Sheerwater's themes of love and violence, hate and fear, hope and sorrow ensure this is a riveting Australian read.

Ava is escaping an abusive marriage. Along with her sons, Max and Teddy, she’s driving to somewhere new in Victoria. She encounters a plane crash on the way to her destination, Sheerwater, and stops to help. Her boys disappear from the car while she’s gone.

We hear about her relationship with Laurence, who is moody and violent. Her mum finds hm charming and is oblivious to his dark side.

The story is told over three days. The narrators are Ava, Laurence, and 9 year old Max. The search for the boys is hectic and frustrating. This is intrinsically a sad story. Victim blaming and victim doubting feature. .This is a fast paced tale with lots of tension, which I very much enjoyed reading. I recommend this book to others.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC for review purposes

Interestingly I had seen so much love for this book on instagram so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately I just could not get into the story or the writing style and I ended up DNF about half way through. Sometimes we just have to accept that a book is not for us and trust it will find its intended audience

This book was a beautiful tale about a mother’s love for her son, filled with tender scenes and a plot that never got me tired.

It’s been a while since I read a book in one go. I forgot about everything else. I could not leave the book. I could not take my eyes of the page… I guess I do not have to write another word as a review, don’t I?

I can not but start with ‘I saw myself in every word’. I saw my ex-husband in every word. I was so thankful that my ex-husband turned out to be a very lazy and incapable… Because if you are a monster and have excessive energy and craft… you get to be in Sheerwater.

The book is unputtable. The narration is unstoppable. It takes you, spins you and spits you out at very unexpected points.

The plot is twisted to keep you aching for more. It is never crystal clear who is in the wrong and who is in the right. Reader is left guessing which side to take, which parent to identify with.

Leah created such a monster, one can get scarry guessing where could she have found such an image, such a complex and crafty character. Lawrence (dad) in Sheerwater is epitome of evil, sociopathy and psychopathy. He is amazing. He is the Apollo he sees himself to be.

Mum in this story is the Mum epitomised. She lives in her kids, for her kids and by her kids. They give her the strength, the power and the drive.

I hope Leah did not live through anything like the story she shares with her readers. Otherwise… this story is so painful to watch, so hurtful to unfold and so incredibly real and raw, one had to go through this hell to be able to write it all out.

I gave this book 5 Stars.

This book put me in a stupor… But one sentence made me laugh out loud.

‘She no longer wore that ring. She’d sold it for almost nothing – it turned out the diamond wasn’t real’.

Leah, I believe you eavesdropped on me when I wanted to get rid of my engagement ring after divorce… This one sentence says it all: about the marriage and about the person one is married to…

At first light, Ava packs her sons and as many belongings as she can fit into her car, and heads for the coastal village of Sheerwater, without letting her husband know. On the way there, a plane crashes nearby. Ava stops to lend a hand and, with fellow bystander Simon, manages to haul the pilot to safety. Once the emergency services and police arrive, she returns to her car to find her boys have disappeared.

This is a taut and tense story with considerable plot momentum, which begs to be read in a single sitting - it's very hard to put down. Swann has come up with yet another powerful entry in the "rural Australian crime" genre. I would have rated it even more highly if she had chosen to explore some of her plot threads a little more, such as the crash survivors, who are barely more than props to establish the mise-en-scene, and barely referred to again.

Unfortunately I was unable to read this book. I was sent a link and tried a couple of times and couldn’t access the title

Sheerwater is an emotionally charged work of both hope and despair, beginnings and endings. Calling this book a thriller won’t be doing it a disservice, but it may give the expectation to the reader that they are about to dive into a work of suspense with no lingering take-homes to mull over. Sheerwater is a nuanced novel that illustrates how dangerously the pendulum swings when one person in a relationship decides that enough is enough.

On the run from her unstable partner, Ava is cajoling along her two young sons in the car as they head for the Victorian coastal town of Sheerwater. There is a little holiday house rental waiting for them and also a little time, Ava hopes, in which she may recover her strength and figure out what to do next. There is much on Ava’s mind, and she is desperate to reach her destination. A small plane falling out of the sky in front of them is the last thing Ava expects to interrupt her run for freedom.

Trained to rescue others, Ava is exactly the right person who should stop to help at the scene of an accident. Leaving her two boys in the car with strict instructions not to move, Ava launches into action to save the injured pilot and passengers. When all the drama is over though, the only one waiting for her in the car is the family dog. Max and Teddy are gone.

Frantic to find her boys, Ava tells the local police everything she knows and everything she suspects. Ava’s husband Lawrence has always managed to charm everybody around him and shield the truth of his instability from others but perhaps this time he will not fool detectives who have no prior experience of his practiced ways of deceit.

Like most narcissists, Lawrence is most successful at fooling himself, always firmly believing someone else to be at fault for all the drama and conflicts of his life. Determined to take charge of the narrative, Lawrence calls a press conference and paints himself as a father desperate to find his children, completely unable to understand why his wife was trying to take two little boys away from their father.

Ava has had good practice at walking around the unexploded landmines of her husband’s suspicions from her time in the family home, but she cannot to do so any longer. Her boy’s lives are at stake.
Told from the perspectives of Ava, Lawrence, fellow rescuer Simon and Ava’s son Mac, a landscape of life on the edge of the world is beautifully realized in Sheerwater.

Some of the chapter intervals in Sheerwater that speak of the natural world are unnecessarily dense or blousy, which does let down the solid writing present elsewhere. Where we read of Ava battling to keep it all together, or of Max and Teddy trying to navigate and adapt to their hellishly new circumstances, we are held fast to the page in our concern for them. Max’s scenes are heartbreakingly convincing, as a young child realizes perhaps for the first time that adults don’t always tell the truth or have the best interests of children at heart. Decisions meant to be firmly in the hands of experienced grownups sometimes become the responsibility of little people not equipped to deal with them. The power of this book is evident when it is not trying so hard to elevate its prose to something a little more literary.

The character of Lawrence is utterly terrifying to read of, and his unravelling when challenged is such a disheartening and suspenseful disintegration to read of, balanced by the determination of Ava to overcome and bring her boys home. Sheerwater is peppered also with secondary characters of small towns that live and die having experienced such things as loss, drug abuse, racial divides and the shameful scourge of Australian society that is the domestic terrorism of its women and children.

Both a tale as old as time and a believable depiction of the most common crime of our age, Sheerwater is a powerful read of how easily love turns to hate, protection turns to obsession, and how it’s the invisible battles that can be the most devastating.

A powerful story of 2 innocent little boys, caught in the crossfire of a violent breakup. Ava is fleeing her abusive husband and taking her boys to start a new life in the safety of a new town. When her children disappear from the car during an emergency the hunt begins to find them. This book gripped me from the first page and I literally could not put it down. Well written with a suspenseful plot the story keeps you turning those pages.

Ava, with her two sons, Max and Teddy, running away from her abusive husband, Laurence. It's a fast paced and intense drama, continuing with the missing of her boys. Where are the boys?
I did enjoy the story line but not really impressed with the ending.
Thanks Netgalley for an electronic ARC of this book.

When a light plane crashes by the side of Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, Ava, a former emergency rescue worker, feels compelled to stop and render assistance. Leaving her two young sons, Max and Teddy, safely locked in the car with strict instructions to remain, she and and another passerby bravely pull the pilot and two frightened children from the wreckage moments before it explodes. When emergency services arrives Ava makes her way back to the car only to find it empty.

Alternating primarily between the perspectives of Ava, her estranged husband Laurence, and their oldest son, 9 year old Max, Sheerwater is a harrowing tale, skillfully executed by Leah Swann.

Ava’s fear for her missing sons is visceral, her confusion and anxiety building as the police question her every word. Laurence’s attempts to reframe the narrative are infuriating, and an all too familiar reflection of recent current events. Max’s courage is heartbreaking as he tries to care for and protect his four year old brother, Teddy.

The prose is lyrical and evocative, portraying nuanced character and emotion. Vivid imagery conjures a sense of place, no matter the setting.

Though there are a few elements I felt were perhaps out of place, they didn’t detract from my interest. Unfolding over a period of three days, the pace is intense, and the increasing tension utterly gripping. I was left shattered by the ending.

Both beautiful and brutal, Sheerwater is a compelling read.

I'd not read any of Leah Swann's books when I picked up her new release Sheerwater, so wasn't sure what to expect.

But her writing is exquisite. Beautiful, elegant and lyrical. From the first page I was enchanted by the way she wound words together. Smitten.

I've talked recently about my reticence towards books about parents and parenting - good vs bad. Divorce, domestic violence etc. It all feels a bit overdone lately. (Particularly as a non-parent.)

Thankfully Swann kicks things off differently here and drops us into the middle of the action. Ava's finally lost someone who's been tailgating her when she witnesses the plane crash and pulls over to help... giving her 9yr old strict instructions to stay in the car and watch his 4yr old brother.

I don't want to spoil the book so won't say much about the crash's relationship to the rest of the story; but later when Ava's wishing things had been different and she hadn't come across the accident, we wonder if the boys' disappearance was orchestrated or merely happenstance.

We have several narrators - Ava and her ex-husband Laurence as well as her oldest son Max and and another man Simon, who helps after the plane crash.

We learn more about Ava and Laurence's relationship from both of them, but realise both can't be telling the truth. Their relationship is a fraught one and the police investigating the boys' disappearance are similarly frustrated by the he said / she said stories and allegations.

They both however reveal a relationship initially built on love—the word devotion is used often—but also obsession. One fraught with gaslighting and suspicion.

I probably felt this book (which is quite short) rushed to its conclusion a little. It seemed a lot of time was spent giving us backstory and moving us to the precipice but, suddenly—in a flurry of action—it's over and I didn't quite have the time I needed to understand, process or absorb what happens. In many ways it's shocking. Devastating. But it could have been more-so. 

The strength of this novel is Swann's (both) poignant and powerful writing. She effortlessly throws around words to offer up eloquent descriptions of the book's setting as well as forcing us to consider complex themes:

"Photos make the past consumable. They're kind've like the corpses of yesterday. They make you nostalgic. But they don't bring anything back." p 38

The beautiful phrasing, evocative language and fresh style of Leah Swann’s writing had me reeling. This is a story about a mother’s love, and the depths she is forced to take physically, and psychologically, to protect her two sons.

Young mother, Ava, leaves her home in Melbourne, to escape her abusive husband, Laurence. She travels with their sons, Max and Teddy, to Sheerwater, a fictitious seaside town along the Great Ocean Road. While abuse is suggested, in fact, the narrative is more about Ava’s love and her primal need to protect her sons, than focusing on details of brutality or the more sinister.

Swann’s perfect descriptions illuminate each scene, from wreck of a burning plane to the sight of shear water birds and the sea. I was spellbound by the visceral descriptions—the vivid clarity. I envisaged Ava and the boys’ hapless journey, as details of the calamitous events over a three-day period are revealed. I lived through Ava, Simon, Laurence, and Max, as chapters written from each character’s perspective disclose the story.

I haven’t read anything recently, which has made me hold me breath as I read. The claustrophobic smothering of Ava while in shock, and the intensity of the emotional carnage she experiences, feels real. She will not allow anyone close to her—even those who try to help. The pain and suffering of Ava trying to keep her children safe, and the manner of the investigation and numerous incidents along the way keeps the tension pinging at a high level. There is no stopping when you read something this great. Ava pushed through pain and I was urged to as well. I was there, hoping and praying that Max and Teddy would be safe.

This book will stay with you for a long time. Haunting and raw, it is a remarkable work of literature.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

#NetGalley #LeahSwann #Sheerwater #HarperCollins

I have mixed feelings about this book but still think it was a good read. The plot is one that is fast paced with two small boys missing after their mother, Ava, flees her violent and dangerous husband Laurence. However, the telling of the book, especially that from the perspective of Ava and Laurence is more suited to a literary style book. They seem to make a lot of trivial observations and use a lot of superfluous descriptive words when supposedly they are both at their wits end. To me the plot and the telling did not quite gel.
On the other hand, the sections told from the perspective of Max, one of the boys was right on the money. His narrative broke my heart and had me so worried for him and his younger brother Teddy.
Many will read this book and love it, of that I have no doubt! It is set on the Victorian coast and in Melbourne with some great characters. It also flags the terrible reality of domestic violence and the fall out of this.
Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins Australia for the opportunity to read this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You can kind of see what Swann was going for here. Yet in the attempt to be an exploration of an abusive relationship and the ripple effects of domestic abuse in the guise of a mystery thriller, at least three of those ingredients got lost in the mix.

The book begins with an interesting enough premise: Ava is driving with her two sons to start a new life in Victoria’s Sheerwater when she witnesses a plane crash. After rushing to help, Ava’s two boys going missing from her car. What unfolds in practice lands somewhere after <i>Gone Girl</i> and its countless imitators, yet is constantly mired in Swann’s convoluted language choices.

An early warning shot is fired at readers in Ava’s description of her ex-husband: “She had gazed through the strata of Laurence, walked his landscape, and understood less about him the longer she knew him.” Only a few pages later, Swann takes a sharp turn when Ava suddenly feels “the hard twinge of burden that her country’s genocidal history laid on everyone” out of nowhere. These are not isolated incidents in the writer’s style, but the attempt to work in a bit of Indigenous plotting is a truly shameful throwaway for a non-payoff in the book’s final pages.

Compounding this issue is some serious structural confusion. Perhaps trying to obfuscate character choices until later in the book, Swann shifts the narrative perspective between each of the chapters. Yet the characters are never fleshed out enough to differentiate between them, and I must confess to getting a little confused as to who was doing what and more importantly why.

While ostensibly looking at a form of spousal abuse, Swann’s alternating interiority briefly has us siding with both of the principal parties before abandoning any sense of mystery and painting Laurence in particular as a two-dimensional villain. The children’s perspectives don’t far much better in this regard. At one point, one of the kids is running from the rampaging Laurence, “hiding like a smart little puppy might hide from its crazed owner.” Or, you know, a child might hide from an abusive parent?

As Swann rapidly wraps up her “terrifying psychic hieroglyphic,” I simply found that I was never invested in any of these bizarrely crafted people to care about their fate. As the book literally drives off the deep end, it just feels like Swann has wasted a solid premise on too little story spread even thinner.

Leah Swann is a brilliant writer!

I was totally overwhelmed by this powerful and disturbing story of a mother’s love and the horror of domestic violence. It has taken me a couple of days to be able to sit down and try and write a review that will reflect how impressed I was with this novel.

The story is told through the eyes of several of the characters over three days. I was particularly impressed about how Leah Swann was able to write the perspective of each of the characters with each of them having a distinctive voice and personality, with their own slant on what was happening to them and around them.
Eva, the mother, is wonderfully kind and absolutely loves and adores her two sons, Max (9) and Teddy (4). She stops to help when a plane crashes in a paddock near where she was driving but in doing so her sons disappear - the emotion in this is intense.
In the chapters for Laurence, the father, the confused, intense and crazy thoughts he has are thrown at the reader, creating a tension that is hard to describe.
Probably the best written chapters are those of Max whose thoughts and feelings are so young and confused - brilliantly written.

While the story is set in and around a fictitious town called Sheerwater, a rural location near Warrnambool in Victoria, Australia, it could be anywhere near the sea.

Highly recommended read.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins Publishers Australia for a copy to read and review.

I couldn’t finish this title as when I hit page 162 (of 188) it struck a glitch and wouldn’t go any further. Having said that I had really read enough. This is a pretty lightweight novel more Mills and Boon than anything of substance.. That however is just my opinion and I see a lot of people loved this book.
Ava and her 2 sons are on their way to Sheerwater. She has packed them up and stolen away in the night, away from her husband. Nearly at their destination they are witness to a light plane crash. Ava pulls over and races to help. On return to her car her 2 boys are gone. Here we start to see several narratives and it is deciding who is telling the truth that carries the story forward.
#netgalley #sheerwater

I have received the book for a fair review. Sheerwater is set in a place near Victoria's Warnambool, where Ava is trying to set up a new life for her sons Max and Teddy. The story descents into a scary story of missing children and a more sinister background story. THe pace is quick, it is an intense three days.
It might not be a horror story, but it is every mother's worst nightmare. Sheerwater takes your breath away, don't blink.

Ava packs up her children, Max (9) and Teddy (4), and secretly leaves for their new home in Sheerwater. They are escaping the physical and psychological abuse of Ava's husband and the children's father, Lawrence. On the way to Sheerwater they see a plane crash and Ava instructs the children to stay in the car while she saves the pilot and gives comfort to a dying women. A man, Simon, who has been tailgating her, assists in saving the plane passengers and it turns out that he is also from Sheerwater. This becomes really creepy when Ava gets back to the car and finds that her boys are missing.

Ava never really doubts however that Laurence has taken the children. This despite his alibi and despite his ability to charm others including her non-supportive mother. Where are the boys? Are they alive? What is Laurence's role in their disappearance? This first novel will have you on the edge of your seat as we wait to see if the boys will make it home alive.

I was deeply impressed with this as a debut novel. It is a quite short novel that explores various themes including domestic violence and the stolen generations. Ms Swann deserves 10 stars for her depiction of how disorienting the tactics of domestic violence are for the victim and how hard to articulate to those on the outside. Even better was her illustration of the world of children of abusive parents. I spent many years working in Child Protection and this might be the best I have ever read. Futhermore, I usually find the depiction of villains to be banal and boring but she has done a wonderful job here too.

On the other hand I found the role of Simon to be confusing and in need of fleshing out. I'm not sure just what his purpose was in the story. I was also deeply sceptical of some of the police comments. I just do not think they would be said, whether or not they were thought. Police officers are very aware of the possibility of complaints. These issues jar the reader out of the story which is unfortunate - because it is such a good story.

Highly recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley, Harper Collins Australia,. and Leah Swann for the provision of the ARC in exchange for an independent review.

#NetGalley #HarperCollinsAustralia #Leah Swann @HarperCollinsAustralia

Sheerwater is the first adult novel by Australian author, Leah Swann. Later, Ava so wishes she had driven on and dialled 000, but at the time, she felt she had to stop. She was on her way to freedom from Laurence, to perhaps a better career and, most importantly, to safety for her boys and herself. But the light plane had crashed, right there in front of her, and she had to check for survivors, help if she could. Max and Teddy would stay in the car, she was certain. Lives were saved, but by then her boys were gone.

As Ava begins living every mother’s worst nightmare, the people of Sheerwater rally around to help search and support, while in Melbourne Detective Fiona Ballard questions Laurence Bain and extended family. Simon Manrose, the next on the crash scene after Ava, proffers a description of someone he strongly feels is involved.

The story is told from five different perspectives and it is quickly clear from Laurence’s narrative that Ava has had the misfortune of becoming the focus of the attentions of a psychopath. That Laurence has Ava and Max constantly second-guessing their every thought and action also bears this out.

So well do Max’s chapters portray a nearly-ten-year-old’s his resolve to care for and protect his four-year-old brother from harm, it’s heart-breaking. This is a brave and clever boy whose confusion at his father’s behaviour is palpable.

Even as the reader learns from the various strands of the story exactly what has happened and who is responsible, the tension ramps up and the anxiety for the boys’ safety is intensely felt. At certain points, some readers may need to do the reading equivalent of hands in front of the eyes during the scary bit of the movie: shut the book for a while and do something else.

Swann’s prose is often wonderfully evocative: “In the noisy, heaving, chaotic police station he was as calm and motionless as a benediction” and perceptive: “Could she teach Max the difference between truth and what seems true? Or could it only be learnt as life trims your edges? She grimaced. She hated to think that Max and Teddy had to learn that love does not protect you.”

While domestic abuse, both physical and psychological, are highly topical, Swann could not know just how relevant her novel would be in the light of recent events in Queensland. This is an emotional read that grabs the attention from the start and does not let go until the final shocking conclusion.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Better Reading Preview and NetGalley and Harper Collins Australia.