TELL ME WHEN IT HURST

by Christine M. Whitehead

I really enjoyed this book even if it was a cheapie from Amazon I downloaded to my Kindle... an impulse buy.

We first meet Archer as a young educated women who falls in love with handsome Adam and they have a daughter, Annie. The love of her life. Everything is going along smoothly until one terrible night when on a school trip, Annie is raped and murdered. This terrible event will be the end of Archer's life as she knows it as the murderer goes free and she is left with a huge abyss in her life. The depression and struggle to live after such an event forces Archer and Adam to split up and Archer becomes a recluse living in the bush.
Living on the property next door, enter Connor. Hunk of a cowboy guy from Wyoming who is camping out on his newly inherited property. After some standoffish behaviour Archer and Connor are forced to interact which in turn leads to a wonderful love story... except Archer has secrets. She is a secret vigilante and a trained killer and is part of a group that 'makes justice happen' when the justice system let people down and destroys peoples lives.
I was engrossed in this story which peeled away layers of Archer., bit by bit, as she slowly came to terms with her daughter's terrible death and that she needed to continue to live to honour her daughter's memory. A moving story which had me in tears several times. I like it when I find a story out of the blue that really touches me like this book did.

FOAL'S BREAD

by Gillian Mears

I have to admit the cover made me take this book home. Haven't a good 'horsie' book since Silver Brumby times back in primary school, so I was expecting great things, particularly with the book winning a few awards. I was disappointed. 
From the first chapter it was doom and gloom but I persevered until almost the end when I decided I would just skip through it. (Which I never usually do). 
I get the story was set in the harsh farming conditions in outback NSW prior to the war, and it was very tough living and farming at the time, but I really found this book depressing. Noah had a dark secret, the birth of a baby from her uncle at the age of 14, which she delivered herself and cast it down a river, so no one would find out. This would haunt her all her life.
The only part I enjoyed was when Noah and Roly fell in love during their early show jumping years and started to raise their family. But the joy was short lived and there always seemed to be tragedy in their lives, which Noah blamed on herself and what she had done to her baby. The book had many reflective moments of the relationship between Noah and her uncle which put me at ease and made me want to give her a good talking to. There was sadness throughout this story and I really didn't enjoy it.