The Opal Miner’s Daughter by Fiona McArthur
Obstetrician Riley Brand leaves the city behind to go in search of her mother, who’s taken leave from her marriage to pursue a passion for opal mining in the dry backblocks of an old mining town. Accepting a short-term posting as a fertility expert in Lightning Ridge, Riley plans to assist women pursue their baby dreams in remote and regional areas, while at the same time helping to rekindle her parents’ love for each other.
The small dusty community is a far cry from her polite medical practice on the North Shore of Sydney, but the down-to-earth locals soon welcome her into the fold with their Friday night social gatherings. But no one is more welcoming than enigmatic doctor Konrad Grey, the GP who’s working alongside her.
When an employee of their medical practice confesses she’s hiding an unexpected pregnancy, Konrad and Riley are thrown together in challenging and wonderful ways.
A moving and heartwarming story about new life and new loves, about the treasures to be found above and beneath the surface of a small country town, and about the important choices women must make in life.
Published 30 August 2022 | Publisher: Penguin Random House | RRP: AUD$32.99
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My Blurb (4 / 5 stars)
I really do enjoy rural romance but yet I don’t read that many and this is one of my reading goals this year, to read some more! The Opal Miner’s Daughter is definitely an excellent rural romance read and I’m thrilled to have been sent one for review. I must say that the title somehow led me to have had a different expectation. It just sounds more like one of those historical fiction with family tragedy etc etc but it is very much NOT. Also, I know 2 boys named Riley and having a female protagonist named Riley kind of messed with my head a bit; I kept having to check myself.
Dr Riley Brand is an intelligent and independent woman. She is a strong sensible character and I just love this to bits! She was fun, sensitive, and easy going except when it comes to a certain gorgeous doctor in town. And even then, she was open to learn. All the other women in this novel were just as amazing and the men were funny but overall this small community in Lightning Ridge was wonderfully tight-knitted.
The Opal Miner’s Daughter is a light-hearted romantic read; one that ended with my sigh of contentment. However, it also tackled tough issues such as stigma of illness, infertility, depression, and a few other things, and done in such beautifully sensitive way that didn’t make the reader sad but hopeful. An utterly delightful and pleasing read.
My thanks to Penguin Random House for this paperback copy of book in exchange of my honest thoughts
About the author
Fiona McArthur has worked as a midwife for thirty years. She is the clinical midwifery educator inner rural maternity unit and teaches emergency obstetric strategies while working with midwives and doctors from remote and isolated areas.
Fiona has written more than thirty romances, which have sold over two million copies in twelve languages. She has been a midwifery expert for Mother and Baby magazine and is the author of Aussie Midwives. She has also written the novels Red Sand Sunrise, The Homestead Girls and Heart of the Sky. She lives on a farm in northern New South Wales.
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Barbara Hannay writes women’s fiction, with over twelve million books sold worldwide. Her novels set in Australia have been translated into twenty-six languages, and she has won the Romance Writers of America’s RITA award and been shortlisted five times. Two of Barbara’s novels have also won the Romance Writers of Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year award.
Jennifer Scoullar is a bestselling author of Australian rural fiction, and lives with her family on a small property in West Gippsland. Her house is on a hilltop, overlooking valleys of messmate and mountain ash. She grew up on the books of Elyne Mitchell, and all her life she’s ridden and bred horses, in particular Australian stock horses. Jennifer writes page-turning stories set in and around Australia’s magnificent wild places. She has nine published novels, including the bestselling Brumby’s Run, and the historical adventure series The Tasmanian Tales.
Fiona McIntosh is an internationally bestselling author of novels for adults and children. She co-founded an award-winning travel magazine with her husband, which they ran for fifteen years while raising their twin sons before she became a full-time author. Fiona roams the world researching and drawing inspiration for her novels, and runs a series of highly respected fiction masterclasses. She calls South Australia home.
Tea is an award winning Australian author of historical fiction. In a past life she was a teacher, a journalist and a farmer. These days she haunts museums and indulges her passion for storytelling. She is the bestselling author of several novels, including 
Tricia Stringer is a bestselling and award-winning author. Among others, her books include commercial fiction titles Table For Eight, The Model Wife and The Family Inheritance, the rural romances A Chance of Stormy Weather and Come Rain or Shine and historical sagas Heart of the Country, Dust on the Horizon and Jewel in the North, set in the 19th Century Flinders Ranges. Tricia lives in the beautiful Copper Coast region of South Australia, often exploring Australia’s diverse communities and landscapes, and shares this passion for the country and its people through her authentic stories and their vivid characters.
Rachael Johns is an English teacher by trade, a mum 24/7, a Diet Coke addict, a cat lover and chronic arachnophobe. She rarely sleeps and never irons. She is also the bestselling, ABIA-winning author of The Patterson Girls and a number of other romance and women’s fiction books, including her recent bestseller, Something to Talk About. Rachael is currently Australia’s leading writer of contemporary relationship stories around women’s issues, a genre she has coined ‘life-lit’. Rachael has finaled in a number of competitions, including the Australian Romance Readers Awards. Jilted (her first rural romance) won Favourite Australian Contemporary Romance in 2012, and The Patterson Girls won the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award and also the 2015 Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction. She continually places in Booktopia’s Top 50 Aussie Authors poll. Rachael lives in the Swan Valley with her hyperactive husband, three mostly-gorgeous heroes-in-training, two ravenous cats, a cantankerous bird and a very badly-behaved dog.
Ilsa Evans has published fourteen books across a range of genres, from light fiction and short stories to memoir, murder mystery and YA fantasy. Two of her books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Davitt (Sisters in Crime) Awards, while her novel about domestic violence, Broken, was an Australian best-seller and selected as Women’s Weekly Book of the Month. Ilsa also teaches creative writing students, writes social commentary, and has been published in several newspapers and online journals. In 2011, she received the Eliminating Violence Against Women (EVA) Award for online journalism.
Tania Blanchard writes historical fiction inspired by her family history. She grew up listening to her grandparents’ fascinating tales of life during World War Two and migrating to Australia. Coming from a family with rich cultural heritage, stories have always been in her blood. Her first novel, The Girl from Munich, was a runaway bestseller and shortlisted for the ABIA Best New Writer Award. Tania lives in Sydney with her husband and three children where she can often be found in the kitchen, cooking up a storm for her family, including her two cheeky dogs who think they’re human too.
Sandie Docker grew up in Coffs Harbour, and first fell in love with reading when her father introduced her to fantasy books as a teenager. Her love of fiction began when she first read Jane Austen for the HSC, but it wasn’t until she was taking a translation course at university that her Mandarin lecturer suggested she might have a knack for writing – a seed of an idea that sat quietly in the back of her mind while she lived overseas and travelled the world. Sandie first decided to put pen to paper (yes, she writes everything the old-fashioned way before hitting a keyboard) when living in London. Now back in Sydney with her husband and daughter, she writes every day.
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