review

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

5th February 2019 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

I was provided an eArc of this book for review, and Amazon link (image) is an affiliate link.

He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron’s mind when he was alive, he didn’t look peaceful in death.

Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of the outback. In an isolated part of Australia, they are each other’s nearest neighbour, their homes hours apart.

They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish.

Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he choose to walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects…

I loved Jane Harper’s first two books, The Dry and Force of Nature, and I was a little disappointed to hear that her third book, The Lost Man, didn’t feature Aaron Falk, the detective from the first two.

I wasn’t disappointed for long.

The Lost Man isn’t just a crime novel. It’s an exploration of a family, a town, a landscape, and yes, a death. There’s so much more to it than the crime though, as it weaves narratives of several family members together, and deftly takes apart people and their motivations.

There aren’t any heroes. There are certainly villains. Are they who you think they are? If you’re anything like me, you’ll be kept guessing throughout, as the story unfolds like the landscapes in her descriptions. It’s so vivid that it feels like a memory rather than a piece of fiction – I can’t begin to describe people and places the way Jane Harper does. I read this book back in October according to my kindle, and it’s stayed with me throughout. Although I am thinking that maybe I deserve a re read.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who has read The Dry or Force of Nature and not adored them. I actually think The Lost Man is even better, which I didn’t think was going to be possible.

Buy this book. But be ready to block out the next couple of days for reading. You won’t want to put it down.

#MyAquaphor challenge

3rd December 2018 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

This post is an every for the Britmums #MyAquaphor challenge, sponsored by Eucerin. Discover the benefits of Eucerin

At this time of year, I struggle with my hands. My skin objects strenuously to being cold and damp, I’m not good at winter on so many different levels. And I don’t get along with many skin ointments, lotions or potions, either they’re too scented, or they just kind of grease your skin without actually protecting it. I was interested to give Eucerin Aquaphor soothing skin balm a go and I’ve got to say I’m pleasantly surprised.

For starters, I hope you can see how thick the balm is there. But despite that it goes on so easily and just rubs in without any fragrance at all and although my skin looked a little shiny, there isn’t any residual greasiness. This may of course be something to do with his dry my hands are! You really don’t need very much at all, and you can feel it making a difference straight away. I was so taken with it it now lives in the bag of everything that gets carted around with me everywhere, and when I forgot lip balm it stood in for that. It’s good. So good that even eldest daughter, who has sensitive skin, gave it a whirl and a mood of approval.

At this time of year, it’s really handy to have a single tube that will cover most eventualities, and I’m definitely sold on this stuff. I can’t quite understand how I hadn’t come across it before to be honest, would have been useful back in the baby nappy days. (Not sad those are behind us, not even a little bit.)

I’m definitely going to be recommending this, and picking up a couple more tubes for the car and the camping kit. Camping is the other activity that tends to end up with me wearing my hands out.

Have you come across Eucerin Aquaphor before? Got any thoughts on it?

Brio World Travel Switching Set 33512 – review

23rd November 2018 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

This post contains affiliate links. We were sent the Brio World Travel Switching set for the purposes of review, all opinions are mine.

We have been Brio fans for a very long time, and have a fairly comprehensive stock of trains and track from years and years ago. I love that it’s all still compatible with the current stuff, and that we can just go on adding to it as the years go by and the children grow up with it. It’s incredibly durable stuff, and while it can feel like a bit of an investment when you start out, it’s a great thing to suggest for relatives to add to, and it’s very much a more the merrier present and toy.

So yes, we were very happy to review the Brio World Travel Switching set (code 33512 for anyone making notes.)

It’s a reasonable size set, with two switching sets, a double height station (with working lift) and two trains, one battery powered. Plenty to play with and it kept the two younger children occupied for some hours. I’m looking forward to getting out a couple of our older sets and mix and matching them in to increase the play value too.

The station is particularly fabulous to be honest, here’s a close up from my Huawei.

The lift is a great addition – I don’t know what it is that is so satisfying about moving your people up and down the levels, but it’s such fun.

The battery powered train takes AAA batteries, not included – you’ll need a little screwdriver to fit them too.

Video hopefully of it in action.

About my only quibble with the whole set is to do with the packaging – do we really need every train piece and person and set of track to come in a separate plastic bag? The box, like I said is sturdy and reusable, I’d like for Brio to think about cutting down on the bags and replacing with something more environmentally friendly. In terms of the toy itself my experience is that it will last for years through multiple children and outings so that makes it great value and low impact given that most of it is wood. What do you think, does this rate as overall pretty good?

The other path.

5th November 2018 by Jax Blunt 4 Comments

I didn’t start home educating as an act of rebellion, but it seems increasingly the government views this entirely legal activity that way. Instead, it was to give my children space to be themselves without external judgement /artificial standards /ridiculous amounts of unnecessary testing.

I thought we’d probably only home educate through primary years, then we used a montessori school for a while, and then it was back home. It got to secondary age and we just kept on going. When Big did go into school it became apparent that our approach had worked fine to allow her to to achieve what she needed, and that kind of cemented that this is our approach, to keep going until whichever child it is wants something different.

So this year, Small is in college alongside Big. She’s on a level 4, degree level work. He’s on a level 3, A level equivalent, playing guitar, and bass, and keyboards alongside people who’ve been playing a lot longer than he has, easily holding his own despite his relative inexperience and being a year younger than everyone else on the course.

(I’m quite proud, can you tell?)

And we continue adapting our home education routines to the changing needs of the younger two. Tigerboy now does trampolining once a week in a daytime home ed session. He’s already got badge 2 after just a couple of months. Smallest tried it but didn’t enjoy it, so I’m still looking for something that suits her.

I set them both up with a basket of stuff to do, and as I’m out of the house a couple days a week I put a special emphasis on spending time doing things they enjoy. For example, yesterday we made Kirbys with some fab Mix up air drying clay we’d been sent for review. It comes white, with tint pots and you blend your own colours. That’s fine motor skills, colour mixing, art and craft all ticked off in one go.

Buy it at Alphabet Pie (not an affiliate link).

(I’m at guitar group atm and struggling with picture uploads. May have to pop back and add them later.)

All in all, although I never planned a life looking like this (I always assumed I’d end up living down the dene, raising cats and writing stories) I’m pretty happy with how it’s going.

Dixit – a family card/board game reviewed

29th January 2018 by Jax Blunt 6 Comments

Buy at Amazon

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when we were sent Dixit for our Blogger board game club review last month. (Apologies for the delay in getting this review live, I think I should pop a health update on but basically, long story short, it probably isn’t depression causing my issues, but an underactive thyroid, and along with depression symptom I’ve got shaky hands, which makes typing somewhat hit and miss…) The box is quite luscious, and the pictures on it would not be out of place in a fantastical picture book, which isn’t usually how board games go.

Open the box up and the surreal continues.

You have a set of 84 cards with the wonderful wordless fantasy images on, some wooden rabbit playing pieces, and a set of voting cards per player.

Each player starts with a hand of cards. The first to play chooses a card to describe and lays it on the table, with a story in a sentence. This should describe the card, but not too precisely, as each other player has to choose one of their cards that could illustrate what was said, and pass it face down to the storyteller. The cards are shuffled, and then laid face up on the table. Then the players who didn’t tell the story place a counter facedown to vote for the story. Points are then given depending on how many votes the storyteller got – if everyone votes for their picture, they don’t get any points. Otherwise they get a certain number, and each player whose card was voted for gets points as well. The rabbits hop around the course on the board in the box to keep track and that’s the game.

Sorry, it sounds ridiculously complicated, it did take us a couple of hands to get used to, but the fun of this game isn’t in the competition. It’s in thinking up ways to describe the cards, and I know I’m not going to be able to get across to you how utterly gorgeous they really are. They are also quite gloriously bizarre and a little bit spooky, and very very lovely.

The game was a huge hit here, and then Tim took it round to his family on Christmas day and it was loved there too. You don’t have to worry that you might get to know the cards too well – you can buy different sets if you feel like that is happening. I’m kind of tempted to do that anyway.

We were sent a puzzle for review as well, but I haven’t taken pictures of that yet (taking pictures is another problem with shaking hands) so I’ll hope to be back with that later in the week.

Now I’m going to finish this review with something I don’t often do, which is ask for your help. Because of the somewhat complicated health issues I’ve got at the moment, I’m not managing to put much time or effort into blogging, or sharing and it is affecting my blog visibility horribly, so if you can see your way to help me out with a share or a comment, I would be incredibly grateful. Thank you!

This post contains affiliate links.

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