Reviews

The following reviews and others can be viewed www.amazon.com

Novella – Drew’s Party

Lynette McClenaghan is a wonderful writer! Her writing simply pulls you along. I had only planned to read ‘Drew’s Party’ for a short time, but I just couldn’t stop. I had to keep reading until the very end. And I loved the way ‘Drew’s Party’ stayed with me for days after. Such an intriguing story. I’m off to buy her next book now.
See Drew’s Party review on Amazon.

Novel – On the Wind’s Breath

The weather may seem to be an unusual manifestation of supernatural horror, but Lynette McClenaghan’s dark tale of a young married couple facing malevolent storms and wild weather is a gothic tale with genuine scares.
Vanessa and Martin have returned to Black Mountain, on holiday to reinvigorate their flagging relationship. They are confronted by a series of inexplicable and terrifying freakish weather events.
Lynette McClenaghan does more than simply rely on frightening occurrences to propel her story, although you will find these in abundance. Her emphasis is on the ways in which the story’s events impact on the two main protagonists. We learn about their pasts, their fears, their vulnerability and their strengths, and the narrative focus of the novel is on how two flawed but fundamentally decent people must come to understand truths about themselves and their relationship. One of the novel’s features is that it also embodies a strong critique of rampart development and greed and supports the conservation of natural and man-made heritage.
Lynette McClenaghan skilfully blends the supernatural and the mundane. An ordinary couple’s deteriorating relationship is played out in the context of inexplicable and terrifying forces that bring chaos and destruction. A complex and thought-provoking novel.
See On the Wind’s Breath review on Amazon.

Novel – In Jeopardy

A dark tale

Lynette McClenaghan’s novel In Jeopardy recalls the short stories of Tobias Wolff. Both writers portray ordinary people faced with a crisis in their lives and explore the ways in which those characters engage, or fail to engage, with the crisis, and how the story’s events change the character, for better or worse.Christine, the main protagonist of In Jeopardy, is cruelly ejected from her husband Richard’s life as the serial womanizer decides to permanently replace her with a new, more glamorous partner. On one level Christine must cope with her changed circumstances and her struggle to gain a fair settlement.
More significantly, this event precipitates a series of crises in her life. She must come to terms with the obliteration of her identity as Richard’s wife and struggle to create a new identity out of the wreckage of her marriage and her dislocation from almost everything, except her work as a nurse, that has sustained her. Christine’s life is further complicated by her renewed relationships with her brother, returned from England, and her sister, married and living in Perth. Christine often seems powerless, drifting from situation to situation, yet throughout the novel she retains an elusive but discernible strength, particularly to face up to the harsh realities and confusion of her life.
See In Jeopardy review on Amazon.