We finally got here! The end of the twelve week month that is January and yes, I do still have mince pies in the freezer. I also had lots of books to read for January but gave myself a chance to read a few of those books that have sat on my shelves for a while and I’ll be reviewing those on my Throwback Thursdays. This month has taken me from a London hotel to Western Australia, via NYC, Nova Scotia and the South of France. What they do have in common are complex female characters with many secrets to uncover…
This book about a band taking a new direction was an unexpected pleasure and I read it with my Squad Pod pals. The Future Saints are Ripper on guitar, Kenny on drums and the explosive Hannah on guitar and vocals. Manifold Records manager Theo is sent to troubleshoot the band who’ve been struggling since the death of their old manager and Hannah’s sister Ginny. He has a remit, to get the band on track to produce at least one album and then let them go. However, when Theo walks into a bar to see them for the first time, he’s transfixed by Hannah and the new material she’s written. It’s emotional, dark and really connects with the audience. So when Hannah falls off stage mid-song and goes viral on TikTok it’s the perfect springboard for their new album. Theo is excited about this band, but just when he should be taking advantage of their viral moment he feels an instinct to protect Hannah who seems to be falling apart. You will root for this band because they’re such likeable characters and I felt their loss so strongly. There are funny moments but also a really deep psychological undertone to this novel that gives it heft. There’s also the growing chemistry between Hannah and Theo, at exactly the wrong time. This was a deeply emotional book, with the realities of the music business and the psychology of loss. A really entertaining read.
Cora is a ‘maroon’ one of a group of settled slaves from Jamaica who have signed an agreement with the English government to secure their freedom in Nova Scotia. She lives in her ‘found’ family – Leah who has been like a mother to Cora and her sister, Benjamin her niece and Silas. Cora has often felt watched when walking in the forest and comes across Agnes, a lone girl with a huge dog. Immediately they have a connection and slowly she trusts Cora enough to show her where she lives her bare and solitary existence. As the pair grow closer, Agnes shares their beautiful surroundings with Cora, showing her sights she never imagined. Can these two women build a life together with the obstacles of their sexuality, the complexities of freedom and the sheer struggle of surviving in the harsh winters of Canada? As Cora will find out, it’s easy to take one wrong step and lose your life in the wilderness. Also, one person can hide and escape more easily than two. There are secrets on both sides that will force both women to face their pasts and the truth of where they come from. This is beautifully pitched, with enough emotion, tension and a beautiful atmosphere to keep you reading. I found this moving, imaginative and historically interesting. My full review is coming in Feb with Random Things Tours.
This was a book I was catching up on over the New Year as I tried desperately to get my NetGalley backlog sorted. Of course I failed. However, I’m glad I finally had time to read this thriller from Katie Bishop whose debut novel ‘The Girls of Summer’ I enjoyed enormously. Our main character is Josie, recently released from prison and returning to her home town on the Côte d’Azure. She’s destined to stay with her brother and his girlfriend at the diving shop where they grew up. Years before Josie was jailed on the evidence of Nina Drayton, the youngest daughter of a local ‘summer’ family with a huge house on the cliffs overlooking the beach. Nina apparently told her mother that she’d seen Josie kill her older sister Tamara in the swimming pool. Coincidentally, the grown up Nina is at the family house with her husband and children trying to decide what to do with the place since her mother’s death. Haunted by that summer she has since become a psychotherapist, in the hopes of understanding her own memory. Did she see what she apparently disclosed to her mother and Blake, because she has no memory of it? As Josie tries to start anew she’s thrown of course by a True Crime channel on TikTok deciding to serialise Tamara’s death and blow it up all over again. How can she make a new start if everyone knows who she is? This is brilliantly told in two timelines and with both Nina, Josie and her friend Hannah as narrators. The tension grows as that summer is revealed slowly and the popularity as well as the sensationalism of the True Crime genre is questioned.
Kate and Vic have been married for a few years, after meeting when she was studying in Rome. After a normal morning rush at home Kate travels into London, on the pretext of doing an interview. However, she has a different destination in mind. This is an appointment she’s been keeping for several years like clockwork. Now she’s caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She should be travelling home later this afternoon – picking up the kids from school and collecting the rabbit from the vets. Instead she’s trapped in room 706, in a luxury hotel that’s under siege by a terrorist group. How can she explain why she’s here? Even if her body is discovered in the aftermath everyone will wonder, what exactly is she doing here? She has always been very careful, leaving no trace. Now she wonders whether her husband Vic will understand why? As she tries to summon the words that convey just how much Vic and her children mean to her, Kate reflects on all the choices that brought her here. The author carefully lets the tension mount so slowly that while reminiscing over Kate’s life we almost forget where she is in the here and now. She’s a prisoner in this room and she has to be silent, so they can’t put the television on and they can’t flush a toilet. When the lights and electricity go they’re almost totally cut off from the outside world. It’s a quiet that is sometimes broken by heavy footsteps or other hotel guests meeting their fate. You’ll almost hold your breath at times. The forced intimacy means she asks questions of her lover that she’s never asked before. She knows nothing about his life, only that he’s married and has been sleeping with Kate in this way for several years. We know the terrorists are stalking the corridors, one floor at a time, but we don’t know whether they have a master key or a bomb. I realised that despite her family unit, Kate is lonely. What she wants is for someone to see and appreciate her as Kate the woman, not the mum, wife or journalist. You will be compelled to read this as I did, long into the night. It has the pitch perfect pacing and tension of a thriller, but so many psychological layers. Women will identify with Kate, at least some part of her. She very simply wants to be seen, desired and receive pleasure. As the terrorists come close enough to hear in the room next door, we know Room 706 will be next. Kate has had an opportunity to assess and understand her life, to possibly make changes and live more. You’ll have to read to the end to find out whether she gets that chance.
My final choice this month is an older read, a big chunky novel that’s been on my shelf for a long time! I’ve always picked up Kate Morton’s novels and I don’t really know why this one has sat on my shelves for so long. I made it one of the novels to catch up on in December, when I take a break from blog tours and read what I feel like. It’s a chunky novel and it took some time to get to grips with everyone and their timelines but there’s no mistaking the power of the central image as new mum Izzy and her children are found on their picnic blanket by the creek. The man who makes the discovery assumes they’re asleep, until he sees a line of ants crawling over Matilda’s wrist. It’s such a striking image that it inspires the title of journalist Daniel Miller’s book ‘As If They Were Asleep’. The only person missing is baby Thea and it’s assumed she’s been carried away by wild dogs. The conclusion is that Izzy has poisoned herself and her children, unable to leave them behind. Back at their home, Halcyon, Izzy’s heavily pregnant sister-in-law Nora is waiting for her brother’s family to return. Possibly due to the shock and in a powerful storm, Nora gives birth to her own daughter Polly. Once she leaves for her own home, no one will ever return to Halcyon. Nora’s brother stays in the USA seemingly unable to face what happened to the woman he loved and the children whose voices once filled the house he fell in love with as soon as he saw it. Now, with Nora seriously ill in hospital, her granddaughter Jessie will be drawn into the cold case through Nora’s rambling words and Daniel’s book. What follows is a not just a complex murder case but a tale of mothers and daughters and how intergenerational trauma has an impact, even when it’s a closely guarded secret. Morton keeps the twists and turns coming right up to the end of the novel, some expected and others a complete surprise. She never leaves even the tiniest loose end and that isn’t easy when we see just how far the ripples of this tragedy spread in the community. In the midst of that Christmas and all that comes after, Izzy really has an impact with her beauty and vitality. It is unthinkable that only hours later all that sparkle is simply snuffed out. If you love Kate Morton, this has all the aspects that make her novels so popular – the family saga, the big house and the secrets kept behind closed doors. However, this had the added element of an unsolved crime giving it an addictive quality. Added to that is the length of the book, allowing the story and characters to fully develop, showing fascinating and complex psychological dynamics between each mother and daughter. I can’t believe it took me so long to finally read it.
The Lotus Readers 