I thought I knew what to expect when I started reading an advance listening copy of Fruit Fly through Libro.fm. As per the blurb, I expected a satirical thriller about a washed-up could-have-been author appropriating the life of a young, gay drug addict in the hopes of reviving her career.

Technically, yes, that is what Fruit Fly is about. But it’s not really what it’s about.

One of the narrators is Mallory Maddox, a 36-year-old upper-middle-class counsellor with a successful television producer husband. She wrote one smash-hit YA novel seven years ago, but she’s been blocked ever since. Still, she “has it all”… and she hates it.

Taking her inspiration from a Reddit post about how to write a bestseller, she decides to conduct research for a sad, gay novel by downloading Grindr. That’s what sets her on the path to meeting the other narrator, Leo – a young man with long-time addiction issues and no permanent address. Gradually, she ingratiates herself into Leo’s life, shamelessly mining his trauma for content. She has no idea that Leo is manipulating her right back, in the hopes of getting enough money out of the rich white lady to fund a couple of weeks in a hotel and enough drugs to put down a rhino.

Yes, it’s an “Everyone Sucks Here” novel – neither Mallory nor Leo are perfect, and they both do reprehensible things for selfish reasons – but ultimately neither narrator is the villain of Fruit Fly. The reveal of the true malevolent force in Mallory’s life is so gradual, you’ll likely question whether you’re imagining it at first (as I did).

Fruit Fly takes so many unexpected twists, I’d call it the most unpredictable novel I’ve read in recent memory. It’s smart, it’s shocking, and it’s not one you can breeze through while your mind is elsewhere. Take note of the content warnings (all kinds of violence, addiction, suicidality) and keep your wits about you.

Read Fruit Fly on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

Do you remember the Mars One program? It was big news back in 2019, when the company that had promised to send a small contingent of humans to Mars to establish a colony was declared bankrupt. Despite the organisation being widely and vigorously criticised, more than 2,700 people applied for the one-way ticket to the red planet before the company was dissolved. It’s a story that stuck in Jordan Prosser’s head, and formed the basis for his new novel Blue Giant. My friends at UQP were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

The story focuses on Abby, a thirty-something hot mess with a lot of unresolved mental health issues – the latest of which is a hyperfixation on applying to be part of a tech billionaire’s Mars colonisation project. Her roommate, Niki, is justifiably concerned, but her cautious questioning of Abby’s plans goes nowhere. Abby believes a one-way ticket to Mars is the only way she can be “useful” in this life, and she will stop at nothing to achieve her “destiny”.

I’ll tell you right now: don’t pick up Blue Giant if you’re one of those readers who needs their protagonist to be likable, or even at any stretch relatable. I was actively rooting for Abby’s failure most of the time. She is selfish, delusional, cruel – and, occasionally, very, very funny. Luckily, that’s the kind of character that makes for a cracking good read, in my opinion.

Blue Giant is a delightfully unpredictable novel, a “paean to the total crushing disappointment of adulthood”, and a testament to the awesome destructive power of millennial ennui.

P.S. A warning for fellow dog-lovers – there are a few brief descriptions of off-page dog deaths.

Read Blue Giant on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

In Falsely Convicted, Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick Mercer unravels nine serious miscarriages of justice and judicial failures of the Australian legal system. These are nine back-to-back stories of people who were wrongfully imprisoned, publicly shamed, and later exonerated, with the fight for justice often led by journalists or dedicated loved ones. My friends at Allen & Unwin were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

The first, and most disturbing, thing I learned from Falsely Convicted is that there is no clear process or established protocol for redressing a miscarriage of justice. Once someone is released from being wrongfully imprisoned in this country, they rarely receive so much as a “sorry”, let alone any compensation for the years lost and trauma endured. They are abandoned by a system that has already failed them in the most horrifying of ways.

That’s because Australia, on the whole, has yet to adopt Article 14(6) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – the right to be compensated after exoneration. The ACT is the only Australian state/territory that has adopted Article 14(6), so if you’re going to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice, best to do it there, I suppose.

Another confronting element Falsely Convicted is the fact that a miscarriage of justice can happen to anyone. As these nine stories illustrate, anyone – from respectable semi-retired schoolteachers to hardened criminals – can find themselves caught in the clutches of the ‘justice’ system at the whim of cops and prosecutors who don’t want to admit they got it wrong.

Given that it’s kind of a bummer, I think Falsely Convicted could have done with a strong introduction and/or conclusion, some kind of unifying message that’s a little more hopeful than “it could happen to you or your loved ones, and if it does, you’re on your own, kid”. As fascinating as these stories are, I finished Falsely Convicted feeling rather discouraged and despondent.

Read Falsely Convicted on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

Jodi McAlister won herself a lifelong fan with An Academic Affair, so I was thrilled to see her latest book – A Study In Sparkling, set in the same universe – available for review through Libro.fm.

This time, the story focuses on Fiona – Jonah’s 35-year-old sister, whose husband left her and their three kids to live in his secret second life full-time. Fiona’s chapters alternate with her new love interest, Satoshi, the proprietor of Fiona’s favourite wine bar. He’s 27 years old, pansexual, and elbow-deep in studying for his Master Sommelier certification.

It’s not ideal timing for either of them to start something new, but Satoshi has fallen head-over-heels in love with his favourite regular, and Fiona can’t resist the allure of a new romance with a younger man to remind her she’s alive.

A Study In Sparkling has much of the same magic and charm as An Academic Affair, and fellow fans will be delighted to pick it up if for no other reason than to see more of where Sadie and Jonah end up. That said, the narrator of Satoshi’s character felt a little flat, and I didn’t quite enjoy his chapters as much. The character is also a bit of a pathetic mess for Fiona, and while we usually love that in a man (ahem!), at times I wanted to tell him to grow a bloody backbone.

And I don’t mean to get too nit-picky about it, but I’m not sure his wine bar’s service model is solid. He insists that there must be a qualified sommelier on the floor at all times – that’s fine for cocktail hour and dinner service, but seems like overkill for a weekday afternoon (not to mention blowing out his staffing costs). It’s just one of many ways Satoshi makes things way harder for himself than they need to be.

Once again, McAlister leaves a few doors open, both in terms of the spicy scenes (whew!) and new couplings for future books. I’ll be eagerly anticipating her next release!

Read my review of An Academic Affair here.

Read A Study In Sparkling on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

My friends at Penguin Books Australia kindly sent me an advance copy of Lying Is My Love Language for review. This debut rom-com follows a city girl finding love in the Australian outback – if she can only stop lying long enough to embrace it.

The protagonist, Jamie, has lived a life of rapidly rotating Tinder dates and a copywriting job that just barely earns her enough for a small apartment in a nice part of town. She is also, it must be said, aggressively millennial – which I can see alienating some younger readers, even if I myself can sympathise a little. She has big Eldest Daughter energy, in the sense that she seems to have made People Pleasing her personality (all the while coming off as bitter and caustic, which isn’t particularly pleasing at all).

Jamie keeps life interesting by lying to each of these one-night-only suitors, pretending to be into running, or rock climbing, or whatever special interest makes their eyes light up. Lying is basically her only hobby – until she meets Luke, a grumpy but charming farmer, at her friend’s outback wedding. He sees right through the game, and they fall into a messy situationship of sorts.

The premise of Lying Is My Love Language is fine – an evergreen rom-com plot – but the prose gave me the ick. There’s a lot of repetition in form, with sentence structures that you see frequently in AI-generated text. “Not X, not Y. Just Z.” “The kind of A that makes you B.” “[Blank], as if [blank].” Maybe some of this will be cleaned up in the version that hits bookstore shelves, but it’s hard to imagine what will be left after a rigorous final edit (especially if they also take out all of the Quirky Character Facts that are mentioned once and then forgotten, like “the time Jamie made a PowerPoint to argue with her teacher about notebook margins”).

I think Lying Is My Love Language shows promise conceptually, but needs a bit more work to be execution-ready.

Read Lying Is My Love Language on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)