Duet (Kimberley Freeman, Hachette Livre Australia, $32.95 tpb, ISBN 9780733621772, September) ***

Under another guise Kimberley Freeman, author of Duet, is better known as Kim Wilkins, writer of several award-winning horror and fantasy novels. The shift in genres is a curious one: the transition from speculative fiction to commercial women’s fiction here is not always smooth. Duet is a sprawling novel filled with passion, greed, secrets, and lies that sweep through the London pop scene, the opera stages of Europe, an island in Greece, the Australian outback; and spans 30 years. Lives and identities intermingle; loves are lost and found; people are betrayed; melodrama abounds as we follow the lives of two women: Angela Smith and Ellie Frankel. There is no doubt that Freeman is adept when it comes to the written word and can engage the reader with a welltold saga, but Duet doesn’t always hit the mark. Plot twists are a little too predictable, the set-ups obvious, and the coincidences a touch too convenient. This may be the result of the genre change and will hopefully be ironed out as Freeman eases into her new guise. Duet is a sprawling page-turner, however, and will no doubt appeal to fans of Paullina Simons, or those with a hankering for melodrama.

Deborah Crabtree is a Melbourne-based fiction writer and bookseller

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker