Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe

  • Family Secrets: The Girl and the Ghost #2 – Jacqueline Harvey.

    Penguin Australia October 2025 Officially, my blog break doesn’t finish until the weekend but how can I resist posting this one immediately, after gobbling it up over two nights! I was very excited to be back in France with Jet, Louis and Gabriel in another adventure. There is an exciting opening event as the Mona…

  • The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest – Aubrey Hartman

    Walker Books Australia May 2025 ISBN:9781761601453 RRP: $17.99/New Zealand RRP:$19.99 Now, how to describe this delightfully quirky and sometimes dark quasi-horror with heart? It’s a little bit My Dead Rabbit, maybe a little bit Coraline, and a little bit The Graveyard Book. And then there’s A Girl Called Corpse – and soon you will get…

  • The Haunting of Fortune Farm – Sophie Kirtley

    Bloomsbury Australia January 2025 ISBN 9781526642783 Imprint Bloomsbury Children’s Books RRP: $16.99 I enjoyed Sophie Kirtley’s debut novel The Wild Way Home tremendously back in 2020 and though I haven’t read the intervening books (one novel, one picture book), I had high expectations of this one. I was not disappointed. This is another MG novel…

  • Something Somewhere – Richard Yaxley

    Scholastic Australia August 2024 ISBN: 9781760266370 ISBN-10: 176026637X RRP: $18.99 Richard Yaxley is one of our outstanding local authors, acclaimed and awarded for many of his books, and this newest one is another fine example of his skill. Earlier in the year I reviewed the wonderful The Other Shadow and this book is, to my mind, of…

  • Lockwood & Co – Jonathan Stroud

    Penguin Australia Ten years ago I reviewed The Screaming Staircase and wrote: This new series from Jonathan Stroud is the first since the Bartimaeus Sequence which sold over six million copies, and was translated in over 35 languages. The fact that Universal Studios has already picked up the film rights to Lockwood & Co. is…

  • The Ghost Locket – Allison Rushby

    Walker Books April 1st 2022 ISBN: 9781760654153Imprint: Walker Books AustraliaDistributor: Walker AustraliaBinding:Release Date: April 1, 2022 Australian RRP: $17.99New Zealand RRP: $19.99 Allison Rushby has repeatedly proven her gift for suspenseful spookiness for middle-grade readers and this new book, in my opinion, might just have tipped the scales of my favourite so far. Eleven-year-old Lolli (Olivia) has never known her mother,…

  • Pony – R. J. Palacio

    My review of this utterly fabulous book is now live at Kids Book Review – check it out and make sure you get a copy – you won’t be sorry!

  • The Supernatural Survival Guide – George Ivanoff

    Penguin Australia September 2021 ISBN: 9781761043635 Imprint: Puffin RRP: $24.99 Here is the third in George’s Survival Guides and it’s not just in our house that each has been so anticipated. This one is totally going to tick boxes for a lot of your readers – and dare I say it, the geeky, the preppers, the curious, the…

  • There’s a Ghost in this House – Oliver Jeffers

    Harper Collins Australia October 2021 ISBN: 9780008298357 ISBN 10: 0008298351 Imprint: HarperCollins GB List Price: 29.99 AUD Without doubt books for young readers which invite the children to become part of the whole experience of text and illustrations are far and away the most popular in any setting, in my experience – just think, Herve Tullet, Beck & Matt…

  • The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker – Lauren James

    Walker Books September 2020 ISBN: 9781406391121 RRP: $14.99 Whatever it is you might expect to happen after your death it is not likely to match Lauren James’ latest supernatural thriller. Harriet Stoker has been raised strictly, protected and, truth be told, controlled by her grandmother since both her parents died of an unexplained food poisoning…