‘Ava felt the sea move in her blood before she saw it.’

Ava is fleeing an abusive marriage. With her sons Max and Teddy, she’s driving to a town on the coast of Victoria, hoping to make a fresh start. They are almost to Sheerwater when they witness a light plane crashing into a field next to the road. Ava is the first person on the scene and stops to help. She tells the boys to stay in the car. Minutes later, after pulling the pilot from the plane and after others have arrived on the scene, she returns to the car. The boys are gone. Where are they?

‘Who are you?’

Failed relationships. Missing children. As we join Ava in her desperate search to find her sons, we learn about her relationship with Laurence. Superficially charming, Laurence is prone to rapid mood changes and can be violent. Ava has taken out a restraining order. But Ava’s mother sees only that Laurence is charming and thinks that Ava is overreacting.

The story unfolds over three days, and is mainly told by Ava, Laurence and Max. Max is only 9 years old and looks out for his 4-year-old brother. I kept turning pages, hoping that Ava, or the police, or anyone really, would find (and rescue) these two boys. Other (sketchier) characters provide part of the story, and the tension builds. Can the boys be rescued?

I don’t want to write more about the story because I can’t do so without spoilers. Suffice to say that sadly (and often tragically) domestic violence is far too common in Australia. Victims are often not believed, or are blamed, for their circumstances. Perpetrators can be simultaneously charming and violent, capable of twisting the truth to suit themselves.

I finished the novel profoundly saddened. If only such stories could be confined to fiction. This is Ms Swann’s first novel: it’s a powerful story and will haunt me for some time.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This is a heart-rending novel that begs to be read in one sitting. Two little boys, Max and Teddy, are ripped apart from their mother and my heart was in my mouth for the whole book with the suspense of wishing them reunited safe and sound.

The boys’ mother, Ava, has decided she can no longer take the abusive marriage she has found herself in and plans an early morning escape with the boys to a fresh start in Sheerwater, a small town on the southern Victorian coast. On the way there they witness the crash of a small plane and as the first person at the site, Ava pulls off the road, and after telling the boys to stay in the car, rushes to see if she can help any of the passengers. After pulling the pilot from the plane, others arrive and Ava heads back to her car only to find the boys missing. Any parent who has sight of their child for even a few minutes will understand the sheer terror Ava experienced at that moment.

This is not so much a novel about missing children as one about relationships. When Ava first met Laurence he was playful and charming but as their marriage has gone on he suffers periods of rapid mood change and rage. He is easily angered and hits out at Ava and frightens the boys to the point where she has taken out a restraining order and just wants to get away from his hate and anger. Ava’s mother is less than supportive as she has been charmed by Laurence and does not believe he is capable of hurting Ava or the boys.

I liked the way the novel is written, with three of the family members, Ava, Laurence and Max telling their side of the story as it unfolds. Nine year Max’s care and love of his little brother, four year old Teddy was really lovely, in the face of the frightening situation they found themselves in. While the main characters were quite well formed, the minor characters felt very underdeveloped. Particularly Simon, who arrived after Ava at the crash site and helped her in Sheerwater after the boys were taken. There were some glimpses of his story but not enough to resonate or fill out his character. I also felt his moments of 'intuition' were unnecessary to the plot and could have been dealt with in other ways. Given that the novel is quite short more time could have been spent fleshing out Simon and his brother Caleb who was also interesting and sketchy.

Overall, this is a haunting tale with a very emotional ending and an important one as every day we continue to hear harrowing tales of family domestic violence caused by uncontrolled male anger.

I found Sheerwater a sad, emotional, on the edge of your seat story, a page turner and a very small cliffhanger. Almost an inspirational story which is a tale about a young mother who escapes from a turmoiled relationship. After helping people escape from a plane crash, she returns to her car to unfortunately find her two boys go missing. The book is full of twists, turns and mysterious events, a small community binds together to help look for the boys and get the house ready for their return. I like how the novel speaks for the other characters that is involved within the storyline. The ending is a little confusing in understanding on what happened to the young family.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from HarperCollins Publishers Australia through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Run date of 27 February 2020 on Netgalley and Facebook. On 23 March 2020 my review will be posted on Amazon.com.au, Christianbook.com, goodreads, Barnes and Noble, kobo, googlebooks and iBooks. A link to my review is also on my Facebook blog page, is https://www.facebook.com/BlueFalkon95-Readers-blog-104660277776984
#Sheerwater #NetGalley #HarperCollinsAustralia

Where do I start with this one...

Sheerwater is described as an emotionally powerful unforgettable story, but unfortunately I failed to connect with it.

Ava is travelling with her two boys on a journey to start her new life. Along the way she comes across a plane crash where she feels compelled to lend a hand. In the minutes she is gone her two boys disappear. From here we now enter the mystery of who took then and where did they go.

This book alternates chapters between one of the many characters in this book. I feel this is where I first started to loose interest. I feel there is too many characters trying to be included in this book. At one point I was completely lost on who was even in the room.

I kept waiting to be grabbed by this compelling story line but sadly it never came.I found the language in this book bland and not captivating at all. Chapter after chapter seems to chop and change a bit and I did not feel a nice flow from the start to the finish.

Overall I was not taken by any of the characters and I think mainly for me it was the writing style that I did not gel with and found it far from beautifully written.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing and ARC in exchange for an honest review

This book certainly deals starkly with a topical issue. Characters are generally well thought out and realistic. There is no sugar coating. However I found the book a little hard to read and somewhat disjointed.

I really could have done with one more chapter to this novel. I didn’t need it, but I definitely wanted it. For reassurance. In my imagination, I am pushing for a couple of key outcomes, so I guess I’m just going to have to go with that. What a novel though! This is a powerful story, almost gentle in its brutality; quite a literary achievement.

Alternating between character perspectives, the novel spans only three days – three very intense days. The beginning of the sections that cover day two and day three are prefaced with a piece of writing about the shearwaters’ migration. Shearwaters are the most abundant seabird species in Australian waters and they are commonly known as the mutton-bird. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the novel that I realised that these two pieces of writing about the migration of the birds were in some way a premonition of what was next to come in the journey of the boys, Max and Teddy. Reaching that climatic part of the novel, towards the end, gave me goosebumps as my mind instantly reached back to the preface of day three. I even went back and re-read it, confirming my feelings about this correlation.

I feel as though this novel is a cautionary tale of an utterly preventable tragedy. When domestic violence meets mental illness there is never going to be a positive outcome, but I can’t help feel that there shouldn’t automatically always be a tragic one either. There were several instances throughout this story where I really felt enraged at the police. We have a woman here, whose two young children have gone missing while she is fleeing from their father. This couple are separated, but there is an intervention order against the husband, who is being treated for a mental illness, and there is a history of documented violence. That’s the scenario we have here. It’s all very clear, and while the husband attempted at every opportunity to rewrite the narrative, the facts really spoke for themselves. And yet, the woman in this scenario still gets asked a question like this by the detective investigating the disappearance of her children:

“Why did you marry someone like this, who tells lies, who makes you feel so unsafe that you get an intervention order taken out against him?”

This was just one of many questions that did nothing at all to aid in the investigation, and also did nothing at all to prevent the ultimate tragedy. Questions like this only serve one purpose: to victim blame. To change the narrative and put the responsibility of a grown man’s actions back onto his wife, who should what? Not try and protect herself and her children from harm in case it angers him? Not flee from her family home in terror because that’s ‘not fair’ to a father because ‘he’s a good guy just going through a rough patch’? Everything that happened within this novel was avoidable, and this is why we still have so far to go when it comes to preventing death from domestic violence within our society. This is a novel that taps into a crisis that exists within our country today. It’s very much a statement novel, but not in a gratuitous way. It was devastating, yet written with a beauty that seemed to paradoxically soften the blow while also remaining sharply on point.

I really loved Ava and was desperate for her to get the freedom for herself and her children that she so deserved. There was another character, Simon, who I also really liked. He was going through his own issues and was pulled into what was happening with Ava merely by chance and proximity. He seemed to be a ‘seer’ or perhaps just highly intuitive, I’m not sure, but this aspect of his persona appealed to me greatly. In my imagination, there is more for Simon and Ava, beyond the pain.

Sheerwater is a novel that will leave an impression upon anyone who reads it. I have a feeling I will be seeing more about this novel within the next year, perhaps listed for prizes. I don’t often get hunches like that, but the last time I did was after I read The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood, and we all know how that turned out!

Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a NetGalley copy of Sheerwater for review.

Beautifully written, literary thriller about a woman running from a broken marriage with gut wrenching ending. So powerful and descriptive.

Unable to down load for some reason so couldn't read. They normal download to my Amazon but this didn't give me that option.

With thanks to Leah Swan, HarperCollins Publishers Australia and NetGalley for the ARC of Sheerwater.

Leah Swan has written an extremely tense and suspenseful novel. It drew me in from the first page and held me until the end. Set on Victoria’s south west coast in fictitious towns somewhere between Warrnambool and Apollo Bay. There is skillful character development; I felt the fear and anxiety Ava suffers, the need to be reunited. There are descriptions of abuse, domestic violence and suffering resulting from addiction. The story is told by several protagonists; Ava, her eldest son Ben and her estranged husband Laurence, it is crafted beautifully with lyrical prose. Recommend.

Before you pick up this book, make sure you understand the meaning of: “beautifully written, propulsive, tense, gut-wrenching and unputdownable” in the blurb. Especially the “gut-wrenching” bit. Or shall I say “gut-punching”? Because after finishing it this morning, I still feel strangely winded and hollow.

Let me also make it clear that you should not make the same mistake I made, and pick this up thinking it is mainly a mystery. I was somewhat puzzled when the “mystery” component was pretty much obsolete by the second part of the book. Instead, choose this book knowing it is about relationships, parenthood, trauma, domestic abuse (in all its shapes and form) and the unravelling of the human psyche into darkness.

You will get a taste of what is to follow from the very opening pages, when a small plane crashes into a field next to the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Ava and her two small children are the first on scene. Ava feels the same dilemma any mother in that situation would face – she has children in the car, should she stop or just drive on and call for help? With her rescuer background, she cannot resist the compulsion to render assistance. Instructing the boys to stay in the car and look away, she sets off to give first aid. And thus her fate is forever changed.

Swann writes beautifully and lyrically, conjuring up the stunning scenery of the Victorian coastline with her words. This is a two-sided sword, because her horrific scenes are just as vivid and unescapable as the tranquil ones (which are thankfully thrown into the mix every now and then to give the reader breathing space). Her characters are well drawn, their emotional baggage relatable, their plight unimaginable. With an uncanny insight into the human psyche, she teases out her characters’ darkest secrets, slowly and gradually, so that the picture we may have formed initially soon begins to unravel. It is very difficult to discuss this book without spoilers, so I will keep it brief. I had a lot of assumptions challenged. I was duly terrified when all the clues led to the inevitable finale, and yet I was not prepared for it.

Relationships feature strongly in this novel. Ava and Laurence’s marriage, which we gradually learn more about as the story progresses. The mother-daughter relationship between Ava and her mother. Motherhood. Brotherhood. Fatherhood, as seen through the eyes of Laurence, which will hold some surprises. Friendships in the most unexpected places. Dysfuntional, some of them.

Yes, I will leave it here because as much as I would like to blurt out some of the details that absolutely sucker punched me, I will not spoil it for you. Read it with a buddy, one you can call in the middle of the night when you have read the last page and need a friend as much as a 1800 helpline.

Ava is driving with her two sons to her new home in Sheerwater (a fictional coastal town supposedly in the Great Ocean Road area), having just left her husband, when a plane crashes [literally] in front of her. Feeling duty bound, she goes to help the plane passengers, leaving her sons with strict instructions to stay in the car. When she returns, however, they are gone.

The story unfolds from the point of view of several characters including (obviously) Ava, Ava’s husband Laurence, Ava’s son Max, and Simon, a man who also stopped to help during the plane crash.

Swann’s writing style is very beautiful. Her descriptions of the gorgeous Australian landscape around the Great Ocean Road is captivating. I felt so immersed in her prose at times that the plot became of little consequence. However, there is more to the book than flowery writing — a very well thought out and tense plot.

Swann increased the tension throughout at just the correct rate. In a couple of places near the end of the book I felt like my nerves were stretched to their limit. There were some scenes I was expecting, and some which were extremely unexpected, and it all left me feeling a little helpless and hopeless at times. I guess a slight warning — despite the beautiful style of writing, a lot of the subject matter is less than beautiful. The book is basically a domestic thriller, after all.

Without giving too much away, I especially liked the way Swann made me reflect upon the contrasting styles used by Laurence and Simon to face their individual struggles. The theme of forgiveness and redemption was made even more powerful, I thought, when comparing the two characters.

The book, at times, has a dreamlike quality to it that I will admit to liking. I’m more of a rational disbelieving type person with a tendency to roll my eyes but I found I embraced this surreal element of the novel with gusto. Obviously Swann cast a spell on me.

I recommend Sheerwater and predict it could become the next big hit in Australian literature.

4 ½ out of 5

Another slight spoiler warning – I shaved off half a star because I would have liked a little more resolution than what the ending of the book presented me.

Sheerwater is such an intense and emotionally charged read. It holds you on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next thing to happen.

I did find it hard to get into as I found the language stiff.

The characters are complex and engaging.