Book: Storm Season
Publisher: Interlude Press
Publication date: February 2, 2017
Length: 226 pages
Reviewed by Erin
Synopsis
The great outdoors isn’t so great for Sydney It-Girl Lien Hong. It’s too dark, too quiet, and there are spiders in the toilet of the cabin she is sharing with friends on the way to a New South Wales music festival. To make matters worse, she’s been separated from her companions and taken a bad fall. With a storm approaching, her rescue comes in the form of a striking wilderness ranger named Claudia Sokolov, whose isolated cabin, soulful voice and collection of guitars bely a complicated history. While they wait out the weather, the women find an undeniable connection—one that puts them both on new trajectories that last long after the storm has cleared
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Excerpt
Lien’s
focus is on Claudie. “You’re being unfair. I never thought of you as a cause,”
she says. Her voice is choked.
“I only
meant that you want to build my band for me. I need to do it for myself.”
“I never
wanted that. I wanted to help. You could definitely use help.” Lien’s eyes
glitter in the streetlight. She lifts her chin. “But more than that, I wanted
to spend time with you, Claudie. Look, I had this whole plan to ask you to go
on a date with me.” She swallows. “I didn’t want a cause. I was kind of hoping
for a girlfriend.” Car headlights arc behind them. Lien goes on. “What I said
up at the cabin? That I thought we could be something? Nothing changed for me.
I still think we could work. But you don’t. You push me away if I come close. So
I’m done. I’m not going to trail around after you trying to prove that I’m a
different person from the one you made up in your head. I can’t make you
believe this would work when you’ve already made up your mind that it won’t.”
She
whirls around and strides away. She’s across the road in a break in the traffic
before Claudie has time to think. Lien’s white dress reflects the green and red
and white of the city lights. Her hair flies out behind her.
Claudie
can’t breathe. The rest of the world keeps moving. Wind spirals in the trees
that line the street. A few clouds tumble across the sky and block the moon. A
siren wails in the distance.
Lien’s
the opposite of what Claudie needs. She’s hectic. She’s interfering. She’ll
move on. It’s taken months for Claudie to realize that none of that matters.
Review
Storm
Season by Pene Henson is just as stunning on the inside as the cover is
on the outside. Coming from Interlude Press, I wouldn't really expect
anything less. IP books have always had the most gorgeous covers, and
from the number of books I've read from this publisher, the words inside
more than do them justice! A lush setting, gorgeous imagery, and
well-developed, multi-faceted characters made reading Storm Season quite
an enjoyable experience.
Lien
Hong is a city girl through and through. She's all about fashion and
music and food and hanging out with her friends. She's also utterly
endearing if not a bit flighty and self-centered, but as a young woman
in her mid-twenties, not really unexpected. What she is NOT is an
outdoor kind of girl, and is definitely not looking forward to the
camping trip her friends are dragging her to. I found myself smiling,
and perhaps rolling my eyes a bit, while she packed, making sure she had
her fashionable boots and her pith helmet, not to mention her lemon
yellow cardigan because goodness knows, you can't ever look too good in
the middle of the rain forest, right? What happens once Lien and her
friends make it to their campsite might be predictable seeing as how
Lien winds up lost in the middle of a rainstorm only to be rescued by
the sexy and beautiful park ranger, Claudia. However, what happens once
the two are secluded in Claudie's--as she's known--cabin to wait out the
storm is anything but cliche'.
I
loved both of these characters. Lien is irreverent and sweet; Claudie
is a bit more pragmatic but no less likable. The push and pull of these
two opposite people was quite the treat to watch play out for sure. Once
the two make it back to civilization, their differences become readily
apparent, but Lien's attraction to Claudie won't let her move on.
Claudie's back story tugged at my heartstrings, and the more we got to
really know her, the more I loved her. Much less quiet than the quirky
and effervescent Lien, these two really are the perfect complement to
one another. The romance is beautifully written, nothing overly done or
in your face, just easy and sweet. Henson's writing is effortless, it
flows like a meandering, bubbling stream, gently rolling its way down a
slope. There is no over the top dramatics in Storm Season, which I SO
much appreciated, but there is a realness to all the characters in the
book. And let's not fail to mention the utter smorgasbord of secondary
characters. A broad range of ethnicities and sexualities but none felt
trite or cliche'd.
This
is a gorgeous book that I'm so glad I read. Pene Henson's writing style
is evocative and gripping and I found myself completely engrossed from
the first page until the end. I loved the music and the fashion and the
whole sense of Sydney and Lien's neighborhood. Storm Season is a delight
for all your senses and I highly recommend you pick this one up
immediately and immerse yourself in the lushness of Henson's words.
Guest Post
Today I’m very lucky
to be interviewing Pene Henson author of Storm Season.
Hi Pene, thank you for agreeing to this
interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current
book.
I’m Australian, extroverted and hard to ruffle.
Also I’m pretty tall, mostly lacking in sporting prowess, and way less funny
than I’d like to be. I live with my wife and our two divinely awesome
kids in Sydney, along with a ferociously loving cat.
I grew up dreaming of being an astronaut or an
experimental physicist. I love sciences and mechanics but I’d do a dreadful job
of either of those things so fortunately surprised myself by developing a
career in law and writing.
I’ve always written poetry and short fiction. I never
really dreamed of a novel until I was writing one. It was delightful to build a
whole world, the first in Hawaii and on the ocean, and fall in love with my own
characters.
Storm Season is my second novel. It’s set on the
Australian East Coast, in land and in cities that I know well. Like my previous
novel, it’s essentially a happy queer story. It’s a romance between a bubbly
and adorable fashion blogger and a capable park ranger living alone in a remote
cabin. As you’d imagine, these women have vastly different experiences. They
think they have vastly different priorities. Trapped together by a storm,
however, they uncover not just a deep attraction to one another but also all
the ways they fit together. And then, of course, the storm breaks and they have
to work out what will happen when they return to their ordinary lives.
The experience of
writing Storm Season left me thinking
about subjects I may tackle next.
I want to look at
a character who’s left home and essentially discarded that place for good and
bad reasons, and see what happens when she returns. I’m working on a short
where an LA based basketballer returns home to her small town for the holidays.
She learns more about herself back home than she expects and that changes her.
I like watching adults re-determine their priorities and accept people and
places that might not be perfect but have great value.
I’m definitely
looking forward to exploring more women in sports. It’s not that I’m interested
in the fame and success of sports so much as that I’m interested in people who
have big dreams beyond the romance. I’m also very interested in people with
that kind of innate physicality. I love watching people handle their bodies at
a high level. I love seeing the world through the eyes of someone whose body
moves the way they want it to. I want to write romances where the women and men
address the world physically as well as emotionally.
I’d like to watch
sports people grow up and face the joys and heartbreak, successes and failures
that wanting to be the greatest brings.
I’m also planning
to revisit the world of my first novel, Into
the Blue, which is set among a group of young housemates and surfers in
Hawaii. I’m really excited to explore that found family as they grow up further
and achieve unexpected things. I want to think about how to hold together a
family of people who don’t have to stay together. I want to watch how new
relationships, new priorities, change and growing up can crack those families open,
and how they can love one another enough that the family can be rebuilt.
About the Author
Pene Henson has gone from British boarding
schools to New York City law firms. She now lives in Sydney, Australia, where
she is an intellectual property lawyer and published poet who is deeply
immersed in the city’s LGBTQIA community. She spends her spare time enjoying
the outdoors and gazing at the ocean with her gorgeous wife and two
unexpectedly exceptional sons. Into the
Blue, her first novel, was published by Interlude Press in 2016 and
received a starred review from Publishers
Weekly.
Storm Season will be published by Interlude Press on February 2,
2017. Connect with author Pene Henson at PeneHenson.com; on Facebook at facebook.com/penewrites
and on Twitter at @penehenson.
Giveaway
Thank you so much for the visit, the chance to talk about what I'm writing, and that lovely lovely review!
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