Trials in the Dust
Author: Joy Dettman
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Release date: 25th July 2019
Pages: 368 pages
R.R.P: $32.99
After many tumultuous years spent grappling with the past, Jenny Hooper might have expected her latter years to be the best of her life, and they are- until tradgy strikes. Left floundering in a house full of memories, not all of the, good, Jenny knows a reckoning is in order.
But it won't be say. History is beginning to repeat itself for Jenny's adopted daughter, Trudy, who finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship. Jenny and her older daughter, Georgie, can only stand by and watch as Trudy's life implodes.
Meanwhile, half a world away in the UK, Cara and her husband Morrie nurture a devistating secret that keeps them at arm's length from Jenny.
Most of all, Jenny wants to renew contact with the beloved son she lost decades before when she was at her lowest ebb. Only that, and having the chance to tell the truth about what happened, will give her peace. But it is too late?
My Review
Thoughts on the book: Trails in the Dust is the final book in the bestselling Woody Creek series by Joy Dettman set in Australia which is told in multiple points of view and centres around Jenny Hooper and her family. The novel starts off with Jenny's husband having a fatal accident and after the funeral Jenny decides to put her house on the market, despite the family begging her not too, and books a long holiday overseas. But her real purpose for going overseas is to see if she can find her long lost son that she gave up without really knowing that she was giving him up forever. Of course it wouldn't be a Joy Dettman novel without multiple storyline's that all intertwine but will they all have a happy ending and will Jenny get the new life she is looking for?
A massive thank you to Hannah from Pan Macmillan Australia for allowing me to be apart of this blog tour and for sending me a copy of Trails in the Dust to read and review. I was introduced to Trials in the Dust as the the final book in the Woody Creek series but could be read as a stand alone novel (which would be the way I would be reading it). So of course I signed up for the blog tour and after receiving it I started reading away. I would recommend to anyone else who might be thinking of doing it this way that you may get very confused for a lot of the book trying to work out how each character is related. I personally felt I missed out on a lot of backstory that would have been explained in the previous books and this lead me to being very confused with how everyone was related and how certain situations came about.
Despite this I really enjoyed the book and found myself flung into the Woody Creek world and falling in love with our main character, the tougher than nails Jenny Hooper and the amazing backdrop of the novel featuring country Australia. She is one tough lady, especially considering what she has been through in her life, and doesn't let anyone or anything get in her way. Despite being in her later years in life Jenny goes on a huge holiday and despite having severe reservations about having any actual fun on this trip it turns out that it really was a trip of a lifetime and she made some amazing lifetime memories.
The biggest part that I had a love/hate relationship with was that as we were getting to the end of the book you get to the part that you think is the nice sweet ending that the series deserves and then suddenly your thrown into a whole new adventure that has your heart racing and hoping that everyone comes out alive and well at the end of it. But the kicker with it all is that Joy Dettman seems to want to leave us on a bit of a cliffhanger with not knowing if the person who is in the situation will make it out alive or not. I hated not knowing if they had made it out alive or not and would have looked forward to another book to see if they had. But in saying that really enjoyed Trials in the Dust and I'm now going to go and buy the rest of the series and make my way through them and hopefully everything that I didn't understand in this book will make sense afterwards.
Rating: 4/5
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