Storm Season edition by Pene Henson Romance eBooks
Download As PDF : Storm Season edition by Pene Henson Romance eBooks 
The great outdoors isn’t so great for Sydney It-Girl Lien Hong. It’s too dark, too quiet, and she’s certain a giant spider is going to sneak into the tent she’s sharing with friends on her 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.
Storm Season edition by Pene Henson Romance eBooks
[Review also appears on my blog, Friend of Dorothy Wilde]Pene Henson's Storm Season evokes everything I love from those books I spent so much time tracking down--sweeping descriptions of the natural world, cheeky humor, breathless emotion--with a modern sensibility around life, love, diversity, and doing what's right over what's easy.
The last thing party girl and journalist Lien wants is roughing it in the woods on the way to a festival, even with her best friends, but she rethinks her feelings about the outdoors when a freak storm washes her right into the arms of Claudie, strapping forest ranger with a mysterious musical past. Their passion blooms as the tropical storm rages, but what will become of their feelings when both return to their real life?
Pene Henson is a new author, and one that I am so glad to be introduced to. Her writing is quick, lyrical, gently funny, and emotional just when it needs to be. Every character is a dear, even the ones with barely half a dozen lines, and their identities reflect a modern, non-homogeneous Sydney. Even better, this is a story where the answer isn't giving up what anyone loves to be with a person--it's about finding oneself and striking it out on your own, and how that can make love grow all the better. A gem, one I will be returning to during the rainy NYC summer.
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Storm Season edition by Pene Henson Romance eBooks Reviews
Pene Henson’s “Storm Season” is a gorgeous and lush romance set in Australia with a thoroughly likeable and diverse cast of characters.
Lien is a city girl. She lives in inner Sydney, blogs about fashion and bands, and is a social media queen. Claudie was a city girl, the lead in the latest hot band, Grand Echo. But that’s now behind her and she lives a hermit’s life in a cabin in the woods in one of the National Parks in northern New South Wales.
Lien’s housemate, Beau, drags her out for a couple of weeks of camping on their way to a music festival. On the first night, Lien wanders off, gets hurt and is rescued by Claudie. As is the way with storms in that part of the world, the rain comes down, the creeks come up, and everyone’s trapped, including Lien who is now stuck with Claudie.
Superficially, this is an opposites attract type of story. The city girl decrying the ruination of her vintage safari suit and lack of access to Instagram; the country girl going out to fix the leaking roof and the generator and longing for solitude. But during their enforced stay the two women establish not just a common ground, but a common landscape between them. Sure, Lien is hopeless and helpless in the bush, but she taps into the solitude and makes it a part of her. Sure, Claudie left the city, but she was raised there and it’s still there, just pushed to one side.
The romance is slow burn and gentle, in contrast to the ferocity of the outside weather. I liked that it wasn’t smooth sailing, the little irritations of two such different personalities are aired, at least on the pages.
Of course, the creeks eventually subside, Lien packs up her safari suit and unsuitable white tennis shoes and trots off to the music festival. But the echo of her presence is there in Claudie’s subsequent decisions.
The story is written in third person present tense, often with very short sentences that far from being choppy, add layers to atmosphere. The Australian bush is described with love, and as a rural living Aussie, I particularly appreciated this. I love it when a background is a part of the story.
The pacing mirrored the setting soft and slow when the women are trapped in the cabin, but faster and more frenetic when they rejoin the rest of the world.
I also appreciated that the writer stayed away from the clichés and stereotypes of city vs rural. There was no fun poked at Lien in unsuitable clothes and discomfort in her surroundings, except from Lien herself.
Supporting characters were wonderful and ranged through the spectrum of race and gender. Beau is trans, Claudie’s parents are Polish (I think), Lien is from Hong Kong, Ranger Shelley is Bundjalung. There’s gay and lesbian couples. This is a good reflection of the makeup of Australia’s population, and is portrayed without it being an issue for anyone. That is particularly welcome in the current political climate.
I very much enjoyed housemate Beau and Lien’s best friend Annie. I read that the author is considering a short story about those two and I would very much like to read it.
I have nothing critical to say about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Lien and Claudie and I look forward to more from this writer.
Storm Season is a romance and, like a good real romance, it’s part mystery and part adventure, but with a good soundtrack (if you could hear Claudie’s music, at least). It’s got the inward spiraling focus of strangers-to-friends-to-lovers intensity, without ever feeling claustrophobic. Both characters have connections outside their world together, and there are narratives outside their love story which come to matter (intrigue among Lien’s friends, the story of why Claudie quit making music).
It strikes me that this is a novel about trying to get away but then trying to find your way back. Lien absconds to the bush for a vacay, but hurts herself and can’t get home again. Claudie leaves music, leaves hope, leaves love, but Lien shows her she must figure out a way back into those things. I don’t want to give away more of the novel, but much of its plot and character development are about this going-away-and-returning.
In fact, this kind of form—a run away from the norm, and then a return, slightly different, but still familiar—has a long history in art. In music, it might be the fugue (a form whose name translates as “flight”). In psychology, too, it’s a “fugue state.” In nature, it’s the echo. In literature, I can’t help but think of Boccaccio’s Decameron (great for those who want dirty short stories), in which the unifying tale is one of a handful of friends who escape to the country to avoid the ravages of the Plague, and pass the time telling stories. It’s also the history of the topsy-turvey festival (most notably nowadays, Carnavale in Rio or Mardi Gras in New Orleans) in which revelers turn every societal norm on its head (traditionally paupers dress like kings, men dress as women, fish fly, etc., but nowadays it translates into breaking from “good” behavior and getting drunk and running around half-naked while you’re having sex and cussing a lot, I imagine), but for only a limited amount of time to let off the pressure of being normal, like a steam valve that lets the pot go on cooking.
Storm Season is in this tradition, albeit with a lot less naked running around and more intelligence and feeling. What’s interesting is that it not only revels in the topsey-turvey love-affair-in-a-remote-cabin narrative, but also explores the flip side, what happens when Carnavale is over and somebody has to sweep the streets, when Lien must go back to Sydney and Claudie must stay in her remote cabin and paradise goes slipping away.
[Review also appears on my blog, Friend of Dorothy Wilde]
Pene Henson's Storm Season evokes everything I love from those books I spent so much time tracking down--sweeping descriptions of the natural world, cheeky humor, breathless emotion--with a modern sensibility around life, love, diversity, and doing what's right over what's easy.
The last thing party girl and journalist Lien wants is roughing it in the woods on the way to a festival, even with her best friends, but she rethinks her feelings about the outdoors when a freak storm washes her right into the arms of Claudie, strapping forest ranger with a mysterious musical past. Their passion blooms as the tropical storm rages, but what will become of their feelings when both return to their real life?
Pene Henson is a new author, and one that I am so glad to be introduced to. Her writing is quick, lyrical, gently funny, and emotional just when it needs to be. Every character is a dear, even the ones with barely half a dozen lines, and their identities reflect a modern, non-homogeneous Sydney. Even better, this is a story where the answer isn't giving up what anyone loves to be with a person--it's about finding oneself and striking it out on your own, and how that can make love grow all the better. A gem, one I will be returning to during the rainy NYC summer.
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