(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

It is the late 1940s, and the Broody River runs through a maze of sandbanks into the Coral Sea. On its southern bank lies the holiday town of Baroodibah. But its northern shore is wild - unsettled except for the River House, an old weatherboard box on stumps where the Carlyle family take their holidays.
For four-year-old Laurie Carlyle the house and its untold stories fire the imagination. It is a place of boating trips and nature collections, of the wind howling, the sheoaks sighing and the pelicans soaring into the blue sky. But when a squabble between Laurie and her older brother Tony takes an unexpected turn, she detects the first hints of family discord.
As the years pass, the River House holidays seem to shine a light on the undercurrents in the family: the secret from her mother's past, the bitterness between Tony and their father Doug, and her sister Miranda's increasingly erratic and dangerous behaviour...

Disappointing. What I thought was going to be one of the better books I had read so far this year, turned out to be nothing more than a mashed-together bunch of scenes that didn't really have any kind of narrative thread running through them.

Sure, there are some excellent moments throughout - usually anything to do with Tony and Doug was right on the edge of interesting, as their bitterness can be identified with by everyone. I felt that Miranda's character was just a little overdone, though, but was still far more interesting than Laurie.

There are also issues with pacing and description. And these do tie in together. There are passages in this book where the details get so overly described, you lose all sense of what was developing in the plot...and then, just a few pages later, there is nothing at all like that and the plot seems to almost get away from itself...but, never fear, the clunky descriptions aren't too far away to slow it all down again...

This book had so much promise but, I think, was let down badly in the delivery.


Paul
ARH