A Home Like Ours
Fiona Lowe
Published March 2021
Harlequin Australia
576 pages
🌸🌸🌸🌸
A Home Like Ours is a contemporary Australian drama published in 2021, about three women in a small town in Northern Victoria overcoming prejudice and finding friendship in the battle for an under-threat community garden. I realised after I’d started it that I had abandoned a previous book by this author because I couldn’t stand the characters, but I’m glad I persisted with this one as while none of the three women were likeable at the start, their character evolution is the main point of the story and was well handled.
Helen is a divorcée in her late 50s who has found a precarious kind of stability in Boolanga after experiencing homelessness, and is on a mission to save other women from it. Tara lives an apparently charmed life with her family, but secretly her marriage is crumbling despite her attempts to regain her husband’s interest. Jade is a teenage mother struggling to pay the bills whose boyfriend drifts in and out of her life as he pleases. When their paths cross those of a group of recent refugee immigrants, they will learn that they have more in common than they think, and a cause to unite behind.
This was an enjoyable exploration of multiple social issues – some may say too many, but I thought the author blended them successfully. There’s single motherhood, the plight of the unhoused, racism, toxic friendships, marital stress, vandalism, political corruption, relationship difficulties, parenting issues… but despite this it’s not a heavy book and there is humour, romance and redemption galore. The plot was reasonably predictable and the twists – such as they were – well sign-posted, but I liked the way everything wrapped up and everyone got what they deserved.
Leave a Reply