Reviews of Kim Lock’s Peace, Love and Khaki Socks have been overwhelmingly positive:
Daystarz: 5 of 5
One word. LOVE. I love this book. It is warm, genuine and emotive. It is real. It is entirely believable…This is so much more than just a book about pregnancy – it’s also a story about a woman’s search for validation and empowerment.
Peace, Love and Khaki Socks is simply adorable. It definitely makes my best books of 2013 list. An excellent debut novel from a promising Australian author. I will be keeping a keen eye out for Ms Lock’s next literary venture.
The novel’s strength is the very personal journey the reader takes alongside Amy as she weighs up conventional First World medical procedures with the almost Cavewoman-style natural homebirthing. It is a suspenseful ride with her as she battles conventions, the expectations of others as well as a category three tropical cyclone to boot.
Another feature is the brilliant imagery used to describe the setting of Darwin, Australia’s most northern capital. Sweaty, humid, monsoonal, oppressively hot complete with blood-sucking insects, Darwin seems to magnify the drama associated with the intricacies of the female reproductive process. An stirring story of a girl becoming an independent woman.
Sally from Oz: B – Great. I really enjoyed reading it.
I really don’t know where to start when it comes to saying how much I loved and related to PEACE, LOVE AND KHAKI SOCKS… I found myself laughing out loud at many of the events in the story…
This was one of those books that once you picked it up then it was not willingly getting put down until finished. A very good debut, now officially waiting for book two.
This Charming Mum: 4 of 5 stars
It is a funny and entertaining story – not unlike some of the rural/’outsider’ romance novels so popular in contemporary Australian publishing – but it also has a very serious point to make about the way we treat pregnancy and birth in the hospital system.
Drawing parallels with a fierce cyclone that hits the city when Amy is nine months gone, the book suggests we could do with a bit more reverence towards Mother Nature.
The prose style is relaxed and friendly (for want of a better word!). It left me feeling as though I’d been hearing a friend’s birth story over coffee… The final chapters, as Amy lurches from ecstasy to agony during a long labour and birth, are moving and joyful. Keep the tissues handy!
The Raven’s Parlour Bookstore: 4 3/4 stars of 5
This is the debut novel from Lyndoch based author, Kim Lock … and it’s a cracker!
Full of humour, warmth, honesty and raw emotion, it’s a journey of Amy’s right to make the choices she feels best suit her and her baby.
1girl2manybooks: 7 of 10 stars
Amy and Dylan’s relationship is fantastic – from the way they both react to the surprise pregnancy to the way they are at odds over her decision to homebirth. Because it is Amy’s decision, she gives little regard to Dylan’s feelings whatsoever which I get. It’s her body, she has to do it.
Obviously I think this book will resonate with supporters of homebirthing and particularly those who have had one themselves.