Jennifer Cameron-Smith
@fionnabhair.bsky.social
📤 91
📥 13
📝 206
Reader, cross-stitcher, quilter, and grower of roses :-)
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Beautiful Changelings
4/5: The Oxford Dictionary tells me that a changeling is a child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents' real child in infancy. In the titular poem, Maxine Beneba Clarke...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8137523966
7 days ago
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www.change.org/p/call-for-a...
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Sign the Petition
Call for a Royal Commission into the Bondi Beach terror attack
https://www.change.org/p/call-for-a-royal-commission-into-the-bondi-beach-terror-attack
9 days ago
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Publication date: 30/12/2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of On the Edge
4/5: Everyone knows everyone in small towns and people have long memories. Nel Foley knows this, and she fled the (fictional) New South Wales coastal town of Carrinya as soon as she could after the de...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144092343
12 days ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Franz Josef (Nick Chester, #3)
4/5: ‘I’ve got a gutted body in the fridge in the local supermarket and a possible killer on the loose in this tiny town cut off by floods and landslides.’ In Mr Carter’s novel, the town of Franz Jos...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8125191740
14 days ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Empire of AI
4/5: When I picked up this book, I was unaware that the focus was on the company called OpenAI and its leader Sam Altman. I was expecting more general coverage of the development, benefits and pitfall...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8122395328
14 days ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Lost (Detective Bonnie Hunter Thrillers Book 2)
4/5: ‘Where was she?’ This is the second novel in Ms Lee’s Detective Bonnie Hunter series. The story opens on Mothers’ Day, always a difficult day for Bonnie. She’s travelled to the New South Wales S...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8112017382
16 days ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Thirty-One Legs of Vladimir Putin
4/5: ‘Out here at the back of the breakers where there are no mirrors, or people who feel they can comment on my looks, I can forget my resemblance to Russia’s president.’ Dave McDermott is one of si...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8135008241
18 days ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Ankami
5/5: Learning about family history can be challenging because of incomplete records, inaccurate memories and (sometimes) a conscious decision to bury aspects of the past. From records obtained through...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8114886675
18 days ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Transformations
4/5: George Desoulis feels at home as a subeditor at the National, a fictional broadsheet newspaper located in Darlinghurst, Sydney. But change is coming. The novel opens with two of George’s colleagu...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8077168944
about 1 month ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of If the Dead Belong Here
4/5: ‘The intruders enter as quiet as light.’ The novel opens in J1996 in Jordan, Wisconsin. Six-year-old Laurel Taylor is missing. Her older sister Nadine feels her absence before becoming fully awa...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8041097104
about 1 month ago
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Fascinating.
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Crimson Velvet Heart
4/5: ‘The tale begins in the city of Turin, one hundred miles west of Milan.’ Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy is born in Turin in 1685. In 1696, Louis XIV of France, the ageing Sun King, has Marie-A...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8066979331
about 1 month ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Buckeye
5/5: Set in the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, this novel spans much of the twentieth century and focusses on the lives of two married couples: Cal and Becky Jenkins and Felix and Margaret Salt. Cal, bo...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8056048106
about 2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of A Great Act of Love
4/5: ‘If you go, you must invent a new story.’ In 1839, Caroline Douglas arrives in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania since 1856). She has a young boy in her care, and the means to establish herself. She a...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8046191149
about 2 months ago
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Publication date: 18 November 2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Outlaw Planet
5/5: ‘This is her story. It’s the story of the gun she carried, whose name is Wakeful Slim. It’s the story of the dead man who carried that gun before her and left a piece of him inside it.’ I am not...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8035747358
about 2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Farm
4/5: Leila Haddad and her partner James Crawley are devastated when Leila’s pregnancy ends in early miscarriage. Additionally, Leila requires surgery for a complex gynaecological condition and her rec...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7978729279
about 2 months ago
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about 2 months ago
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about 2 months ago
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about 2 months ago
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Some roses in my garden 30/10/2025
2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of China Room
4/5: As is frequently the case, I was led to this novel by one of my Chief Reading Enablers, Lisa. I was intrigued by Lisa’s review, which can be found here: China Room (2021) by Sunjeev Sahota | ANZ...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8003706986
2 months ago
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Today's roses.
2 months ago
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Publication date: 2 Dec 2025
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of After the Weeping (A DS McAvoy Novel, 14)
4/5: This is the fourteenth book in Mr Mark’s DS McAvoy series, and it starts with a very confronting flashback. A foreign visitor is being shown into what is known as The Dying Room in a Romanian orp...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7994005076
2 months ago
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Publication date: 2 Dec 2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Silent Bones (Karen Pirie, #8)
4/5: Scotland 2025. The eighth instalment in the Karen Pirie series opens with a landslide on a motorway, which reveals the skeleton of a missing journalist. His name was Sam Nimmo, he was an investig...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7983632804
2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Legacy (Martin Scarsden, #4)
5/5: ‘Stay safe. Great advice. Brilliant. But how do you stay safe from people keen to trash your reputation online, without a fact in sight?’ Martin Scarsden is in Port Silver for the launch of his ...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8015818841
2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Gunpowder Creek
4/5: ‘Mum, please. I need your help. I’ve done something stupid… They’re coming for me.’ A voice mail from her son Zach on a Friday afternoon signals the beginning of a nightmare for Perth mother Emi...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8011475568
2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Yellowface
4/5: ‘The night I watch Athena Liu die, we’re celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.’ And what a slippery slope our narrator, Juniper (June) Hayward embarks on after Athena’s death. June and Athena me...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7995587593
2 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Hymn to Dionysus
5/5: ‘I’ll tell you about rage, and a complicated man.’ No, actually, I won’t. I’ll tell you instead that Ms Pulley is a must-read author for me. Ever since I read ‘The Watchmaker of Filigree Street’...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7961214582
2 months ago
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First light near Adaminaby.
2 months ago
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Publication date: 4 November 2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Softly Calls the Devil
4/5: Matt Buchanan is enjoying life as the sole-charge police constable in the small settlement of Haast, on the remote west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Matt is respected, has made frien...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7952593305
3 months ago
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My early morning walk yesterday. Too windy today.
3 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Youngest Son
4/5: Opening in Ultimo in 1920s Sydney, this is the story of the three Leach siblings: John, Maureen and Bob. They are the children of a single mother, and their stories unfold between 1929 and 1944. ...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7938671703
3 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Dirt Poor Islanders
4/5: ‘Speak English, you savage. That’s what the pālangi said as soon as they heard my grandmother’s voice. Especially Sharon the Bogan who lived across from us.’ In this novel, Ms Dunn brings anothe...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7942550790
3 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Meanjin 84.3 Spring 2025
4/5: 'This season we turn to the cultural and political impacts of 11 November 1975 that continue to shape contemporary Australia.' I do not always read Meanjin from cover to cover, but I did this ti...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7934223160
3 months ago
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Brilliant.
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Remembered Soldier
5/5: In 1917, an amnesiac soldier was found around midday near the town of Merckem in Belgium. With no identification papers and no memory of the past, he is named Noon Merckem and given a form of san...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7908813614
3 months ago
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Publication date: 28 October 2025
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of A Disappearing Act
4/5: Marnie Elliott, a bestselling author, has invited her three oldest friends to join her for a holiday in southern Tasmania. Twenty-five years ago, in 1999, the four of them: Sarah, Xanthea, Poppy ...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7930220687
3 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The White Crow (Philomena McCarthy, #2)
4/5: ‘In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that line almost sixty years before I was born but it’s true enough today.’ Philomena (Ph...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7929016252
3 months ago
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Highly recommended:
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Star on the Grave
5/5: I was led to this novel by the review written by one of my Chief Reading Enablers, Lisa https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/08/30/the-star-on-the-grave-2024-by-linda-margolin-royal/ . And through this novel, I learned of another aspect of World War II. Before I read this novel, I knew nothing about the six thousand Jewish refugees saved from the Nazis who had escaped Europe via Japan. I had not heard of Chiune Sugihara, whose actions in defiance of the Japanese government’s orders, wrote transit visas for those fleeing Lithuania. Similarly, I had not heard of Jan Zwartendijk, an official of the N...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7895527147
4 months ago
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Recommended! Publication is either later this month, or October.
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Seed
4/5: Mitchell and Frances are scientists, working on the Anarctos project, a seed vault in an isolated location in Antarctica. The seed vault is a biodiversity insurance policy against the impact of a...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7908812180
4 months ago
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Publication date: 28/10/2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Tangled Web
4/5: Set in Sydney and Maitland, Ms Cooper’s latest novel opens in 1892 with Viola Oswald mourning the death of her beloved brother, Sebastian. Sebastian suffered from haemophilia. Viola’s mother is p...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7885028700
4 months ago
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Publication date: 28 October 2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Hiding Place
4/5: Four families have bought a long-abandoned mining town in the Australian bush. Lou saw the ad and convinced family and friends that purchasing it was a good idea: a return to nature, and a way to...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7872979326
4 months ago
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Publication date 28 October 2025. Another terrific novel from Ms Nell.
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Funeral Crashers
4/5: Intrigued by the title, I was delighted to have an opportunity to read this book. Martin Pottinger, a retired academic, is presently sharing his home with his somewhat eccentric elderly mother, E...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7805401233
4 months ago
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Publication date: 30 September 2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Road Trip
4/5: Yes, I know that there are some who would see a caravan trip through the centre of Australia as the trip of a lifetime. And while I am not one of them, I was keen to see where Ms Stringer would t...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7862344859
4 months ago
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4 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Three Lives of Cate Kay
3/5: Who is Cate Kay? It took me a while to get into this novel (I read it as part of a reading challenge) and even longer to care about the story. And I’ll confess: some aspects really annoyed me. ...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7816489613
4 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Good Losers
4/5: A very long time ago, I lived in Launceston, in northern Tasmania. As a member of the lower classes, the realm of rowing was totally foreign to me. Except, sometimes, I saw the upper classes (mos...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7811128576
4 months ago
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Publication date: 30/9/2025
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Murder on North Terrace
4/5: After thoroughly enjoying the first novel in this series (The Death of Dora Black), I was delighted to have an opportunity to read the second novel, which opens six months later. In September 19...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7791899325
4 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Sins of the Fathers
4/5: In the prologue, set in 1898, a man makes a choice which will lead him to prison. The story then shifts to 1910, where Billy and Tommy Smith live with their mother in Sydney’s Miller’s Point. The...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7799218659
4 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Stone Sky Gold Mountain
5/5: In Ms Riwoe’s novel, which takes place in 1877 in the Palmer River goldfields of Far North Queensland, Mei Ying and her brother Lai Yue have left China to try to make enough money to redeem their...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7763942073
4 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of The Persians
1/5: ‘For a week it was a nonstop party of drugs and cartoons until an hour ago when I bailed my Auntie Shirin out of the Aspen jail after her arrest for attempted prostitution.’ During the course of...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7795467835
4 months ago
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Jennifer (JC-S)'s review of Five Found Dead
4/5: ‘Murderers? In the Orient Express? Whoever heard of such a thing?’ Timing is everything, and I am pleased I read this novel after safely arriving in Perth on Australia’s magnificent transcontinental train, the Indian Pacific. Otherwise, my imagination – overstimulated by this novel - might have kept me awake at night… Crime fiction author Joe Penvale and his twin sister Meredith board the Orient Express in Paris. Joe’s writing life has been on pause while he has undergone intense lifesaving medical treatment and Meredith hopes that this trip will inspire him to write again. And, after thei...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7839144398
4 months ago
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