May Wrap-Up and June TBR

The past few weeks have been so hectic! This wrap-up is so late!

I managed to read 10 books in May – mainly due to having taken on rather a lot of blog tours. Of these, I gave 3 *****, 6 **** and one ***. I’m now on 55/100 of my Goodreads Challenge.

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May Wrap-Up

I started the month with the very exciting and tense ‘The Assistant’ by Kjell Ola Dahl for a blog tour. I thoroughly enjoyed this slice of Nordic Noir which was set in Prohibition-era Norway, a setting I hadn’t experienced before. My review is here.

Another blog tour book followed – ‘A Public Murder’ by Antoinette Moses. This is a lively and engaging police procedural and will be the first in a series to feature DI Pam Gregory. Set between Cambridge and Crete, I loved the classical allusions of the Cretan bull and the labyrinth that are central to the story. My review is here.

David Baddiel’s audiobook, ‘Jews Don’t Count’ was up next. This is a short (it is in the TLS Essays series of hardbacks) but compelling argument that anti-Semitism isn’t recognised as ‘real’ racism. Baddiel argues that Jews are paradoxically considered both low status (discriminated against) and high status (stereotyped as privileged and wealthy) – and so racism against them is somehow discounted or ignored. This was one of my five star reads of the month – it is a real eye-opener and the audiobook is engagingly presented by Baddiel himself.

Then it was back to the blog tour books and ‘Stealing the Spanish Princess’ by Bea Green. This is another new crime series, this time featuring detective Richard Langley of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiquities unit. The art dimension (the Spanish Princess of the title refers to a painting) was fascinating and the whole book was tied together with an engaging murder mystery too. My review is here.

This was followed by the charming ‘Mrs Narwhal’s Diary’ by S J Norbury – another blog tour read. This is a funny and relatable book about one middle-aged woman trying to hold everything together – in her case, a crumbling stately home, a husband having a mid-life crisis, children, in-laws and unhappy customers of her husband’s furniture business. My review is here.

Next up was ‘The Distant Dead’ by Lesley Thomson, a crime novel with an unusual detective – cleaner Stella Darnell. This is a clever, dual-narrative story which links a 1940 Blitz murder with events in the present day. My blog tour review is here.

Another five star read (listen) followed with the non-fiction ‘The Glamour Boys’ by Chris Bryant. Although I listened to the audiobook, I also had to buy a copy of the hardback because I needed to see pictures of the key players and re-read bits! This is the story of a group of MPs in the period prior to World War II who first identified that Nazi Germany was a threat that needed addressing – but were ignored, partly because of their queer status. This was an absolutely fascinating slice of history and brilliantly told.

Another five star read followed, this time a buddy read with Hannah’s ‘book club that isn’t a book club’ through The Write Reads – ‘The Five’ by Hallie Rubenhold. I really loved this insight into Victorian women’s lives – specifically the victims of Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold told the women’s backgrounds with clarity and tonnes of interesting details – and (commendably) kept the focus on their lives rather than their deaths.

Then I finished another buddy read (with the Tsundoku Squad), ‘Lace’ by Shirley Conran. I’ll admit that I was aware of the scandalous reputation of this one and wanted to see what the fuss was about. I wasn’t disappointed with the frankly bonkers story of a young woman and the four older women she thinks may be her mother. Bits of this felt dated, but it certainly kept me entertained. Our collective review is here.

I finished the month with another blog tour book, ‘Cut from the Same Cloth?’ edited by Sabeena Akhtar. This is a collection of essays written by Muslim women in Britain and it was an engaging and eye-opening read. My review is here.

June TBR

After May’s excesses on the blog tour front, I only have two for June and I am very much looking forward to ‘Dead Ground’ by M. W. Craven (the fourth book in the Poe and Bradshaw crime series that I’ve heard lots about) and ‘Mary Jane’ by Jessica Anya Blau (a coming-of-age 1970s nostalgia-fest!)

Aside from this, I have a stack of gorgeous proofs and hardbacks that I’m desperate to read! On the shortlist so far is ‘The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle’ by Matt Cain (this sounds like a gorgeous story of finding love later in life), ‘Murder: The Biography’ by Kate Morgan (fascinating non-fiction about the history of murder as a crime), ‘Yours Cheerfully’ by A J Pearce (sequel to the brilliant ‘Dear Mrs Bird’ – historical fiction at its most uplifting) and ‘Nighthawking’ by Russ Thomas (super-twisty crime fiction that has had rave reviews).

As usual, see you next month when I will have read precisely nothing of what I planned!

With my usual thanks to all the lovely blog tour hosts, publishers, NetGalley, bookshops and authors who keep me in books. However I come by books, opinions are always entirely my own.

Header photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash.

Blog Tour: ‘Cut From The Same Cloth: Muslim Women on Life in Britain’ edited by Sabeena Akhtar

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Cut From The Same Cloth’, a fascinating collection of Muslim women’s writing about their experiences of life in Britain.

With thanks to Random Things Tours for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

From the Publisher:

● Perceived as the visual representation of Islam, hijab-wearing Muslim women are often harangued at work, at home and in public life yet are rarely afforded a platform to speak on their own terms.

● From modern pop culture to anti-Blackness, faith and family, politics, education, creativity and working life; Cut From The Same Cloth? Is an anthology which gives visibly Muslim women creatives a space to speak to the matters that mean most to them.

Do you wear that at home? Where are you really from? Does he make you wear that? Do you support acts of terror? Do you believe in ‘British values’? Can I see your hair? Do you have equality? Are you hot in that? Can you be a feminist? Why don’t you just take it off? Do you wear that in the shower? Are you oppressed?

Whether it’s awkward questions, radical commentators sensationalising their existence, non-Muslims and non-hijabis making assumptions, men speaking on their behalf, or tired stereotypes being perpetuated by the same old faces: hijabis are tired. Cut from the Same Cloth? seeks to tip the balance back in their favour, with the space to offer honest insight into the issues that really affect their lives.

Here, twenty-one middle and working class contributors of all ages and races look beyond the tired tropes, exploring the breadth of their experiences and spirituality. It’s time we, as a society, stopped the hijab-splaining and listened to the people who know.

It’s time for change.

My Review:

Having just read ‘The Seven Necessary Sins of Women and Girls’ by Mona Eltahawy, leading Egyptian/US feminist (review here), I was intrigued by her discussion of intersectional feminism and her Muslim faith. Therefore, I jumped at the chance to read this collection of essays by Muslim women which focuses more on Britain than Eltahawy’s (excellent) book.

The essays are very wide-ranging and discuss an array of topics important to Muslim women living in Britain today. The writers each give their unique takes on issues from their own individual experiences – and the results are as varied and fascinating as you would expect.

From reading about how Covid-19 has impacted one woman’s experience of Ramadhan, to discussions on modesty, Muslim motherhood and witnessing the tragedy of Grenfell, this is a collection of essays that are continually engaging and thought-provoking.

As the essays are so wide-ranging, it is difficult to review the overall collection in a meaningful way. However, for me, the most eye-opening pieces of writing were those that catalogued actual lived experiences. The eye-witness account of Grenfell was heartbreaking to read and it was genuinely shocking to hear about the racist treatment of Black African Muslim women in Britain. The concept of misogynoir – the fact that Black women face a double oppression based on their gender and race – really came into sharp focus.

I’ll admit to (shamefully) not knowing much about Islam, so it was enlightening for me to be able to understand more about how religion impacts women’s lives. I didn’t always understand the choices that the women made – as a white, non-faith Brit, this was outside of my own experiences – but it was always interesting to see how other British women live their lives.

It is important to note that this isn’t a book to explain or justify choices made by Muslim women – one of the early essays states absolutely correctly that ‘I am not an essay to show your friend “what Muslims think about X”.’ Instead, the essays were as unique as the women themselves and I loved them.

I’d recommend this anthology to anyone interested in women’s lives and experiences in 21st century Britain. There is some levity and humour, but mainly the collection highlights the difficulties and challenges that Muslim women navigate every day – the Islamophobia, the misogyny, the racism – and it is a powerful book.

About the Editor:

Sabeena is a writer, editor and the Festival Coordinator of Bare Lit, the UK’s principal festival celebrating remarkable writers in the diaspora. She is also the co-founder of the Primadonna Festival which spotlights the work of women writers, and of Bare Lit Kids. She will be available for events around publication, and can be found tweeting at @pocobookreader

Blog Tour: ‘Both of You’ by Adele Parks

I’m usually more at home with police procedurals but when I was offered the chance to join the blog tour for Adele Parks’ new domestic thriller, I was keen to sign up. I’d heard great things about Parks’ books and this one sounded absolutely compelling.

The story is about two missing women. One, Leigh Fletcher, has left a husband and two adored stepsons in an average family home – the normal trials and stresses of raising children were present, but Leigh was happy and the family miss her very much. The second woman – Kai Janssen – has vanished from her wealthy Dutch businessman husband and glitzy penthouse apartment. Again, there was no discernible reason for her to leave. Two women, two devastated husbands, two very different lives – and it is down to DC Clements to work out where the women have gone any why.

I started this novel thinking it was a slow burner – the start of the novel gives us a lot of backstory about the two women and their domestic set-ups. However, this book soon had me in its grip and I raced through it because I was desperate to find out what had happened. In the process, I think I had pretty much everyone involved pinned as a likely culprit for the abductions – and was pretty much wrong on all counts.

This is definitely a book that will keep you guessing.

On top of the pacey plotting, I also found myself being caught up in the lives of the main characters – I particularly warmed to Leigh who seemed to be making a great job of the difficult role of stepmother to two boys whose mum had died when they were young. My heart actually hurt for the littlest boy who was desperate for news of the only mum he remembered. Much of Leigh’s domestic life seemed relatable and her husband a gentle giant who was lost without her. Kai and Daan (the Dutch husband) seemed much less engaging – but maybe that’s just my jealousy about not living their glamorous lives speaking there!

And that is pretty much all I can say without giving away some major plot elements,

I did enjoy this book a lot and was genuinely taken aback by the ending – again, I can’t say much more, but I really couldn’t see how it was going to end in a way that could tie up all the loose ends and resolve all problems. I do still have some questions and a few reservations – but nothing that detracted from my reading of the novel. I do wish that DC Clements had been a little more instrumental in the whole story – but that might be my love of detective fiction creeping in.

I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys domestic thrillers – it is cleverly plotted, surprising and immersive. The characters are well-developed and interesting, even if a lot of them aren’t nice and certainly don’t play nice!

Thanks to Harper Collins, the HQ publicity team and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

April 2021 Wrap-Up and May TBR

April has been a great month for my reading – the Easter holidays gave me plenty of time and I have read some absolutely brilliant books this month.

I’ve read 13 books this month and managed to creep my NetGalley percentage up to 77%. I’ve got slightly ahead of my HUGE pile of May blog tours but next month is also looking pretty busy.

WWW Wednesday – 7th April, 2021

WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted at Taking on a World of Words. Anyone can take part and it is a great way of sharing what you have just finished reading, what you are currently reading and what is next on the TBR.

Ultimate Blog Tour: ‘What Beauty There Is’ by Cory Anderson

Thanks to The Write Reads for inviting me onto this Ultimate Blog Tour for the YA thriller ‘What Beauty There Is’.

From the Publisher:

Published: 08/04/2021
ISBN: 9780241441718
Length: 368 Pages
Dimensions: 222mm x 34mm x 144mm
Weight: 483g
RRP: £12.99
Imprint: Penguin

When everything you love is in danger, how long can you keep running to survive?

Life can be brutal
Winter in Idaho. The sky is dark. It is cold enough to crack bones.

Jack knew it
Jack Dahl has nothing left. Except his younger brother, Matty, who he’d die for. Their mother is gone, and their funds are quickly dwindling, Jack needs to make a choice: lose his brother to foster care, or find the drug money that sent his father to prison.

So did I
Ava lives in isolation, a life of silence. For seventeen years her father, a merciless man, has controlled her fate. He has taught her to love no one.

Did I feel the flutter of wings when Jack and I met? Did I sense the coming tornado?
But now Ava wants to break the rules – to let Jack in and open her heart. Then she discovers that Jack and her father are stalking the same money, and suddenly Ava is faced with a terrible choice: remain silent or speak out and help the brothers survive.

Looking back, I think I did . . .

Perfect for fans of Patrick Ness, Meg Rosoff and Daniel Woodrell, What Beauty There Is an unforgettable debut novel that is as compulsive as it is beautiful, and unflinchingly explores the power of determination, survival and love.

‘Beautifully written and superbly constructed, Anderson pulls you onto a chilling footpath of love and loss and keeps you there until you’ve read every last word’
Ruta Sepetys, bestselling author of Between Shades of Grey

My Review:

I was drawn to this book by the interesting setting – with the action unfolding under the dark, brooding skies of Idaho in winter. What I wasn’t prepared for was a book that was also so dark in content!

The story follows Jack Dahl, a teenager who is left caring for his younger brother after the suicide of their mother. His father is in prison, leading Jack to embark on a scramble to find his hidden drug money. However, Jack isn’t the only one on the trail…

I’ll admit that this was not an easy read – the story is bleak and there are points that are really heartbreaking, for example Jack’s fleeting hope of having a job which is then snatched away from him because of his family name. And any scene with Matty in – the child unquestioningly trusting his big brother to protect him while Jack makes increasingly desperate decisions.

However, there are also some excellent reasons to read this book:

The setting – I love books set in interesting places that are unlike where I live. As I live in the grey dullness of northern-ish England, it felt exciting to escape to the bleak, snowy landscapes of Idaho in the depths of winter. It is the perfect setting for this story, adding another layer of hardship and challenge to the survival story of the Dahl brothers.
The style – Anderson’s writing is beautiful. Despite the often heart-wrenching things being described, the writing is vibrant, vivid and always engaging. I found that the concision of the descriptions always struck a chord and allowed me to picture exactly what was meant – ‘A disembodied sound. Like ash drifting’, a ‘granite sky’, ‘the shift of dark trees’. Anderson’s use of imagery is often surprising and really allows readers to imagine her dark and bleak world.
The characters – Jack isn’t perfect and makes some bad decisions as any teenager in his situation would. Bardem is utterly terrifying and brings real menace to the novel beyond what the Dahl brothers’ situation would suggest. Ava is – although not in the novel as much as I expected – a realistic figure caught in an impossible situation. And Matty is the innocent caught up in a life that he doesn’t deserve. This is a world that is vividly populated, although not always with the nicest people!
The pace – From Jack’s tragic discovery of his mother’s body at the start of the novel, the action barely slows. The reader is carried along at often breakneck speed and it is a breathless ride. There is genuine terror and tension in this book and it is compelling.
The narration – Although Jack’s story is told by an omniscient narrator, the italicised sections at the start of chapters give us an intriguing first person narrative from Ava. Often poetic and opaque in meaning, these sections add a sense of mystery and poignancy to the story.

This book is not for the faint-hearted. It is gritty, brutal and unflinchingly violent in places – definitely one to check the trigger warnings on before you read. However, if your preferred reading is on the shadowy end of the spectrum, this could well be a great book for you.

About the Author:

Cory Anderson is a winner of the League of Utah Writers Young Adult Novel Award and Grand Prize in the Storymakers Conference First Chapter Contest. She lives in Utah with her family. What Beauty There Is is her debut novel.

Twitter: @coryanderwrites

Website: https://coryanderson.us/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coryanderwrites/

Amazon UK Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Beauty-There-Cory-Anderson/dp/0241441714/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=what+beauty+there+is&qid=1616251655&sr=8-1

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44779579-what-beauty-there-is?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=cy9S5ruE50&rank=1

March 2021 Wrap-Up and April TBR

In the place of my usual WWW Wednesday post, I have my end of my end of month wrap up and a look at what is coming up in my bookish world in April.

Links provided are affiliate links – thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases.

March Wrap-Up

It’s been a good reading month – I’ve read some great books, including a few outside my comfort zone! This month, I’ve read 13 books. I’ve struggled a bit with digital reading, so these have been mainly physical books – unusual for me and a lovely change.

My NetGalley is at 76% – this will be a focus for me in April as I really want to get back to that elusive 80%!

WWW Wednesday – 24th March, 2021

Blog Tour: ‘Comeback’ by Chris Limb

I’m thrilled to be welcoming you to my blog tour stop for ‘Comeback’ by Chris Limb, a quirky, modern myth retelling published by Unbound.

This tour has been organised by Damp Pebbles.

My stop is a guest post from Chris himself… details about the book and author follow Chris’s post below.

Comeback: Guest post

They say that the only thing better than writing a novel is having written one.

One of the best parts of having written a novel is getting feedback when other people have read it. It doesn’t always have to be good feedback (although that’s nice too); finding out what did work and what didn’t can be very useful during the drafting and editing process, which is why I appreciated people who agreed to beta read the novel over the years.

Sometimes of course you’ll get two diametrically opposed reactions – if this happens I tend to assume that I probably got it about right in the first place. After all, the old saying about not being able to please all of the people all of the time arose for a reason.

One unexpected piece of positive feedback I received on a number of occasions – not just for Comeback but also for other fiction I’d written over the years – was that I wrote women well.

This surprised me, as I wasn’t even aware that I should have been writing characters differently depending upon their gender. As far as I was concerned I had just been writing people. Furthermore my experience of the inner monologue of members of the human species was confined to what I’d been able to glean from my own experiences. You could almost say that I’d just been writing me, albeit different aspects of me, different people I could imagine being.

Maybe that’s why it worked – by just writing people rather than consciously writing men or women I was drawing on the common experience of being a person, which meant that whoever read it could relate to it in some way.

It is possible that this is an aspect of writing I’ve missed out on – deliberately putting the narrative in the head of someone I can’t relate to, a person who is so different from me I can’t help but write them as other. On the other hand the way I do write works for me, and it makes the characters more relatable to the reader then that’s good.

As it turned out the main characters in Comeback were women, and even though that does affect their experience of the world within the novel, that wasn’t why they were there. They just turned up when I started writing and their experiences shaped the novel itself. They were interesting.

Characters being interesting can mean any number of things. It can even mean being flawed, having your own personal strengths and weaknesses, your own inner demons to fight. It’s these complex things that make characters zip and which give them verisimilitude, whatever gender they are.

To misquote the alleged old Chinese curse “May you live with interesting characters.”

Returning to the subject of feedback, once the book has gone to print then there’s nothing more that can be done about it so the purpose of the feedback changes. Nevertheless it’s still one of the best bits of having written a book and I still appreciate it!

And that is another odd, exciting and unexpected thing – now that Comeback is “out there” then after all these years the narrative has finally solidified into its final form. It took almost exactly ten years from first typing The End to publication. As a confirmed pantser – or ‘archaeologist’ as I prefer to call it – it is as if I am finally seeing the story clearly after years of groping towards it. After years of existing solely (mostly) in my own head, illuminated only by my personal point of view, it is now in the open and lit from all angles.

Maybe this means that people will start to discover new things in it, things I hadn’t even been aware of. These means that the exhilarating process of discovery inherent in being a pantser / archaeologist actually continues well after the story has come onto being, which is another completely unexpected pleasure of having written a book.

Book Blurb:

Genie has everything – a BRIT award, a singing career, the attention of the press and Oliver Fox, a pretty boy who looks good on her arm.

Until he dies.

His death brings Genie’s long buried feelings bubbling to the surface. Her grief over the death of her lover Wendi who introduced her to this world. Her self doubt and fear that she will be exposed as a fraud.

How far is she prepared to go to fix things?

The afterlife isn’t the most comfortable of places for anyone who’s still alive, but Genie’s not going to take any crap from the dead – she’s got years of experience in the music business.

Sometimes going to Hell and back takes a lifetime…

About Chris Limb:

Chris is a writer based in UK, who has had a number of short stories published over the past few years, blogs on a regular basis and occasionally reviews books and audios for the British Fantasy Society.

Chris wrote a short pop memoir which was published in 2011 and went down well with its core-audience. It continues to sell at a steady rate to this day.

Chris also plays bass guitar and performs random acts of web and graphic design for a diverse selection of clients.

Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/catmachine

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/comebacknovel

Website: https://chrislimb.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catmachine/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5347555.Chris_Limb

Purchase Links:

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08PCM8XXY

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/comeback-chris-limb/1138397379

The Hive: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/CHRIS–LIMB/COMEBACK/25566980

Blackwells: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/COMEBACK-by-LIMB-CHRIS/9781789650891

Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/comeback/chris-limb/9781789650891

Publishing Information:

Published in paperback and digital formats by Unbound on 21^st January 2021

Blog Tour: ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Catherine Alliott

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Catherine Alliott.

This book was published on 4th March by Michael Joseph and I thank the publisher for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, plus the invitation to join the tour.

I’ve read a lot of Catherine Alliott’s books, although not so recently, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into with this one. Absolutely not so!

In this book, Lucy Palmer seems to have it all – a big house in London, a job writing cosy crime novels, a handsome husband and two grown-up children who are both successful in their own ways. However, this is all a facade and Lucy’s marriage is about to end spectacularly and suddenly – and, when is does, she has some work to do in dealing with her past. Leaving London, she goes to care for her elderly and bordering-on-alcoholic parents in the country where she starts to rebuild her life.

This is an altogether darker story than I am used to from Alliott, both in the truth about Lucy’s husband, Michael, and the events surrounding the end of the marriage. It also touches on some poignant issues, especially caring for elderly parents and ageing.

However, everything else I expected from Alliott is also there, so this slightly darker turn works well. It still has elements of humour – I really loved Lucy’s parents and their hectic social life of boozy octogenarian parties, plus the sassy teenage twins who have much more of a finger on the pulse than the adults. There’s also romantic strands to the story, although these aren’t as central as I would have expected given what I’ve read of Alliott’s writing previously. Instead, the love story is quite understated and works really well given Lucy’s situation.

I really loved the family dynamic that is at the heart of this book. Lucy is at the centre of a supportive, if slightly eccentric, family network and this is one of the real strengths of the novel. There’s the ageing parents, growing old disgracefully but still frail, Lucy’s sister (Helena) who absolutely has control of everything except her own children, plus Lucy’s children – the strong and reliable Imo and thoughtful, calm Ned. I especially liked the strong women in the novel – Helena and Imo being my favourites, although there are other surprisingly awesome women (and a few men!) along the way.

Although this was not what I wholly expected when I picked up this book, I’d recommend it. It is certainly less cosy than I was anticipating and includes some difficult issues, not least domestic abuse, but it is an immersive and engaging read. I genuinely struggled to put it down and loved the clever, understated explorations of relationships and dependencies between people.