The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall

STAFF REVIEW

This felt like a slightly new direction for Kate Mildenhall, whose most recent offerings have tended to speculative fiction, but it’s one I enjoyed a lot.  The story brings together a cast of family and friends, who have pooled their resources to purchase a large idyllic property in the Victorian highlands.  They each have their own slightly divergent plans for the land, but a shared vision of enjoying it with their families.  Set across a single long weekend, plans quickly unravel as secrets are revealed and events very quickly get out of control.  This is a pacey, crazy ride full of highly unlikeable characters, who you will love to hate and enjoy see getting their just deserts!  Absolutely loved how she wraps it up at the end.  Described as White Lotus meets The Slap, this is a good one for fans of Liane Moriarty and Sally Hepworth. 

Reviewed by Kate

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They’re good people. Why shouldn’t they get what they deserve?

When Lou sees an ad for a long-abandoned mining town up for sale, it doesn’t take her long to convince her sister and their oldest friends to go in on the idyllic property buried in the bush – a place where the four families can hide away on weekends, get back to nature and unstick the kids from their screens.

But things start to go wrong before they even arrive for their first camping trip – a rogue deer sends a trailer off the road, a neighbour complains about the fence line and squatters have set up camp down by the river. Soon none of that will matter, though, because by the end of the first night someone will be dead.

At first it seems that hiding a body is easier than keeping other sorts of secrets: a lost job, an illegal crop, an outrageous affair, a little embezzlement. But what’s buried has a way of coming to the surface, and even in the bush, it’s hard to remain unseen.

White Lotus meets The Slap in a razor-sharp literary thriller about deception and self-deception, and how far people will go to protect what they feel they ought to have.

‘Absolutely brilliant. I wish I had written this book.’ Hayley Scrivenor, author of Dirt Town

About the Author: Kate Mildenhall is an author, writing teacher and podcaster. Her debut novel Skylarking was longlisted for Debut Fiction in the 2017 Indie Book Awards and the 2017 Voss Literary Prize. Her second novel, The Mother Fault, was longlisted for the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Aurealis Science Fiction Novel of the Year. The Hummingbird Effect was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize and the 2024 Indie Book Awards for Fiction. In 2024, Kate released her first picture book, To Stir with Love, illustrated by Jess Racklyeft, shortlisted for the 2025 Indie Book Awards and the 2025 ABIA Children’s Book of the Year and Notable in the CBCA Book Awards for Early Readers. Kate co-hosted The First Time Podcast where she interviewed over 200 Australian and international writers.

28 Oct 2025

The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall ISBN 9781761429057