Reviewed by Ian Lipke
I admit that it took me some considerable time to warm to reading this book by Petronella McGovern. One has to assume that the reader can suspend disbelief on more than one occasion as the events unfold. Maybe I have been reading too much in the field of rationalist argument. The theme of learning from our mistakes and not moving on or learning until we do is not sufficiently firm in the presentation. I don’t buy it.
The book is built around parts, each part filling with some sort of incident. Part 1 ends with a van crashing over a cliff:
We’re flying.
Weightless.
Tumbling.
Thudding against the tarmac.
Screams shatter the air.
Part 2 opens with the mystery confronting elder daughter Frankie – there is no bandage on a limb, and the girl is studying for an exam that finished weeks earlier. Furthermore, this family had been kidnapped by two bandits. Yet nobody is concerned. Cleverly, the author relies on factual evidence to show that something untoward has happened.
At this point a character called Rowdy Mac is introduced. The heroine of the story takes an unflinching dislike to him. She tries to argue that her daughter is at risk but fails to show any cogent reasons for her dislike. Her feeling is based on personal dislike; there is no rational reason for her attitude.
Part 3 ends as one might expect. There is stalking and abduction in a van culminating with yet another crash. Having survived that drama, our heroine takes herself off to be to be faced by a younger daughter keen to attend school (yet showing no earlier interest), and an older one having a work placement with Rowdy Mac. The appointment is beyond the stretch of her mother’s memory.
The plan for this book is simple. Throw in as many strange and unlikely events within the confines of the history of a most unlikely heroine and call it a romance.
I think it is a reasonable expectation to require our published authors to obey at least a novel construction that has some chance of acceptance by the reading public.
The plot of this novel is vague and lightweight, being little more than a series of unlikely events. The main character fails to convince. On the one hand she is supposed to be a university lecturer and, therefore, capable of serious thought. Yet we witness little of this. Her mind reveals very little sophistication. Her children are spoilt and uncontrolled while her husband is so minor as to be irrelevant.
A disappointing book, I’m afraid.
Every Time She Wakes
(2026)
by Petronella McGovern
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 978-1-78747-280-0
$34.99; 432 pp