Star-Crossed
A young man returns to the place of his childhood, much changed for the time of being away. A young woman with her heart set on independence and running a successful small business lives with her parents and a hodgepodge of characters at the Welsh family-run Powell's Guest House. With a large skeleton in his closet, Daniel moves into the guest house trying to find peace and a fresh start in Port Moreton. Amber, despite trying so hard to succeed in her business ventures, finds vicious resistance within the small-town mindset of the community. There is immediate chemistry between the two, first negative, then passion, while Amber's parents, Ted and Beth, see positivity in the pairing after Amber suffered vicious rape years prior, which lay her low for too long. Within a backdrop of native Australian folklore, a tangled relationship begins to flourish. But demons and ghosts of the mind are determined to pull apart any chance of happiness for the star-crossed lovers. The best they can hope for, they see, is redemption, and weighed upon the cosmic scales of justice, it is what they finally achieve.
Book review by Michael Radon US Review of Books
"You're in love, you idiot," he said, stepping out of the water. "You can say goodbye to rational thought."
After growing up in Port Moreton, Amber Powell knew she was destined for greater things. After going off to college, she finds herself estranged from small-town life and the subject of nasty rumors and animosity. Soon those rumors start to take on an ugly reality, and while Amber finds opportunities to make use of her business acumen, she remains a target among men nearby. Daniel Gilmour is a young man returning to the area where he grew up, boarding with Amber's parents in their guest house. A dark secret from his recent past clings to him, though nobody around him seems the wiser. These two young adults gravitate towards each other romantically in a world they both feel lost in amidst a local Aboriginal legend and a series of horrific murders that seem to involve them somehow.
Thick with personal drama and tragic backstory, this is a book about the kind of melodrama that often accompanies the emotions of young love. In the case of this book, though, the stakes and circumstances surrounding Amber and Daniel are high enough to match their heightened emotional states. The incorporation of a native tale about a young member of a tribe who is destined to be alone forever ties neatly into the storytelling without being oppressively blunt. There is a fair amount of suspense that bubbles to the surface as the police, primarily a detective, work their way into the cast, and that rising action working in tandem with a budding romance gives this story great acceleration and intensity. Readers will find themselves hoping for a happy ending in what seems like a hopeless situation, becoming fully invested in this well-spun tale.
The Author
T H O M A S J A M E S T A Y L O R, born Dec 1st, 1954. First published in the mid-1980s and writes on subject matter ranging through real life, the bizarre and unusual, crime/romance, philosophy, and more recently a first foray into sci-fi. The winner of the Pacific Book Award Star of Exceptional Merit with For Your Pleasure & Questionable Behaviour, Taylor consistently earns high praise from book reviewers while continuing to surprise, interest, and fascinate with unusual material in the novel, novella, and short story format.
"Taylor's work is amazingly diverse" - US Review of Books.
