Alphareader - Danielle Binks

‘One day,’ Froi said, clearing his voice of emotion, ‘I’ll introduce you to my queen and my king and my captain; and Lord August and Lady Abian, who have given me a home; and the Priestking and Perri and Tesadora and my friend Lucian; and then you’ll understand that I would never have met them if you hadn’t journeyed to Sarnak all those years ago, Arjuro. And if the gods were to give me a choice between living a better life, having not met them, or a wretched life with the slightest chance of crossing their path, then I'd pick the wretched life over and over again.’

'Quintana of Charyn' by Melina Marchetta

Hard times ahead - but books community is exactly that, and we help each other ❤️

‘The Monster of Her Age’ drops on July 28 with Hachette Books Australia. Here are some reviews that mention similar-reads;

“This book is all kinds of wonderful. From its smart and nuanced look at how we respond to art, to questions of whether it's possible to separate art from its problematic artist, Binks has written a book I so wish existed when I was a film-obsessed teen. It brought to mind ‘Actress’ by Anne Enright and ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid but also ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ in the way it untangled secrets and pain passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter. The chats about the horror genre are so well done and made me immediately want to join a film group. The queer love story is beautifully told. And the look at how a family manages death is beautiful and real and profound. The chapter closes are all so nicely done too which is a minor point but shows that care was paid to both the big and the small. All up this is my favourite kind of contemporary YA and this book is perfection.” — Jaclyn Crupi

“A warm hug of a book that's packed to the brim with tenderness, truth, and timeless charm. ‘The Monster of Her Age’ is as much an homage to film as it is to family and heart-fluttering crushes. A must-read for fans of Nina LaCour.” — SARAH ROBINSON-HATCH, The YA Room

Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get.

'The Lady in the Lake' by Raymond Chandler

"I’m scared I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a state of yearning, regardless of where I am."

'The Piper's Son' by Melina Marchetta 

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of ever being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.

'Tell the Wolves I'm Home' by Carol Rifka Brunt