The Broken Wave by Matthew Ryan Davies

 

This story reached in and took hold of my heart from the first page, gently in the beginning, then slowly applying pressure, bit by bit, until it finally squeezed it in a vice-like grip, from which I am still recovering!

In 1992 Drew is a twelve year old boy who has come from Minnesota to the Australian seaside town of Queenscliff in Victoria, where his step-father is based in a military operation on Swan Island nearby. Drew meets Tom, a boy his own age and they become friends.

Drew is now thirty-nine, back in Minnesota, married to Claire and working on his second novel when he finds through social media that Tom has been killed in an explosion on his boat in Queenscliff.  Drew decides to go to Queenscliff for Tom’s funeral and once there begins to relive those days in 1992, having become acquainted with Tom’s twelve year old son, Adam.

Matthew Ryan Davies digs deep into Drew’s thoughts with such sensitivity and fragility that I only gradually became aware there was so much going on beneath the surface of Drew’s narration. This is a beautiful, powerful, psychological exploration into friendship, grief and post-traumatic stress, and no one who reads it will be unmoved. 

I highly recommend The Broken Wave and I am now going to look for Matthew Ryan Davies’ earlier book, Things We Bury. He is my new favourite author!

Published by Pan Macmillan

Making up Amanda by Rozzi Bazzani

 This is an Australian crime novel with a new and refreshingly different setting: the town of Ballarat in Victoria which is being used as the location for a movie, and it’s not in the outback!

Marianna Del Re has taken the job as makeup artist for the movie. Marianna has grown up knowing that her mother, Amanda King, disappeared from this same site while starring in a movie in 1988 when Marianna was a baby, and Marianna has started looking for answers about Amanda now that her grandparents who raised her have died. She is hoping that some of the cast and/or crew members from 1988 might still be around.

DS Rebecca Harpin and soon-to-be-retired DI Tom Burn are in Ballarat investigating the disappearances of three young women and also the cold case of Amanda King.  Is it a coincidence that the same film company is in town now while Sharney Smith is missing?

Marianna is learning more about her mother now than she ever did from her loving, though over-protective grandparents who never gave up hoping that their daughter might one day come back to them.

The plot of the story is very well thought out with side issues which don’t stray from the path, and tie in with the main stories. I would like to have seen more of Rebecca and Josh’s budding relationship, if that is what it was. Maybe a new book will take up that particular thread. I’m also wondering if Tom will put off his retirement for a while, or perhaps take on a consulting role, if his begonias don’t  take up too much of his time.

This was a most satisfying read and I hope Rozzi Bazzani is already thinking of where she would like to take readers next. I’m all packed and ready to go!

Published by S & B Books