seen you before?' 

Next up will be my review of The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. 

Also, I invite you to check out my Middle Grade and YA series page. 

'The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side' by Agatha Christie

I'm getting toward the end of the Miss Marple novels for my Agatha Christie page. This one packs quite a punch. 

 MY THOUGHTS:

The action happens at Gossington Hall (same scene where The Body in the Library took place). It's been recently purchased by film star, Marina Gregg and her director husband, Jason Rudd. Marina is a multiple divorcee with a history of nervous break-downs and bi-polar tendencies. She's high maintenance to say the least, but hopes to relax at last in this country mansion. Tragically, murder strikes during a reception they're holding in aid of St. John's Ambulance. 

Heather Badcock, the chatty and gregarious secretary of St. John's, falls ill and dies suddenly. Her drink turns out to be laced with a massive overdose of 'Calmo' a mood-altering, rudimentary depression medication. The freakiest thing for these show-biz celebs is that there's no doubt the glass in question had been meant for Marina, who'd graciously offered hers to Heather to replace a spilt glass. 

To thicken the plot, Marina seems to be holding back something too horrific for words. While greeting guests, she'd gazed toward several new arrivals with a shocked expression that reminded bystanders of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott. 'The mirror cracked from side to side, the doom has come upon me.' Whatever she saw, she's evidently terrified to tell. It's a tricky challenge for the shrewdness of Miss Marple, who's trying to piece together all the reports she's heard.  

It begs to be said that even though her method works well for her, Miss Marple's exceptional skill may now be considered politically incorrect. She sorts people in her head according to mental associations. 'When you recognize certain types, then when anything occurs, one understands quite why.' I think if it had been our current political climate, Miss Marple might hesitate to use those very words.

Ironically, she herself suffers from someone else's generalizations. Poor Miss Marple has to put up with the overbearing and condescending ministrations of a hired helper named Miss Knight, by doctor's orders. Miss Knight seems to assume that anybody elderly must be treated like a fragile baby. This rampant ageism is painful to read, but our senior sleuth finds a happy way out of this smothering treatment. 

The relentless progress of modernization is another interesting theme. A new housing development has mushroomed up near St Mary Mead. It sounds very much like suburbia as we know it, but is entirely new for these characters. It includes, of all new-fangled ideas, a supermarket. ('You're expected to take a basket yourself and go around looking for things,' complains Mrs Hartnell.) Even younger residents, like Miss Marple's friend Cherry, soon discover the drawbacks of neighborhoods such as we know them. 'You can't express your personality without someone being down on you like a ton of bricks.' 

I found it irritating that so many people called Heather Badcock stupid, especially those celebs and their staff. It seems in very poor taste to invite her to their hyped-up shindig, then look down their noses at her because she's not glamorous, but merely an ordinary person performing a humble role in a vital charity. Still it's worth pushing through for the wow factor of the ending. My cover tagline says, 'Has there ever been a murder with a more intriguing motive.' 

To me, it's one of Agatha Christie's most devastating motives. My gosh, totally understandable too. If the murderer hadn't started overthinking, things might have developed a bit differently. But on that note, I'd better stop and say just read it. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟  

End of Year Wrap-Up

This will be my final blog post for the year 2025. 

 I've finished my Aussie Reading Challenge. This was my personal prod to read more homegrown Australian fiction. I selected categories randomly, but the framework took me through a lengthy time span from the colonial era, through the second world war, and the colorful 1960s to the most recent twenty-first century. My two modern picks include a rural abbey during the 2020 COVID lockdowns, and an awesome Pride & Prejudice retelling. Others wove in supernatural aspects, namely time travel and some unexpected ghostly activity in the Blue Mountains. Whew, this challenge stretched me at times but I'm glad I've done it. If I've whetted your curiosity, do check them out. 

Talking of maximizing our own local goodness, I managed some short travel holidays through my own state. I visited Mt. Gambier with my husband in our extremely hot and steamy January, paid a quick trip to the Flinders Ranges with my daughter just before Easter, when it was still dry as powder, and made a lovely winter stop across on the Yorke Peninsula in the winter. I also paid a quick trip to the Riverland where my saxophonist husband had a music gig.

I won the Omega Writers' Encouragement Award in October, which was totally unexpected, and soon hope to have some news about publishing a new book after more than a decade. Look out for the news in early January.

As I often do at the end of a year, I've opened a new page on this blog. Over in the right hand margin, you'll see the link to Middle Grade & Young Adult Book Series. I've already reviewed so many of these, it dawned on me what a handy resource it would be all in one spot. I would've loved something like this to refer to while I was growing up, so I'm providing one myself. I hope you have a great time exploring it. (To kick off 2026, I'm going to review another series that crossed my radar; The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. I've heard these likened to modern classics, so watch out for them.) 

I'm going into January with the intent to knock off a few completionist goals. For the first part of 2026, I intend to finish all of the Miss Marple novels for my Agatha Christie page. Currently I have eight down and just four to go. Since I have so few left until I've read all twelve, Poirot can take a backseat for now. I'm also just one major novel short of finishing my What the Dickens page. Although I can't say I'm looking forward to it, I'll soon have The Old Curiosity Shop under my belt, so do look out for it. 

I've stepped back from Bookstagram for most of this year and don't feel inclined to take it up again yet, if ever. In all honesty, I haven't missed the pressure to create continual content, the anxious watching of stats, or the increasing ingress of reels and blatant advertising pitches over simple still shots by amateurs like myself. I've appreciated the double benefit of having that time back and no longer feeling like a duck out of water. 

May your new year be prosperous and happy. I can offer some advice for weathering sad moods from two young men who were confined in very small spaces. Oliver North, recovering from a devastating war injury from his bed, and Piscene Molitor Patel, floating in a lifeboat accompanied by a Bengal tiger, both made the same discovery. Just like the clouds, bad moods always drift away in their own time. Adding personal resistance while they hover over our heads is an angsty, futile gesture that might simply prolong our suffering. 

So hang in there. Looking forward to being back in 2026. 

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. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟

'The Tea Ladies' by Amanda Hampson

Here's what I chose for the Cosy Mystery category of my 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge.. 

 MY THOUGHTS:

This is a retro Aussie tale set in the Surrey Hills and King's Cross areas of Sydney in 1965. 

The mystery starts when a tea lady named Hazel Bates spots a beautiful young woman peering through the window of an abandoned warehouse building, scribbling a cryptic message on the dusty glass. That very night the building goes up in flames. And next door at her own workplace, Hazel discovers the murdered body of Mr McCracken, the new bookkeeper. Hazel and her friends suspect that these seemingly separate events may be connected. 

They are tea ladies who each work at different fashion houses in the same block. Betty Dewsnap at Farley Frocks loves her little comforts. Irene Turnbuckle at Silhouette Knitwear is a gruff, gossiping pipe-smoker. Merl Perlman at Klein's Lingerie is an opinionated former teacher. And Hazel, at Empire Fashionware, is any business's ideal tea lady; wise, kind, and tactful.

Hazel understands that she's in the unique position to straddle all the social boundaries within her workplace building, from the humble machinists downstairs, and the hardworking accounts team in the middle, to the big nobs on the top storey. These include sisters Jean and Ivy who design the dresses, and the managing director father and son team. Hazel's unspecified tasks include trouble-shooting and smoothing ruffled feathers. She makes a point of always repeating compliments and never criticisms. She also has a wonderful memory for names and details, along with how everyone likes their tea and coffee.

Quite apart from the murder and suspected kidnapping, Hazel's employers are in jeopardy. Ever since Jean Shrimpton, the celebrity model, was photographed in a miniskirt, demand for their own staid, classical designs has plummeted. If the pompous powers that be refuse to jump on board with the dynamic fashion revolution, everyone will lose their jobs.

And Hazel's husband of five years, Bob, is behaving very strangely. Suspicious evidence that he might be living a double life seems to suddenly pop up everywhere. 

Although I love Hazel's warm and gracious personality, I've got to say this is a mediocre mystery. The other plot threads, which have nothing to do with it, steal its momentum. And despite the tea ladies' sleuthing, they never really stir up any discrete motives for us to latch onto, which means that none of the nebulous workplace or underworld characters gain true suspect potential for us readers. 

What's more, apart from Hazel, the tea ladies themselves are painted larger than life instead of being finely nuanced. Often they read more like archetypes than actual women. And even the urgency of the situation with Bob seems to simply peter out. (What was he thinking?! We don't get to really explore his character and situation either.) 

The dialogue is natural and often funny, but mere talking doesn't make a good mystery. I suspect the many four and five star reviews I see on Goodreads have more to do with comic conversations and nostalgic trips down memory lane for several readers than they do with the quality of the mystery itself. And perhaps it is a reasonable historical workplace saga, although it's a subpar cosy mystery. 

I see this is just the start of a whole series of cosy mysteries starring these tea ladies, but based on this lukewarm beginning, I think I'll pass. It became a bit of a slog toward the end of the book, precisely at the stage when it should've been a page turner. 

🌟🌟½     

Note: The Tim Tams and Iced Vo Vos in my photo actually feature in the novel as selections from the good 'upstairs' biscuits. Hazel, the tea lady, judiciously distributes them downstairs as she sees fit. And any fellow Aussie reading this will vouch that they're delicious.