Roni Bloom would be exhausting to know.
She's charismatic and spontaneous with an ability to make an ordinary afternoon feel like an event. She's also unreliable and frequently selfish. Her presence fills every room while the people closest to her are left dealing with whatever she's neglected on the way through.
.
Now, Roni is dying from cancer in her Blue Mountains home and facing a question she can't charm her way around. How do you die well when you're not convinced you've lived well?
Her answer is to begin a Book of Wonders. She fills it with the moments of beauty she once overlooked and hopes to leave it behind as a final gift. Around her gathers a small group of women who have every reason to love her and almost as many reasons to keep their distance.
Belle is Roni’s estranged daughter. Recently out of rehabilitation and trying to protect her recovery, she arrives with years of anger behind her. Anna is Roni’s half-sister, who has returned from London after building a successful life far from the disorder of her family. Pip is the loyal friend prepared to defend Roni against almost anyone. Across the mountain ridge, Roni and Anna’s mother Sylvie is also approaching death in hospital.
The novel takes place over one lunar month. The timeframe's short but the emotional history inside it stretches back through decades of abandonment, resentment, favouritism, and disappointed hope.
The strongest decision the author makes is refusing to equate forgiveness with acquittal.
Belle doesn't need to declare Roni a good mother before she can sit beside her. Anna doesn't have to rewrite their history before she can grieve her sister. Love continues without producing a clean verdict on the person being loved.
The shifting perspectives help enormously here. No single woman is allowed to control the family story. Roni sees herself differently from the way Belle sees her, and Anna’s understanding has been shaped by experiences the others don't fully share. Every account is partial.
That complexity stops the final stages from being a straightforward redemption story. Roni does create something meaningful from her death, but meaning can't travel back and fix every failure. What she can offer is recognition, and a different way for the surviving women to enter the next part of their lives.
Circle of Wonders is a generous and clear-eyed account of what happens when love outlasts trust.
I was most moved by Belle and by the refusal to treat her anger as a character flaw she has to discard before she can grieve properly. Roni is equally compelling because she's appealing and infuriating in almost equal measure. Heyman understands why people like Roni are so hard to leave and why their absence can feel enormous even to those who suffered because of them.
The spiritual material occasionally moved beyond my own threshold and I wanted slightly more from the coercive-control thread. But neither reservation undid the strength of the family relationships or the honesty of the caregiving.
This will suit readers who enjoy intimate family stories with flawed women at their centre. It's tender without becoming entirely forgiving, and hopeful without pretending that every family can be fixed in time. Roni’s final gift is the idea that wonder can survive beside anger, grief, and regret. It doesn't cancel any of them. It just gives the women something else to carry.
🌙 Read this if you enjoy Australian literary fiction and complicated family relationships
🏡 One charged lunar month in a Blue Mountains home
💞 Mothers, daughters, sisters and friends confronting an approaching death
🫶 Caregiving, resentment, forgiveness and finding wonder amid grief
📖 A final book filled with overlooked moments of beauty
⚠️ Contains terminal cancer, death, bereavement, addiction, coercive control and family estrangement
Book Details
Circle of Wonders by Kathryn Heyman
Paperback ISBN
978-1460768051 — Fourth Estate Australian trade paperback edition published on 31 March 2026.
Hardcover ISBN
N/A — no hardcover edition is currently listed by the Australian publisher or major Australian retailers.
eBook ISBN
978-1460718872 — Fourth Estate digital eBook edition published in Australia on 1 April 2026.
Audiobook ISBN
978-1038102966 — HarperCollins Publishers unabridged digital audiobook edition published on 31 March 2026.
Genre
Contemporary Fiction; Australian Fiction; Literary Fiction; Family Drama; Women’s Fiction; Grief Fiction; Domestic Fiction
Subgenre
Contemporary Australian Literary Fiction; Family-Saga Fiction; Mother-Daughter Fiction; End-of-Life Fiction; Cancer Fiction; Addiction-Recovery Fiction; Female-Friendship Fiction; Spiritual Fiction; Blue Mountains Fiction
Tropes / Literary Threads
Dysfunctional family reunion; estranged mother and daughter; complicated sisters; dying at home; one final month together; living wake; book within a book; found family; female circle of care; intergenerational trauma; addiction recovery; coercive former partner.
Publisher
Fourth Estate — an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Australia — publishes the paperback and digital editions available to Australian readers.
Series
Standalone novel — Circle of Wonders is not part of a series.
Formats Available
Trade Paperback; eBook; Kindle; EPUB; Unabridged Digital Audiobook.
Audiobook Narrator
Meredith Penman
Audiobook Length
Not currently confirmed in the publisher information available for the unabridged English-language recording.
Original Release Date
31 March 2026 — first published in Australia by Fourth Estate.
Australian Release Date
31 March 2026 — Fourth Estate trade paperback and HarperCollins digital audiobook editions released in Australia.
Page Count
256 pages — Fourth Estate trade paperback edition with ISBN 978-1460768051.
Where to Buy Circle of Wonders by Kathryn Heyman
📚 Amazon
Affiliate Disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I also encourage supporting Australian booksellers such as QBD Books, independent booksellers, and self-published authors whenever possible.
Danielle Robinson is a literary critic and writer whose
work explores literature through the
lens of atmosphere, memory, culture, and emotional experience. Holding a double degree in philosophy and theology, she combines academic insight with a deeply refined aesthetic sensibility shaped by more than three decades working across the creative industries as an internationally published, multi-award-winning makeup artist, fashion stylist, and interior stager.
She reads widely and rigorously, reading and reviewing more than 200 books each year as both an ARC reader and commissioned critic. Through Silk & Sentences, Danielle approaches literature as something immersive and lived with — not simply stories to consume, but works that shape the way we think, feel, and move through the world.
She writes from her semi-rural Queensland home, where she lives with Alex, her husband of 33 years, their dogs Oscar and Paige, and an ever-growing library of books.
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