​Review: The Rarest Thing – Deborah O’Brien
 
Set against the backdrop of Australia in the 1960’s is this beautiful story of an expedition to discover another Burramys or pygmy possum in the wild. Thought to be extinct, the discovery of a live creature creates waves within the scientific community, and begins a journey that will change the lives of two lonely people.
 
Nature photographer, Scott King, is an unusual hero. He appears to have it all; a glamorous career that sees him travelling around the world photographing both wild animals and pristine wilderness. But there is a darkness in his past and a vulnerable man beneath the charming face most of the world knows. I won’t spoil the story by revealing why he is an unusual hero; suffice to say he has found ways to adapt and handle his issues.
 
Doctor of Paleontology, Katharine Wynter is a painfully shy academic, more at home with fossils than other humans. She has achieved academic honours in a field taken by few women in the world, let alone Sydney. Intelligent and caring, she hides her light from most people. What turned her from a happy, loving child into the frightened young woman who creeps around the Badham building becomes the challenge she must overcome. And Scott King is the man to help her find her inner strength.
 
Together, they search for the Burramys possum in Victoria’s High Country, and survive a severe storm, which is the beginning of life changes for Katharine, or Doc, as Scott calls her.
 
The writing is lyrical, the story, inspiring, and the characters, two ordinary people who are so much stronger together. Loved it! 

Review: The Dry – Jane Harper
 
#bookreviews #aussiereading #AWW2017 #contemporaryfiction  
 
Luke Hadler shoots his wife and son then turns the gun on himself.
 
So begins this gripping crime mystery, which cracks open secrets and lies in a drought-stricken outback community.
 
I read this book in a day. Each time I had to put it down to do a chore, my mind was still with Aaron Falk, a Federal Police officer and old friend of the dead man. Asked by the dead man’s parents to give them proof their son didn’t commit this monstrous act, Aaron remains in a town he fled from twenty years earlier, fighting his own ghosts and battling the circumstances surrounding his departure.
 
It’s difficult to say much about the story without giving elements away, but Harper structures this story in a way that reminds me of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies. The present story develops as past events are slowly revealed. In a land stripped bare by drought, secrets are buried deep. Harper captures the setting very well; the flies, the heat, the moisture-sucking sun beating relentlessly on weary, hard lives. This is a community in denial, but which story is the harder to accept? Murder-suicide or a triple murder?
 
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Jane Harper is added to my automatic read list for future releases.