Nowhere Else by Fiona McCallum

Nowhere Else Reviews

• 
  Sharon

  Anyone who knows current affairs reporter Nicola Harvey's would believe she possesses the perfect life as she has a successful career and a wealthy fiancé, but not all is as it seems. So when the opportunity comes along for her to head to a country town to investigate the effects of the drought, Nicola doesn't hesitate to say yes.
  
  Once she has arrived in the small town of Nowhere Else, Nicola feels very out of place even though the town has that country feel. It doesn't take long before, Nicola realizes that getting information out of the locals was going to be harder than she first imagined. But exactly why were the locals being so quiet and not giving anything away. Was there more going on than just the effects of the drought and if so, just how was, Nicola going to get any of them to speak to her?
  
  A very enjoyable read by Aussie author Fiona McCallum which I have no hesitation in recommending.
  
• 
  Jessica Zimmer

  I really love Fiona McCallum's books (
  Paycheque,
  Wattle Creek,
  Standing Strong), she's brilliant when it comes to creating a great balance of charm, humor, romance and depth. Her previous books have been engaging, delicious treats that I happily devoured.
  
  Which made Nowhere Else (aka
  Australian Secrets) such a disappointment. It's her weakest offering yet, even though it starts out (fairly) strong. My biggest issues were way too many "plot twists", and once I hit the incestany romance between Alex and Nicola hit a dead stop, never to recover.
  
  That's just *not* a topic one can drop in the middle of a blooming romance, and have it end in HEA or HFN. At least not if you want to do justice to the characters and subject matter. I genuinely don't understand why that had to be a plot/subplot at all.
  
  Have them be from rival farming families, Alex being to Nicola as Claire was to Tess in the first season of McCloud's Daughters (ie: they both have a claim to the legacy, Alex wants to stay, Nicola wants to sell). Plopping incest in the middle of a Mills and Boone - which this was republished under, with hideous cover remodel and all - is like chucking a raw animal carcass on the Thanksgiving table.
  
  Sure, you can do it. But it's generally considered to be in bad taste.
  
  Ultimately, I feel like this book tried to be too many things. Forbidden romance, rural romance, family saga, coming of age, adoption story ... it was like the Thorn Birds shoved into less than 350 pages. While this wasn't as endlessly, pointlessly agonizing as Thorn Birds, it wasn't nearly what I expect from McCallum either.
  
  I love Aussie Rural Romance, and I still love Fiona McCallum, but do yourself a favor. Skip this one. Her best (so far) has been Paycheque, followed very closely by Wattle Creek and it's sequel Standing Strong. Those are top-notch enjoyable reads.
• 
  Brenda

  The night that current affairs reporter Nicola Harvey won a highly coveted award for her investigation into a plane crash which had taken the lives of both her parents was an extremely poignant one for her. A sad reminder of all Nicola had lost, but a kind of closing for her as well. It was a shame though that her fiancé Scott didn’t seem to be as excited as she was. But he was a busy man, plus their relationship was such that having been together for eight years, she supposed it didn’t matter much to him.
  
  When Nicola’s boss, Bill asked her to travel to a little outback town called Nowhere Else to do a story on the long drawn out drought, and how it was affecting the farmers, she didn’t hesitate. Thinking some time away from Scott, indulging herself in non-stop lattes and spas while being paid to stay in a posh hotel would work a treat, she only realized her mistake when she arrived in Nowhere Else. With the beat-up old motel attached to the only pub in town; the fact that there were no cafes or spas – whatever was she thinking? Why did Bill send her here?
  
  As Nicola began to investigate the town’s people, she realized there were unexplained tensions, secrets and lies surrounding Nowhere Else. But there was something else there too – was she about to solve some mysteries from her own past?
  
  This was a quick, easy read; light and entertaining. It was a little clichéd and predictable though, meaning I worked out what was going on early in the piece. A couple of the characters were also pretty shallow. Nowhere Else is Aussie author Fiona McCallum’s second book and as I have read her latest two and thoroughly enjoyed them, I know I’ll be reading more of her work!
  
• 
  Kathy

  Being from the land myself, i sometimes avoid the 'rural reads' but the publisher's guarantee on the front pulled me in. And from the very first chapter i was hooked. Page after page kept me interested, and although sometimes i could guess the way the story was heading, i still found it so well written and the characters so loveable, that i was interested to see how it did unfold. I do really recommend this one.....
• 
  Wizzfizz

  The main character Nicola was a stuck up city princess. I was constantly wishing the worst for her. Besides Jerry the dog and maybe Tiff the barmaid, the other characters were unlikeable, pointless or both. Predictable and disappointing.
• 
  Don

  Nowhere Else
  by
  Fiona McCallum
  
  
  Fiona McCallum’s Nowhere Else was inspired by a plane crash in the waters of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. However, apart from using that crash as inspiration all else is a work of fiction.
  
  Nowhere Else tells the story of Gold Walkley Award Winner, Nicola Harvey as she sorts out her life in the afterglow of her award-winning accomplishments, namely her Walkley and Gold Walkley for her story about the aforementioned plane crash that killed her adoptive parents.
  
  Shortly after her win, her boss sends her to Nowhere Else, a small inland town, in South Australia to write a story about the ongoing drought. The negatives of Nowhere Else are poor mobile phone and internet service and no five-star accommodations. While the positives are friendly people and most all know Nicola’s name on her first day thanks to the bush telegraph.
  While in Nowhere Else Nicola takes stock of Adelaide her love life and accidentally finds new love in Nowhere Else.
  
  A letter arrives advising her who her biological parents are and that they were once Nowhere Else residents. Could they still live in or around Nowhere Else?
  
  I listened to the audio version of Nowhere Else and found it thoroughly enjoyable. It was a well-paced story that took no effort to identify the main characters, so as usual, kudos must be awarded to the narrator, Jennifer Vuletic, for an excellent narration of Nowhere Else.
  
  I rated Nowhere Else as a Four Star audiobook.
  
  At the time of writing my review other Goodreads readers had awarded Nowhere Else
  an average of 3.72 stars, from 493 ratings and 55 reviews.
  ***
  
• 
  Shirley

  It's nice to have a book set in an area where you live and can recognise but the story doesn't seem plausible overall. A "Walkley" recipient journalist being sent to a rural town to find a story on the drought. She already has, what the world thinks a lot of women seem to want, a successful fiance, big diamond ring and lovely home. She's adopted and her parents have been killed in a plane crash. In "Nowhere Else" she discovers her birth father, who dies and turns out to be her uncle, her birth mother who had an affair with her father and left the marriage with her uncle. She slept with what she initially thought was her first cousin, who briefly became her brother and then (as it turns out) had been the result of an affair his mother had with an Italian lad...... and just to tie it all up nicely the death of her aunt meant her parents could rekindle their adolescent love.....Let's not even go to the dream....
• 
  Maria

  I am aware this is Ms McCallum's second book, and I suspect she tried to emulate her first successful book, however, this was a bit tedious to read. I found it rather 'scripted' as if for one of those Hallmark 'made for tv/Netflix' movies. It certainly felt like it ought to be!
  I am aware that in real life many people have multiple tragedies, yet this just kept putting the pressure on the reader to believe any of this story being believable.
  From overly descriptive of Nicola's wardrobe, home she shares with her fiancee, her thoughts on life in a nowhere town, to be damped down of Nicola's suddenly appreciative life seemed a little too far fetched for me. Imagine: Sex in the City meets Amish town. (Yes, I am aware of the Tim Allen, Kirstie Alley movie)
  I found it a little tedious and long winded in many of the scenes, some made no sense to the story at all!
  It was ok. A good summer read if you like this sort of story.
• 
  Tim Arundell

  Fiona McCallum held my attention throughout the story. It started with prize winning journalist Nicola being sent to a country town called Nowhere Else to write an article about the drought affecting many farmers and locals. It was interesting as she met local people to enquire about the effect of drought but the story really came alive when her personal connection to some locals became apparent across the story.
• 
  Gemma

  2.5 stars. The writing was easy enough to read, but the story couldn't seem to make up its mind about what it wanted to be. This, coupled with the abrupt ending and lack of any kind of conclusion, was pretty disappointing.
• 
  Sue Martin

  For a top journalist Nicola Harvey is a very weak character. This book is nothing more than a romance novel with not much story except everyone having affairs with everyone else. It was very predicable and not very exciting.
• 
  Elizabeth Nesbit-comer

  I am not ok with a main character cheating on her fiance multiple times, not telling him, and still running to him when she needs someone to listen to her biological family drama.
  Once the sex with cousin issue came up, I just could not finish
• 
  Sherryle

  Very interesting. Hope there's a 2nd book after this one. Pretty please Fiona x
• 
  Maddy Smith

  eh, not her best.
• 
  Aileen

  Nicola sure did find her own story when she went to Nowhere Else. Thanks Fiona for a great story about self discovery and accepting the unexpected.
• 
  Debbie

  Easy to read. Very predictable from the get go. I knew what was going to happen every time. Still enjoyable.
• 
  Lisa Mcmaugh

  This is the first I have read of Fiona’s books and I enjoyed it. I do wish there was one more chapter just to finish it off...
• 
  Suzanne

  Absolutely loved this book. Loved the story and the characters and the intrigue.
• 
  Lyn Richards

  Nicola Harvey has just won two Walkley awards for her investigative news stories that delved into an air crash and uncovered corruption and cover ups everywhere. From the outside her life seems perfect, she has an amazing life, a great career, a fantastic (and rich) fiancé and amazing friends.
  
  Nicola is offered the chance to do a story in a town called Nowhere Else on the effects of the drought.
  
  What Nicola expects and then subsequently experiences are two very different things......
  
  This is a great light hearted read with a couple of twists along the way. There are times when the Nicola Harvey is a completely frustrating character, which tells me I was completely reeled into the storyline.
• 
  Book Gannet

  It’s never a good sign when my reaction on finishing a book is: Are you kidding me? That’s the end? Are you kidding me? Actually, I was a lot less polite and there may have been swearing involved, because I felt cheated. After putting up with the rest of this book, I deserved a decent ending, but that is far from what I got.
  
  In truth, this is probably a two star book that occasionally touches on three. The beginning is slow, full of info-dumps and meanders for a while before Nicola finally reaches Nowhere Else. Sadly, from there on things didn’t improve. This story is too long, it has a nasty habit of broadcasting clues so that everything is completely predictable (Mediterranean colouring, you say? Finishing school in Italy, well, fancy that) and plot twists that are visible for a mile off. I’m not normally bothered by such things, but so many of the subplots in this book limped into dull dead ends that it just made everything feel a little tedious.
  
  It’s not all terrible. There are sections that are potentially interesting and well written. Nicola’s first ventures into Nowhere Else are good and the stuff with the drought is realistically awful, it’s just that none of it went anywhere. I could have done without the whole Richard experience. As for Scott – why bother?
  
  Then came the ending. Sudden doesn’t quite cover it, more like having a door slammed in the face. No, actually, more like having a door slammed on the face. It was so abrupt I think it broke my nose. I don’t care if I knew exactly where it was headed, I put up with everything that came before in the hope of a fairly decent pay off. I didn’t get anything at all. Which, considering that the romance itself was pretty feeble in the first place, is a massive letdown. That’s why this book has only one star.
  
  I’ve read a lot of great M&B books set in the Australian bush over the years –
  Emma Darcy has written some particular gems – and I expected more of the same here. I didn’t get it. The story is longer than usual, but definitely didn’t make good use of the extra space. I’m disappointed.
  
  (I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.)