Have not had a chance to read this yet, but will keep it on my list for a rainy day! Appreciate being offered the reading copy!

What eventually anchors the travellers of the world, or returns the travellers to their origins, is family. Kokomo is an assured debut novel that has much to say about how a chance connection can alter a person forever in ways that may not ever be noticed by anyone else.

Mina’s life is just about to take off. She has the great job, she has the sparkling London life, and she has recently begun something with her gorgeous office husband Jake. Receiving a call that her mother back in Melbourne was spotted outside of the family home for the first time in years brings Mina crashing back to earth. She immediately jumps on a plane.

Mina and Kira always knew that they that were best friends for life. Kira understood why Mina had to leave Australia after the death of her father, more so than Mina’s boyfriend of the time who chose to stay behind. Kira’s mother Valerie welcomes Mina home like a long lost daughter, and once again Mina reflects that her family life was never like that of the Chengs.

Finding out that her colleague (and work husband) back in London has used her absence to leapfrog his way to a promotion that should have been hers sends Mina into a spiral. This is exactly the time when Mina needs Elaine to actually interact and act like a loving mother, rather than someone frozen in the past with little to say or explain. Elaine has her reasons, even if she is not able to articulate them to herself or anyone else.

Kokomo is one of those books that perhaps needed to find its feet a little earlier in the piece that it did. There is a need to push on through the first few chapters, which give the impression that the reader is in for angsty ride about the agonies of the hard done by and disillusioned youth. Kokomo warms to itself and becomes a lot more.

The arrogance of the young assuming that their parents never had to face the same challenges as themselves is a universal experience gently explored in Kokomo. That you can never really return home the same person you were before you left is gradually realized by Mina, who wished she was a part of another family whilst being oblivious to the turmoil being invisibly experienced in her own.

Kokomo is a gently written novel about the power of love and duty, family loyalties and lifechanging battles quietly fought, unseen.

Life is nothing more than maybe......

What an unexpected story! I thought I'd be reading about a daughter who has run away from caring for her mentally ill mother, and it is about that on the surface, but it's about so much more.

Mina has been living in London working to secure a promotion in an ad agency when her best friend calls to let her know that her homebound (agoraphobic) mother has left the house. She immediately sets off and returns to Melbourne.

In the opening paragraphs I thought Mina was going to be a "dick-notised" millennial who I was not going to like, thankfully I was wrong. She has her issues and her story has some pretty ugly parts but her behaviours are better understood as you move through the pages and better understand the impact of her relationship with her mother, Elaine.

This is where I will fangirl a little bit because I loved Elaine. She is a deliciously complicated character. She reminds many of us that our mothers once were young, they had desires and dreams, that they longed for things and lusted after people. All of Elaine's motivations in life were influenced by her love for one man, until ultimately she cannot remain trapped by her grief and guilt: she must get on with things, she must leave to live.

I enjoyed the writing and the pace and the fact that stories don't need to be pretty to be enjoyable.

Kokomo is the daring and compelling story of Mina and her agoraphobic mother Elaine. It is beautiful, well written, and utterly heartbreaking. It is a story of struggle. It explores what it means to be a daughter, who holds power in a relationship, and what it takes to walk away. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it in a heart beat. Victoria Hannan is a testament to the quality of literature coming out of Australia today.

This review is based on NetGalley ARC provided in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion.

The Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award has been a fairly accurate bellwhether of quality. Previous winners have included Graham Simison for The Rosie Project (2012) Jane Harper for The Dry (2015) and Christian White for The Nowhere Child (2017) and. Even the short lists are impressiv and have included Mark Brandi’s Wimmera and JM Green’s Good Money. So going into Victoria Hannan’s blistering and often raw debut Kokomo knowing that it won the 2019 Award is already a good start.
The startling opening chapter gives an indication of what readers might be in for. Mina, on the verge of sleeping with her work colleague Jack, feels she finally knows what love is. But after having this seeming revelation, she pauses to answer her phone and before she knows it she is flying back to Melbourne from London. She returns home to fulfil a promise that she would come when her mother finally left her house. Her mother Elaine had shut herself away after the death of her husband Bill and after years of trying to change the situation Mina had given up and fled to London. But now she is back, swept up by her old friend and neighbour Kira, sleeping in her old bed, making mistakes and trying to make sense of her mother and her own life.
And then about halfway through, the narrative pivots to Elaine. Readers start to see many of the same flashback scenes that Mina recalled – including her father’s funeral and the days after - through Elaine’s eyes, giving them all another layer of meaning.
Hannan delves deeply into the characters of Mina and Elaine and the events that shaped them. They are, in the end mother and daughter and have in a sense also shaped each other and carry the echoes of Elaine’s own parents in their actions. And through this, Hannan keeps coming back to the main question of this book. What is love? How is the best way to express it? What do you do when you have to keep that love secret? How do those secrets shape our connections? And what if those connections are better for secrets kept rather than shared?
Kokomo is sometimes uncomfortable as it reveals nuggets of truth and deals with a messy reality. But it is, from the first page, fully engaging. There is a mystery at the heart of the book that unfolds slowly, seen from the both the outside and the inside. But it is not a plot device to keep the pages turning but rather a function of these characters – who they are and what they mean to each other – that does not fully resolve because real life, and love, are not that simple.

This book had me mesmerised from the start - what a fantastic debut from Victoria Hannan!

I adored everything about this book - it's a showcase of love, grief and longing that is written in a beautifully raw way and the characters are wonderfully written and developed. I loved that we got to see the story from both points of view (Mina and her mother Elaine's) and I also loved that it was set in Melbourne as that provided a sense of familiarity whilst reading and made me feel like I was right there with the characters in all the places mentioned throughout the book. A definite must read!

A big thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Australia for this advanced digital copy to read and review!

Kokomo by Victoria Hannan is an exploration into nostalgia, what makes a place home, love and disappointment. I loved it!

Mina has returned to Melbourne after 6 years away. She’s returned because her mother left the house- something she hasn’t done since Mina’s father died. Mina wants to know why she left, why she locked herself up in the first place and why her mum didn’t love her enough to heal herself. Told from both Mina’s and Elaines perspective, it’s a great Australian novel.

There’s a great juxtaposition between Elaine’s self-imposed exile and Mina’s escape to the other side of the world. Both completely valid expressions of grief, but too different to be understood by the other. Mina is angry, you can feel it on every page. Angry at her father for dying, and her mother for giving up, at the world for allowing her to have to grow up too quickly, at her friends who stayed and herself for leaving. It’s a sad anger because at the base of it all is the loss of her father and her mother. It’s a complex interplay between wanting to stay but needing to leave in order to preserve herself, but Mina doesn’t know what there is to preserve.

Watch out for that first chapter, its fire fire fire.

This review is unbiased and written solely by me.

This was a highly anticipated read for me and it did not disappoint! This is a novel that you will want to gulp in its entirety once you start, the pace and flow to the story are just mesmerizing!

We follow Mina, a young Australian working in London. The death of her father has set her mother into an agoraphobia of sorts that results in her not leaving the house for years - after the mother-daughter pair become estranged, Mina moves to London to pursue her career at an ad agency as a copywriter. Her toxic work/play relationship with a colleague, Jack, was superbly written and resonated with so many complex issues around “merit” and sexism in the workplace - I loved how this got explored!

Mina receives a call that her mum has left the house for the first time in years, so Mina drops everything and returns to Australia. The way her estrangement with her mum, as well as her university friends, is written was so powerful - the tenuousness of connections and the strength when they endure was moving to see written in so many relationships.

I also loved how immersive the point of views perspectives were, both those parts of the narrative told from Mina’s perspective, and especially when the story moves into her mother’s perspective.

This was a beautiful and layered narrative exploring love and connection in so many character manifestations - between friends and lovers and family. Many thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for a review copy.

I wish to thank Victoria Hannan, Hachette Australia and NetGalley for the advanced copy of Kokomo in exchange for an honest review.

This is a story of love, Victoria Hannan has skillfully written this enjoyable novel; captivating and entertaining. The protagonist Mina returns home to Melbourne when her mother Elaine leaves the family home after confining herself for many years. Mina is a likeable character; she is romantically involved with a colleague in London in a workplace where she experiences discrimination. She reconnects with her childhood friends and neighbours who are close, like family.

There’s a secret, a mystery emerges and there is sadness and loneliness which is lightened by moments of humour and human connectedness. I enjoyed the accomplished descriptive writing, I lived in Melbourne for a few years and it is described wonderfully. Winning the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, this is another fine literary debut by an Australian writer I will follow. Recommend.

Love. A word that has many connotations depending on our mindset at certain times in our life.
When Mina returns home looking for answers this opens a pandoras box that has remained closed for many years. Mina struggles with her own problems while coming to terms with her mother's self imposed isolation.
A cleverly crafted story that takes you in and holds you to the very end.
This is an independent review thanks to NetGally and Hatchette Aust.

I didn’t anticipate enjoying this as much as I did. I thought with the opening chapter (which didn’t gel well with me) was going to set the tone for everything with this. However, I was pleasantly proven wrong with the direction that this took. It was a surprising look at a family relationship that has tense moments in hand with touching ones, and some sweet moments as well. The romance aspect of this was very much a leave it facet of the story, but the rest of it was lovely.

It examines parts of adulthood that are jagged and awkward and don’t quite fit into the narrative that the world throws at us about growing up. The way that the book also looks into the switching of parenthood roles, how we all end up taking on more responsibility with our parents as they face roadblocks that they struggle with through their lives.

I found the reconnecting with old places you used to love and friends from your past really beautifully written as well. While I didn’t find the lust and longing a particularly powerful part of this book, the rest of it was certainly a strongly written piece that provided a lot of important messages and lessons to learn.