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Blue Smoke, Deborah Challinor
HarperCollins
Reviewed by Jan Treliving-Brown (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

First there was Tamar, then White Feathers. The Deborah Challinor trilogy is now complete with a cheerless finale, Blue Smoke. Tamar remains my pick of the three, followed by White Feathers.

The matriarch, Tamar Deane, once the sassy young Cornish migrant turned brothel-keeper, has aged and, like this third book, become a tad slow and fusty.

As the wealthy landowner in White Feathers, Tamar still held the balance of power in a family decimated by war. In Blue Smoke the zing has gone. Challinor attempts to keep the narrative going with the gaggle of births, deaths and marriages within the Deane/Murdoch clan. But she fails to make the most of two opportunities for sensational writing: the 1931 Napier earthquake and the Great Depression. Both disappear into genealogical streams that become tedious.

The "Catherine Cookson set in New Zealand" tag remains. I agree that Blue Smoke is a fitting, even at odd times stirring conclusion to the trilogy – it's just the least memorable of the three.