Review: Warra Warra by John Scott

The residents of Warra Warra, a small regional town in country Australia, have their quiet lives turned upside down when a commercial passenger plane is the target of a terrorist attack. The plane crashes in the middle of town, killing all passengers on board and several townsfolk, leaving the community reeling. As the survivors attempt to piece their lives together without loved ones, strange things start to happen. The ghosts of those onboard the doomed flight have risen and, unable to return to their homes, seek to claim Warra Warra as their own. Slowly they begin to pick off the remaining residents one by one, in horrific and violent ways.

As somebody with an overactive imagination and prone to nightmares, I tend to avoid horror stories as much as possible. But I had to read Warra Warra for class and I’m so glad that I did because I was truly surprised at how much I enjoyed this story. It sufficiently gave me the creeps and Scott is excellent at using the skill of simple statements. Some authors become lost in the beauty of language and their story suffers for it. But Scott manages to create this vivid and compelling image without an abundance of superfluous words. His stark writing style emulates the bleak setting of the remote country outback perfectly. While I could easily see where this story was headed, I still thoroughly enjoyed devouring it and I can see this making an excellent horror film.

If you feel like something different to read then I definitely recommend you give this story a go. It’s great to see an Australian author using quintessential Australian style in a way that still captivates instead of bores. Though perhaps you might want to skip it if you’re about to catch a flight…

4/5 stars

Review: The Last Letter From Your Lover - Jojo Moyes

Ellie Haworth is in her early thirties, a features writer for London's The Nation and is in love with a married man. Her life has become consumed by trying to dissect brief text messages from her lover. Her work is suffering because of her obsession and she is in very real danger of losing her job. Her boss has given her one last task to redeem herself: sift through countless random documents found in the paper's archives from forty years ago and write a story comparing life in the sixties to now. Amongst the papers, Ellie finds a passionate love letter and finds herself caught up in a story bigger than she could imagine.

Jennifer Stirling is a preened and perfect 60s housewife of a wealthy businessman who has just survived a horrible car accident, which has left her with holes in her memory and strained feelings towards her husband. One day she discovers a letter that reveals she has a secret lover and becomes consumed with rediscovering his identity.

I was surprised how much I loved this book. Moyes has managed to perfect the balance between bittersweet moments and romance to leave me utterly satisfied. Each chapter begins with a break-up message from varying generations and the difference in language (and lack of tact) is amusing. Sometimes, it's unbelievably satisfying to read a nice love story. The only criticism I have is that the book is poorly edited - frequent obvious typos make it seem like the book was edited with spell check. I'm not normally a person who would critique a book purely on typos, but these were too frequent to ignore. However, as someone with an editing background, I know this might not necessarily mean a sloppy editor but constraints on time and budgets. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to enjoy some light reading with heart.

4/5

banana muffins

As I've gotten older, I've found myself falling more in love with baking. There is this awesome sense of accomplishment when I've baked or cooked something new and it has turned out perfect. It makes up for all of the flops, mistakes and downright disasters (which don't happen too often, thankfully).

Today, I baked my traditional banana muffins but instead of using caster sugar, I tried out Equal Baking. I was worried it wouldn't taste quite right, or the texture would be off, but they turned out perfectly.

They don't look the same as they do when I use sugar, but they taste fantastic and smell delicious. They have no odd aftertaste either. Because I want to spread the love, this is the recipe:

Ingredients
- 3 ripe bananas
- 3/4 cup Equal Baking
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups plain flour
- 1/3 cup melted butter (approx 85 grams)

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius and line muffin tin with cups. Mash bananas until almost completely smooth, then add Equal Baking and slightly beaten egg. Stir until combined. Combine the melted butter. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir until fully combined. Batter should be thick and almost sticky. Using a tablespoon, evenly divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups. Bake for 20min, or until springy when touched. Cool on wire rack. (I also like to coat the tops with melted butter and cinnamon sugar for extra flavour.)

The best part about Equal Baking is that it doesn't affect the consistency of things like sugar does, so if you like your treats to taste extra sweet you can add a little more!