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Risk by Fleur Ferris

Crime

Risk by Fleur Ferris

June 24, 2015 by Sheree 5 Comments

I nearly didn’t read Risk. It isn’t light reading. It hits hard, but I couldn’t put it down. If you’re a teenager, read this! It freaks the hell out of the rest of us.

24973955Fifteen-year-old Taylor and Sierra are best friends. Sierra is stunning, athletic, popular with boys, has rich parents and anything she wants. She can be lovely, but being around her is often hard work. She doesn’t have a clue about how she should treat other people, and seems to care even less. Taylor spends a lot of energy pushing down jealousy of everything Sierra has, and excusing what she does.

At Taylor’s place they meet a hot boy a few years older than them in an online chat room. Taylor keeps chatting after Sierra goes home, and it’s looking good – for once she might get the boy. But no; next time they see each other Sierra announces she’s totally into him and is meeting him on Friday. Devastated, Taylor plays the good friend, but she can’t face going with her to meet him. Instead, Sierra asks her to cover for her.

Instead of going back to Taylor’s place, Sierra calls to say she’s staying the night with him. Taylor has to lie to keep her secret. When she doesn’t show up on Saturday, what should Taylor do? Should she tell their parents and get them both into trouble? Or should she wait, because Sierra is bound to turn up eventually?

The premise of Risk is what every teen believes won’t happen to them, and every parent’s nightmare. The reality of predators cyberstalking teenagers is difficult to convey, and the ease with which they can  glean so much about a target’s life is terrifying. The majority of teens don’t realise a predator could find out where they live and go to school, things they’ve done, likes and dislikes, interests, music they play, photos they’ve taken and anything else about them that’s online. It’s even more disturbing to know they use all this to deliberately attract their target, making him or her think they’re soul mates.

Risk* is narrated by Taylor, and the text itself is easily accessible to an average teenager. The threads of the story are skillfully woven, establishing Taylor and Sierra’s relationship and those of the rest of their group of friends. We see how innocently it all starts with both Taylor’s and Sierra’s infatuation with ‘Jacob Jones’, and how crushed Taylor is when he prefers Sierra. Initially I thought the book took too long to get to the point where Sierra disappeared, but as I read further I realised it was necessary. We need to go through it all with Taylor so we understand how she reacts, both initially when she doesn’t know whether to tell someone Sierra has disappeared, and in the long term.

Fleur Ferris has made excellent use of her background as a police officer and paramedic, and the descriptions of the interactions Taylor has with the police have the gravitas of authenticity. There are no soppy cops making it easy on Taylor or her friends. They aren’t treated badly, but tears, upsets and embarrassment aren’t going to stop these police from doing their job, and they know exactly what they’re on about.

SPOILERS Don’t read any further if you don’t want big hints about what happens to Sierra.

People connected to Sierra cope in different ways, including Taylor’s mixed up emotions and various types of guilt. Ferris does a good job depicting the manifestations and confusions of grief. She didn’t try and bring the story to a rosy ending with we’ve-all-worked-through-it-now smiles, the sun setting and music swelling. It has a resolution, and a satisfying one as a story, but manages to keep the awareness that something like this is never truly resolved – people just keep on going because there aren’t any viable alternatives.

Risk should be on your To-be-read list as of July, and give it to any teenagers you know. It’s not a light read, but it’s a compelling and important one.

*I received an e-copy of this book for review through Netgalley. Netgalley badge

Details

Risk by Fleur Ferris
Random House, Australia
ISBN: 9780857986474
Publication: 1 July 2015

Links: Fleur Ferris’s webpage
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Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Crime, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Book review, Books, Crime, Review, Young Adult

The Blackmail Blend: “Sassy Crime”

June 18, 2015 by Sheree Leave a Comment

Tea, mystery and romance novels; a heady combination. The Blackmail Blend* from Livia Day is a delightful offering, small and artful like the high tea her heroine serves.

Tabitha Darling runs a café frequented Tea2by hipsters, while her Scottish friend Stewart works in the building upstairs as a journalist when he’s not writing romance novels. He’s not impressed when he discovers she’s taken a booking from a rival, the revered author of Regency romances Beatrice Wilde, for a book launch and high tea.

The reputation of Tabitha’s business is on the line when Beatrice collapses from a reaction to a food allergen. Tabitha knows she kept all traces of Beatrice’s allergies from the food she served, so someone must have poisoned her deliberately. Stewart drags her into investigating, and it doesn’t take long to discover there’s no shortage of suspects.

But how will she cope with Stewart’s new girlfriend? Just because she’s with her long time crush now, a policeman, does that mean she won’t be jealous? Can either of them look at the evidence about Beatrice or her workshop participants impartially? Will they discover the culprit before another attempt is made on the life of the odious Beatrice?

The Blackmail Blend is under 100 pages, and is a lovely read. It’s light and tight, with well-drawn characters and a decent mystery for its size. Tabitha is smart and witty with a hint of commitment phobia to keep her interesting. Her flat mate and best friend, Xanthippe, is satisfyingly outrageous, and Xanthippe’s brother is Tabitha’s policeman boyfriend who hovers in the background to let her bounce ideas around and distract her from other things – particularly the journalist/writer. Stewart is Scottish, which is a ninety percent approval guarantee in my opinion, so when you add smart, charming and being a romance writer, my only question is, Why is Tabitha with the policeman?

TrifleDead-Cover2Regardless of Tabitha’s reasons, it delivers excellent sexual tension and entertaining dialogue.

Though I haven’t read the the preceding story in the Café La Femme series, A Trifle Dead, there was still a sense of shared history between the characters, and necessary backstory was explained without noticeable exposition. The crime – attempted murder – comes into Tabitha’s life naturally without her seeking it. A major scare in her previous case put her off amateur detective work, so she’s not keen to go down that road again.

The copy I read included the text of a speech presented by Livia Day at CrimeSceneWA in November 2014, titled Obsessive Amateur Detectives (and the Authors Who Love Them). It’s an interesting piece giving some insight into the creation of Tabitha and her sleuthing tendencies, as well as Day’s own comments on other famous crime novel protagonists. It’s probably particularly enlightening for readers like me who only read an occasional crime novel.

DrownedVanillaThe Blackmail Blend is set between A Trifle Dead and Drowned Vanilla. It has encouraged me to read the longer novels. After I’d written most of this review, I went looking for them and discovered that Livia Day is the crime-novelist alter ego of fantasy writer Tansy Rayner Roberts. No surprise, then, that the writing is so good.

It was also then I came upon the term “Sassy Crime”, coined by Angela Slatter.** It’s a perfect way to describe this series, not in terms of brashness, but more of an outspoken, confident woman who’s smart and isn’t about to sit in a corner and let other people get away with anything.

I intend to enjoy the further exploits of Tabitha Darling.

*I was provided with an e-copy of this book for review by the publishers.

Links: Livia Day’s website

A Trifle Dead Twelfth Planet Press

**A.K.A Livia Day Angela Slatter interviews Tansy Rayner Roberts

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Australian Women Writers, Crime, Romance Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, Book review, Books, Crime, Livia Day, Review, Romance, Sassy Crime, Tansy Rayner Roberts

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