Ash Mountain by Helen FitzGerald (Review)

Happy Humpday everyone! Today I’m thrilled to be on another wonderful Orenda tour. This time for Ash Mountain by Helen FitzGerald which is released tomorrow – 20th August 2020 in it’s paperback format! It’s also available in Kindle and Audiobook formats. I received a copy of the book for free as part of the tour.

Ash Mountain is set in the astoundingly hot Australian summer and centers around Fran who has returned to the place she thought she had left behind so that she could provide care to her father. She tries to get used to life back at Ash Mountain with this new challenge to contend with, but it ends up being far more than she bargained for when forced to confront her past, the start of a romance and her daughter uncovers a dark secret. Thing’s are getting hot and intense on Ash Mountain… in more ways than one.

This book is not a very long one, but it sure packs a punch. It’s pacey and intense. It’s emotional, heart wrenching but also comedic. It’s vivid, it’s… it’s a LOT of things. It’s.. simply excellent. It explores loss and abuse, but also redemption, love and forgiveness. I feel like it would be really easy to spoil this book because it’s like a whirlwind. It’s complex, just like life truly is.

Ash Mountain has turned out to be one of my favourite reads this year. It’s one of those that lingers in the mind; the sort of book that you have to take a moment with once you put it down. It feels so authentic and convincing. Fran is so wonderfully human. The balance is just right. Many things are bleak but this book will still make you laugh. It’s one you can easily read from cover to cover. I didn’t want to tear my eyes away from the madness of Fran’s story for a single moment, lest I miss any of the action.

About the Book

Fran hates her hometown, and she thought she’d escaped. But her father is ill, and needs care. Her relationship is over, and she hates her dead-end job in the city, anyway.

She returns home to nurse her dying father, her distant teenage daughter in tow for the weekends. There, in the sleepy town of Ash Mountain, childhood memories prick at her fragile self-esteem, she falls in love for the first time, and her demanding dad tests her patience, all in the unbearable heat of an Australian summer. As past friendships and rivalries are renewed, and new ones forged, Fran’s tumultuous home life is the least of her worries, when old crimes rear their heads and a devastating bushfire ravages the town and all of its inhabitants

Simultaneously a warm, darkly funny portrait of small-town life and a woman and a land in crisis and a shocking and truly distressing account of a catastrophic event that changes things forever, Ash Mountain is a heart-breaking slice of domestic noir, and a disturbing disaster thriller that you will never forget

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