About the Book: On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: From internationally bestselling author John Boyne, an inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected. It’s…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: From internationally bestselling author John Boyne, a masterfully reflective story about one woman coming to terms with the demons of her past and finding a new path forward. The fi…| Theresa Smith Writes
9 posts published by Theresa Smith Writes during May 2025| Theresa Smith Writes
5 posts published by Theresa Smith Writes during August 2025| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting … Continue reading Book Review: Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young – young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, … Continue reading Book Review: Audition by Katie Kitamura| Theresa Smith Writes
The Long Prospect is Elizabeth Harrower’s second novel, published in 1958. It is set in a fictional town called Ballowra, which is loosely based on Newcastle. I didn’t get quite the sam…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter — which outlined the principles of democracy and freedom in South Africa — comes a novel set in the township where it was …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Set against the wild backdrop of an intense heatwave in Europe, this is a story about sibling relationships – what holds a family together and what might fracture it forever. Family is everything, even when it falls apart. There is a heatwave across Europe. Goose and his three sisters gather at the … Continue reading Book Review: The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce| Theresa Smith Writes
Down in the City is Elizabeth Harrower’s first novel, published in 1957. It tells the story of Esther Prescott, a sheltered woman who has grown up wealthy and motherless, who marries a man after only knowing him for two weeks, thus leaving her Rose Bay family home to live in a flat in Kings Cross. … Continue reading Elizabeth Harrower: Down in the City| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It’s 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley – the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship with a married man in Dublin. But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why.Returning to the community to try and reclaim … Continue reading Book Review: The Coast Road by Alan Murrin| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: D. H. Lawrence is dying. Exiled in the Mediterranean, he dreams of the past. There are the years early in his marriage during the war, where his desperation drives him to commit a terrible betrayal. And there is a woman in an Italian courtyard, her chestnut hair red with summer. Jacqueline and … Continue reading Book Review: Tenderness by Alison MacLeod| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Charlie, a prime-time radio producer in her early thirties, has always had a big group of friends – until she left her husband, and they all sided with him. Now she finds herself fl…| Theresa Smith Writes
5 posts published by Theresa Smith Writes during September 2024| Theresa Smith Writes
Most of my thinking out loud pieces morph out of conversations with those who are a part of my private universe. Over a period time, we’ll go back and forth over whatever it is we’ve been talking about, picking it to pieces until it gets to the point where it feels as though it could … Continue reading Thinking Out Loud: When Authors Get Mad – The Ups and Downs of Book Reviewing| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But all is not as it seems and Anna soon finds herself at the heart of a mystery that threatens her very way of life. In New York in … Continue reading Book Review: The Story Collector by Evie Woods| Theresa Smith Writes
Vera and Thea are mother and daughter. Vera writes for the internet: she constructs identities and scenarios for brands to cater to the ideal consumer. Yet she also consumes the offerings of the on…| Theresa Smith Writes
I haven’t published a good think piece for quite some time, but I’ve found myself increasingly irritated by many things to do with the book reviewing space of late. On a recent trip to …| Theresa Smith Writes
4 posts published by Theresa Smith Writes during June 2025| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Claire O’Connor’s life has been on hold since she broke up with Tom Morton and moved from cosmopolitan London back home to the rugged West of Ireland to care for her dying father. B…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: In the freezing January of 1989, mother-of-two Birdie Keller wakes to the news she’s been waiting seventeen years to hear: the man who destroyed her life has been freed from jail. B…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife it was to marry his girlfriend, Audra, a woman as irrepressible as she is spontaneous and fun. But, Graham learns, life with Audra can …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavík Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewi…| Theresa Smith Writes
10 posts published by Theresa Smith Writes during March 2025| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends for her to follow a long-stand…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Former London police officer Rose Campbell has been estranged from her daughter, Lou, for almost a decade. But when Lou disappears from a remote Western Australian beach, and the po…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has bee…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Being in limbo, 30,000 feet in the air, offers time to reflect and take stock. For Aaron Umber, it’s an opportunity to connect with his 14-year-old son as they travel halfway across…| Theresa Smith Writes
For those of you who are only connected with my reviews here and not over on Instagram and Facebook, I thought I’d just pop up a quick announcement. We welcomed a beautiful female four-year-o…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Duncan is charming, handsome – and Jane falls in love with him easily. But he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhe…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: From the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake comes a stunningly beautiful tale about love, family and seeking a new life in the aftermath of tragedy …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: ‘Lonely mouth … It’s a Japanese expression. It means, like, you feel like you want to eat something, but you don’t know what it is. You’re looking for …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Broome 2023: when Saskia’s free-spirited mother leaves her a caravan in her will, it doesn’t make sense. Saskia is a schoolteacher, tied to plans and schedules, even if they are beg…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. In the idyllic Sussex countryside, her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather for lunch, a…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wi…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: One will lose his mind. One will pay. One will agonise. And one will die. Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond have been best friends since childhood. Now, as young men running their famili…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: WINNER OF THE 2025 MUD LITERARY PRIZE Missing in every sense of the word, a man walks into the landscape and doesn’t stop. In all weather and across all kinds of terrain, Ingv…| Theresa Smith Writes
For those of you who have followed this blog for a long time, you would be familiar with my beautiful little Husky named Zeus, whose adventures and antics were a regular feature in my newsletter po…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines. First thing, she loses her job – or quits, depending who you ask. Then her ex-husband Max t…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: 1918, Belowla. As the Great War grinds to an end, Adelaide Roberts accompanies her father to a rugged island off the south coast of New South Wales. While loss and deprivation …| Theresa Smith Writes
(Molly the Maid #3) About the Book: Molly the maid is no stranger to secrets… She sees everything behind closed doors at the Regency Grand hotel: wiping away the dust and grime of guests passing th…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: WINNER OF THE READINGS NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION PRIZE Mary Anne is painfully aware that she’s not a good wife and not a good mother, and is slowly realising that she no longer w…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researche…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: What would you do if you found out you’d been raising another couple’s child – and they’ve been raising yours? Fourteen years ago, Kelsey and Raf Maccioni le…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It’s 1849 on the west coast of Ireland. Resilient Honora O’Donoghue is accustomed to fending for herself and to reading the language of the natural world. It was always said she’d b…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: When Giselle escapes to the north Yorkshire village of Hollydale, she doesn’t give much thought to what she might find there. She’s more concerned with what she’s leavin…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: WINNER OF THE 2024 MATT RICHELL AWARD FOR NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditi…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Her family’s story made Henry Lawson famous. But was it his story to tell? Fact and fiction meld into one in this stirring family saga set against shifting landscapes and pivo…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mist…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: When Caitlin inherits a significant sum of money on her fortieth birthday, she decides to break the habits of a lifetime and throw caution to the winds. She’s about to tell he…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Lucy is running from what she’s done – and what someone did to her. There’s only one person who might understand: her sister Jess. But when Lucy arrives at her sister’s desolate cli…| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Pe…| Theresa Smith Writes
