What a year it’s been for debuts!! This is another excellent read that I’d put on the back burner because I had over committed myself to blog tours. I’m so sorry I didn’t read it sooner because I absolutely LOVED it. This is my absolute favourite genre – gothic, historic fiction – but when added to the elements of spiritualism, transgressive females and dysfunctional families this would definitely come up on Goodreads as highly recommended. In Paris, 1866, a couple of sisters are living very separate lives; Sylvia who is now Baroness Devereaux and Charlotte Mothe, the sister she left behind with a drunken, violent father. When Charlotte pays a heavily disguised visit to Sylvie’s home she assumes their father is ill, but it’s a different aspect of her past she’s bringing to her sister’s door. Their mother had a business as a spirit medium, but Sylvie promised to put such shady dealings in the past when she married the Baron. Charlotte needs her sister for one last con, to pay her father’s medical bills. The aristocratic de Jacquinot family think they are being haunted by an aunt killed in the revolution. They will need to use all their tricks to frighten money out of this family, but they didn’t bank on being absolutely terrified too.
The Perrault fairy tale underpinning this story is ‘The Fairies’ but the sisters don’t necessarily agree on the interpretation. One sister is asked a favour by an old crone, a glass of water from the well, but she ignores her and is cursed to expel toads every time he opens his mouth. On the next day the other sister is commanded to provide a glass of water by a young beautiful woman and grants her the favour. The second sister opens her mouth and gold coins spill out. Perrault says one sister is good and one is bad and Sylvie accepts this, but Charlotte thinks changing her disguise was a mean trick.
“The test is rigged from the start – even before the fairy turned up, when Perrault labelled one sister good and one bad on the very first page, before either got a chance.”
However, by the end Sylvie has changed her perspective. She muses that if she had a daughter would she be toads or gold? She decides not to read her Perrault; ‘I think I will let her decide for herself how a girl should be.”
The de Jacquinot family are dysfunctional and have narrowed all their problems down to the daughter, Josephine. They are clearly struggling to stay afloat, with clear spaces on the wall where there used to be paintings. Yet none of them are working or making any money, still living like the aristocrats they once were. The grandfather seems grumpy but is convinced they have a visiting spectre – Aunt Sabine who died in the revolution when her throat was cut. Brother Maximilien is cynical, in his book there is no such thing as spirits and his sister is suffering from a prolonged bout of lunacy brought on by a dalliance with a once trusted friend of his. Josephine is absolutely convinced there’s a spirit. Charlotte and Sylvie started their routine and I’d not expected them to be charlatans! I loved the details of their routine – the snuffing out of candles, the ring of salt. I thought that the story of creating waxed spectral hands with their mother was a brilliantly quirky childhood memory! Charlotte adopts the patter again straight away, talking about “penumbral disturbances” and “liminal spaces”. Sylvie almost admires her sister as she weaves a tale around the de Jacquinot home and their errant daughter.
However, everyone is shocked when Sabine appears to possess her niece. Josephine has become a different person, babbling about something being taken from her and spitting with anger at her grandfather. Then she’s overcome, with ectoplasm pouring from her mouth. This is something they’ve heard of but have never seen spontaneously like this. That night the library walls are trashed and the ancestral paintings are slashed to pieces, all expect Sabine’s. The family suspect a poltergeist but how could they have slept through such destruction? After this even Maximilien is on board, yet Sylvie suspects something isn’t what it seems. Charlotte was vociferous in her defence of Josephine, almost as if she actually cares. Sylvie knows that her sister has become unnaturally attached to young women before. Before they can go any further Sylvie’s husband confronts her at home. He’s had her followed and suspects an affair with Maximilien de Jacquinot who is closer to Sylvie in age. Sylvie tries to protest her innocence, but it’s difficult when she has betrayed her husband, just in a different way. She can’t reason with him and can only do what he asks, to leave. Now she is back in her miserable childhood home, listening to her father snoring as she lays awake and bereft.
Here the author pulls a brilliant ‘Fingersmith’ style twist, with a change of narrator and perspective of the same events. This narrative is what happens to the girl who spews toads and doesn’t conform. Charlotte is the daughter who stayed behind and still nurses the father who she suspects of killing her mother. In Charlotte’s story, instead of the aristocracy we meet an interesting set of characters who live and love outside the norms of society. I loved meeting Mimi who could fill a book of his own! The atmosphere and settings in the book are brilliant and give a very varied look at the city of Paris, from the poverty Sylvie and Charlotte come from to the remaining aristocrats and their crumbling mansions. This is a society recovering from the shock of revolution and a shift in the existing hierarchy. The de Jacquinot family are like their mansion, falling apart. I loved the dual staircase too, with Josephine and Charlotte using the servant’s exit together when surely they should use the main stairs? There’s are further tantalising hints of people who live outside the rules, quite lavishly if Mimi’s quarters are the example. I could see why Sylvie had opted to disappear into the money classes, because the difference between her rooms and the home she came from is stark. She also truly loves her husband and hasn’t married him for a comfortable life as her sister thinks. Charlotte does feel the dice was loaded when it came to their differing fortunes and I think she sees the Perrault fairy tale as an allegory for her sexuality. Sylvie is able to conform in this way and Charlotte can’t, she’s born the way she is into a world that doesn’t accept her. I was also sympathetic to her situation at home, trying to care for a man who is hard to love and has been violent towards them all. This was an amazing read, genuinely spooky but also a novel about families. Those who fit into their family and those who don’t. This is a fabulous ghost story with an unexpected twist and a wonderful glimpse of a society in flux.
Meet the Author
Carmella Lowkis grew up in Wiltshire and has a degree in English literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick. After graduating, she worked in libraries, before moving into book marketing. Carmella lives in North London with her girlfriend. You can follow her on social media @carmellalowkis. Spitting Gold is her first novel.
Kate Foster has taken a real life news report and turned it into an incredible read, full of historical detail and intrigue. It’s the late 17th Century and Lady Christian Nimmo lives with her sister Johanna and her mother at their lavish home in Scotland. Although their home is becoming less lavish by the month because since their father’s death she notices pale spaces where paintings or rugs once lived. Their fortunes are at the mercy of their uncle by marriage. James Forrester is laird of the neighbouring castle where he lives with Christian’s invalid aunt Lillias. James comes for dinner and departs with a little more of their family history packed away for sale. The girls must marry well and it is Johanna with her bubbly personality and pretty face who is proposed to first. For her wedding to Robert Gregory, Christian’s uncle sends her a beautiful brooch to wear and she is pleased at his kindness and the acknowledgement that she might feel left behind that day. Not all of her uncle’s attentions are welcome though and although he keeps pressing her to visit his castle to sketch and paint with her aunt she isn’t sure. However, she does enjoy the attentions of the fabric merchant Andrew Nimmo who brings them new fabric and entertains them with tales of sailing to far off lands and the night sky at sea. Christian daydreams about sailing alongside him and seeing some of these sights. Noticing her enthusiasm he cuts her a piece of silvery fabric that is the colour of a stormy sea. Next time he brings a sample of midnight blue velvet, shot through with an ocean green and she is very charmed. Marriage to him would be interesting and adventurous, all the things that Christian yearns for when she reads novels and poetry. So when he proposes she accepts happily, sharing her sister’s new found marriage advice and looking forward to being mistress of her own house. Yet only months later she is detained for the suspected murder of her Uncle James, killed by his own sword under a sycamore tree in the grounds of his castle. How has it come to this and will Christian have to face the infamous ‘Maiden’, a guillotine where Scotland’s aristocratic condemned meet their fate?
However, this isn’t just Lady Christian’s story. The novel is split into two narrators: Christian and Violet, a prostitute from Mrs Fiddes’s brothel in Edinburgh. For both, there are two timelines; the present after the death of the laird and the events leading up to it. Until finally past and present come together. Violet is a very young girl, and has been resident at the brothel since Mrs Fiddes sold off her virginity. The scenes within the brothel are brilliant; bawdy, coarse and incredibly colourful. Mrs Fiddes knows every customer’s taste and predilection, she’s shrewd and knows that this gives her a certain amount of power. She’s keeping their secrets close until she really needs them. Violet’s friend is fellow resident Ginger, a skinny young girl with red hair who lives on the same corridor. One evening a rather distinctive man comes in to choose a girl, a man who doesn’t wear a wig which is unusual. He looks past Violet and chooses Ginger, but it’s not long before she is also occupied. It’s not long before Violet hears a terrible commotion and she rushes down the corridor, but it’s too late. The man is gone and Ginger is left like a broken doll on the floor. In the aftermath Violet longs for her luck to turn. When she’s out one morning she notices a wedding taking place and lingers to watch because sometimes men who are celebrating and have had a few drinks might look for a girl. She’s in luck when a very wealthy looking man catches her eye. Before long he’s slipped into the parlour and is so pleased with Violet that he makes an offer. He would like to take her back to his castle for the weekend. As he shows her a secret room in one of the castle’s turrets she is amused by the illuminating art work, but amazed by the lavish surroundings she will be staying in and the maid who will bring her meals and make sure she has what she needs.
Like all the servants Oriana knows the laird has his amusements and they are kept quite separate from the lady of the house whose illness usually keeps her tucked away upstairs. Violet could get used to this sort of treatment, but the power lies with the laird. She might have fallen on her feet for now, but what if he loses interest? When he starts to receive visits from a lady of quality, Violet fears it’s the end for their liaison and starts to think up a scheme to get the upper hand. Meanwhile, Lady Christian’s marriage is not what she expected, not only is Andrew often away for long periods leaving her behind, there has been no physical contact between them. She and her sister often read and giggled over the ‘marriage book’ they found in the library at home, especially when Johanna was engaged. However, Andrew has never made an advance to his wife. Christian is still untouched and although she has a wonderful home and wants for nothing, she can’t help but want to be desired. As her uncle invites her to his castle for a visit she can’t help but think about the special attention he has paid her over the years and her pulse quickens. Could she really think about having an affair with her aunt’s husband? I could understand her need to be wanted, why should she be satisfied with simply being the lady of the house. For many the huge house, the money and the security for them and their family would be enough. It’s interesting to see the interplay between the two characters; Violet would probably be happy to settle for the things Christian has, but Christian could be contemplating risking it all for the freedom to express her sexuality. I felt she was chasing just a glimmer of the adoration that her sister Johanna has enjoyed all her life thanks to the luck of being born beautiful.
The author has created two incredible characters in these very different women, both are bravely sexually transgressive but sadly live in a world where men hold all of the power. The settings are wonderfully evocative and range from lavish to squalid, a combination we see clearly in the city of Edinburgh. As Violet observes the wedding, noting the quality of the guest’s clothing she is also aware of watching her footing lest she slip in the contents of a chamber pot flung from a window into the street below. The gap between rich and poor is more of a canyon, best expressed when Violet finds an opportunity to roam the castle and finds a brooch in the shape of a sword. It’s just one of many that the residents have left languishing in a drawer, but Violet sells it she would have enough money to start a new life. The threat of sexual violence is always close by, not just for Violet and Ginger but for Christian too once she has lost the respectability her title and her husband gave her. What the author does that makes this novel sing is combining the time period and story to the structure of a modern crime thriller. Just when we think we know everything, she trips us up with a different perspective or twist we didn’t see coming. Some revelations throw a completely different light on everything that has gone before bringing that excitement and compelling you to keep reading. I genuinely didn’t know how it would be resolved until we arrived there and once we did it was obvious this was the only way for it to end. Utterly brilliant and definitely a debut worthy of it’s accolades.
Out now in paperback. Pictured copy is the Waterstones special signed edition.
Meet the Author
Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. The Maiden won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect 2020 prize for new writers. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.
Kate’s new novel The King’s Watch is out on 6th June and is a Squad POD Collective book club pick for next month.
“Peach. Its shape floats on Mr Bell’s mouth. The pinch of the p, followed by a rounded push of the lips, sending the last syllable hard across the tongue. My hand nearly reaches for my pocket, as if the feather from our lessons might still be found there. It’s been a long time since I thought of the feather. I would balance it on my knuckles and make it quiver with the puff of my ps. Puh-puh-puh. I stop myself just in time, folding my hands against my skirts.”
I found the opening scene of this novel incredibly moving and so skilful, placing us so close to our heroine that we understand the barriers she faced being deaf at that point in history. In it, Ellen and her fiancé receive an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell. As the two men converse, Ellen is picking up body language and tone of voice which indicate a serious topic but she notices a repeated word ‘peaches’. Her attention moves to the beautiful jar of peaches preserved by her mother on the dining table. Yet she’s wrong, as she passes Mr Bell the jar and urges him to take it he tells her no, the word he was saying was ‘speeches’.
As Ellen reminisces, so did I. I was propelled back to the early years of my nephew Charlie, who was born visually impaired. Before we knew the full implications of his sight loss, we’d noticed he was behind in his development. He wasn’t moving round much, had put on weight and wasn’t speaking. It then occurred to us. In order to learn something for the first time, we tend to copy it. If you can’t see, you can’t imitate others and just as Ellen is struggling to get the full meaning of Mr Bell’s conversation, Charlie couldn’t form the words if he didn’t know how to use his mouth to make the noises. So Mum used the same technique she’d used with us when we were small. When a specific noise was needed like the ‘puh’ sound in the book, Mum would raise his hand to her mouth and make the sound against his fingers. He would then put his fingers to his own mouth a copy her. It was lovely to relive that memory and feel perhaps a tiny bit of what Ellen is feeling too.
A Sign of Her Own is narrated by Ellen Lark across two timelines and it’s an incredible feeling to be in her world, because it’s so different from the world we know. It felt similar to when actress Rose Ayling-Ellis did Strictly in 2021 and performed a ‘Couple’s Choice’ dance with Giovanni Pernice, choreographed to bring the audience into Rose’s world. At a certain point, the music stopped but the couple continued to dance and we realised that this was Rose’s world. For us the music would return, but she carried on dancing into the silence. She somehow used her trust in Giovanni and read his body to perfect her dance routines. It was moving, disorienting and a complete revelation so it was no surprise to me that they were winners of that year’s BAFTA for a memorable TV moment.
Ellen’s inner world is also a revelation and the author communicates it so beautifully. She lost her hearing as a child during a bout of scarlet fever and communicated with her mother using a language of signs they made up as they went along. It broke my heart to read how the sound of her speech was viewed by local children. Restricted to vowel sounds, because she couldn’t hear the precision of the consonants, Ellen feels shame about how she sounds. Her personal sign language seems to suit her, but it’s her grandmother who comes up with the idea of using Alexander Graham Bell’s ‘Visible Speech’. Students of his method were banned from using any sort of sign language, but were allowed to use a notebook. Family politics played their part in the decision, because the family were in debt to their grandmother. Luckily Ellen enjoyed studying and proved to be incredibly clever, even if she was unsure about Bell’s method and his motives. She has to be perceptive and learns to read people very quickly, including Bell. As we move into the present day, Ellen and her fiancé are visited by Bell who is embroiled in a fight to be recognised as the sole inventor of the telephone. He wants Ellen’s support as a character witness, but Ellen doesn’t have good memories of her time under his tutelage. She feels like he betrayed her and other deaf students for his own fame and recognition. How can she support him when she feels so conflicted?
During the later timeline Bell’s fight becomes all consuming. He is full of determination and I felt torn about his character because on one hand he appears to be paying attention to a group of people rather alienated by the rest of society so his work could be seen as altruistic. On the other hand it’s as if the people he’s helping don’t really matter to him. There’s a narcissism or selfishness in his character that means he only sees his students in terms of how they can help him potentially find fame. I felt like he didn’t appreciate their characters or individuality. I found myself disliking him intensely. By contrast, Ellen is instantly likeable and intelligent. Through her we are invited into the deaf community and the debate over sign language and visible speech is fascinating. As someone who has studied disability theory, I was very aware that some people don’t consider their deafness a disability. If they sign, they simply see themselves as speakers of a different language. I was interested in the politics and ethics of a speaking world imposing a method of communication on the deaf community, rather than the community coming to society with their own choice of language or speech method. I think there are many readers who might never have considered these issues and wondered how the book is being received in the deaf and/or disabled community. I was impressed that the author wanted to bring these issues to the fore and loved the enthusiasm she clearly has about her subject and her heroine. This is a well researched debut clearly inspired and informed by her own experiences of deafness as a child. It puts us into the centre of that experience and I came away feeling like I had a renewed awareness of sensory disability.
Thank you so much to the Squad Pod Collective and Tinder Press for my copy of A Sign of Her Own, published on Feb 1st 2024
Meet the Author
Sarah Marshwas short-listed for the Lucy Cavendish Prize in 2019 and selected for the London Library Emerging Writers Programme in 2020.A Sign of Her Ownis her first novel, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness
If this author had a certain readership in mind when writing this debut novel, she might as well have had a picture of me. I would have picked this book up on the strength of the cover alone. Three of my all time favourite books are: The Crimson Petal and the White set in the seedier areas of 19th Century London with a heroine is a prostitute called Sugar; The Night Circus that appears without warning, held together by real magic and the result of an epic battle between two magicians; The Museum of Extraordinary Things where our heroine is a mermaid, exhibited in a freak show at Coney Island. See what I mean? It’s perfect for me. The blurb promised me a tattooed mystic, a show run by a prostitute with dwarfism and real life New York gangs and Barnum as their contemporaries. It’s quite a heady mix and I was enthralled from page one. Flora is a tattoo artist and mystic, in an abusive relationship with a tattooist called Jordan, a member of an Irish gang the Dead Rabbits. She longs for escape from the slums of Five Points and the degrading relationship she’s been in since she was a teenager. Then she meets Minnie, a beautifully dressed woman whose dwarfism has led her to a career as a circus and freak show performer. Minnie promises Flora a career and life in an opulent town house uptown, not to mention her freedom. However, the freedom she’s promised comes with certain conditions.
Flora stays with Minnie, in her palatial bedroom and bathroom within the townhouse that belongs to her lover, Chester Moreton. Avoiding Chester’s advances seems to be one condition of Flora’s freedom, along with constant worry about being found by Jordan’s friends in the Dead Rabbits gang. She’s to earn her keep as a mystic, with her tattoos and tarot cards the centre of attention. Minnie knows that Flora’s skills run deeper, although she’s always been warned to hide them and ‘tell nuthin’. Flora’s gift is ‘the knowing’ an ability to summon the dead that’s always on the periphery of her performances, but kept at bay by Flora’s willpower. It’s when she’s pushed into allowing her spirit guide to break through that the trouble begins. At the Hotel du Woods she exposes the abuser and killer of a young boy, setting in motion a chain of events including suicide, murder and madness. Flora and Minnie escape and voyage to Manchester, where they try to survive on what they can earn from sex work and Flora’s tarot readings, but the past is never far behind and once again Flora finds herself at the centre of a love triangle where obsession and betrayal are medicated with drugs and alcohol and a tragic end seems inevitable.
I felt fully immersed in the novel immediately as the author creates an incredible sense of place. Five Points is grimy, deprived and controlled by gangs. I loved how the author used the grotesque throughout the novel and particularly where she’s describing the slums of New York and Manchester, filled with rats, unwashed bodies and an ever present grime that’s sticky on the skin. This took me straight back to university and Kristeva’s theory of abjection. The things that women’s bodies can do are magical or monstrous. Flora’s body is a conduit, allowing the dead to speak through her. Minnie’s body is seen as grotesque by others, but she wears angel’s wings and when she’s in bed with Flora it’s the softness of her skin that’s noticed first. All women have a transformative power to produce another life, when their pregnancy isn’t terminated by the men in their lives. The author doesn’t hold back when describing the reality of life for women, particularly women like Flora who haven’t had choices. Bodies seem divorced from minds when it comes to sex with men, as torsos become slabs of meat, breaths are whisky sour and skin is raw, red and broken. Sex is rarely consensual and always comes with violence. It’s a grim world so any chance to escape into a better future is welcome. The gentle and pleasurable attentions of Minnie are a promise of things to come, where Flora could have choices and sexual experiences that come from a loving place instead of a place of ownership.
No one here is perfect. Each character is morally grey and I loved that complexity in their personalities and the ambiguity it brought to their actions. I was also transfixed by the sheer power of Flora’s ‘knowing’. Mediumship has become something of a joke these days, a formulaic stage show where people are picked out of the audience and told that Grandad left the priceless clock in the attic or under the floorboards. It’s always benign and a little bit boring. Flora’s spirits are not there to guide her and they’re definitely not benign. They want to expose truths, tell the subject’s darkest secret and even mete out punishment where necessary. The first seance at Hotel du Woods is successful from one viewpoint – the spirits do come through – but a disaster from the other side when a vengeful spirit talks a man into killing himself. No one will be booking them again! Flora will have to learn how to control the spirit’s power and keep the vengeful ones at bay. Strangely, for a story where our main character is prevented from carrying children, this felt like a story about mothers too. It’s about the lack of a mother when growing up and how the lack of motherly love and protection feels, but it also shows the people who fill that void and become mother figures. This could be a difficult read for some, especially the sexual violence, but it would have been the daily reality for women living in 19th Century slums and for some women in upper Manhattan townhouses. I desperately wanted Flora to survive and have the right people around her, to give her the feeling of being loved and wanted. This is an addictive read of vengeance, betrayal and obsessive love and I couldn’t stop reading until I knew the truth of Flora’s fate.
Meet the Author
Emma Hinds is a queer novelist and playwright from Manchester. She focuses on untold historical Queer narratives and her debut novel, The Knowing, from Bedford Square Publishers is coming in January 2024.
Evie Porter has everything a girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a picket fence, a fun group of friends.
The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.
First comes the identity. Once she’s given a name and location by her employer, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it.
Then the mark: Ryan Sumner.
The last piece of the puzzle is the job. For Evie, this job feels different. Ryan has gotten under her skin and she’s started to picture another kind of life for herself – one where her boss doesn’t pull the strings. But Evie can’t make any mistakes. Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to – her real identity – just walked right into this town. A woman, who looks just like her, has stolen her name – and she wants more. As Evie’s past begins to catch up with her, can she stay one step ahead to save her future?
Evie has never seen herself as the sort of girl who could have everything. The things many young girls dream of -marriage, security, family – have never really factored in her life, especially since she started working for the man on the end of the telephone. They’ve never met in person, but he is able to control her whole life even the person she’s going to be. From petty theft and credit card fraud she has been noticed by the boss and honed into one of his best operatives, able to throw on a new identity and slip into the mark’s life within a matter of days. Strangely, despite her criminality, the writer managed to make me feel empathy for Evie and even root for her a little bit. Her relationship with Ryan is at a stage where the friends are asking questions and want to meet this new woman. It’s a small town where everyone knows everyone else, especially the moneyed circles that Ryan grew up in. The rules dictate that he can dabble where he likes when it comes to liaisons, but when it comes to settling down it should be within their hallowed circles. An outsider might be tolerated if they’re rich, but Evie isn’t and neither is she one of them. As she dresses for a lunch date with the women from his circle of friends I found myself willing her to succeed. She’s clever in how she dresses – a bit like them but with a boho edge, enough to be accepted but still seem as an individual. I was nervous for her because it felt like she was being dropped into a shark tank and I had to keep reminding myself that Evie is the shark. As the weeks go by she’s starting to think she can relax, when she’s thrown a curve ball. At a horse racing event Ryan introduces her to a couple she’s never met before, a man who he clearly knows well with a woman who is closer to home than either of them realise. This is an old friend, but he’s with a woman Ryan doesn’t know and when she introduces herself Evie realises that her boss is playing games. The woman introduces herself as Lucca, Evie’s real name. Could she be about to lose the only thing that belongs to her – her true identity?
The author cleverly uses shorter chapters in between the main timeline that take us back through Evie’s previous jobs. They are glimpses into her past, teasing the reader with tidbits of information until we finally meet the real Evie. Sometimes our questions are answered and other times we’re surprised by a revelation that takes us in a different direction. We see how she’s pulled into her boss’s orbit, then tested until she’s the best operative he has. There’s a sadism and an element of gaslighting in what he does, sometimes sending multiple people on the same job to see who gets there first – the first prize is staying on his payroll. Although, people don’t get to just walk away from his employment because they know too much. So far Evie has had a great track record, earning well and staying on his good side, but on the last job something went wrong, could this new game be her punishment? There are only two people who Evie trusts, one is her fellow operator Devon – a man she employs to keep her safe and one step ahead of the competition. They have become close over time and he is her family. The other person is George, a messenger man for the boss who brings her the paperwork for each new identity. Can she really trust both of them? Oddly, even though she knows there must be something dodgy about him, she’s starting to trust Ryan more too and that’s a dangerous place to be. She knows there must be something dodgy about his haulage operation, because why else would she be here? Yet, even though this started as a job she feels they’re growing closer. It’s a rare feeling that’s never happened to her before. Could her fake relationship be developing into something real? The author keeps us guessing to the final pages and it’s so tense as Evie has to question the loyalties of those closest to her and juggle her burgeoning feelings for Ryan. Could he be playing her too? Has the boss pitted them against each other to see who comes out on top?
I enjoyed the back story of how Evie had ended up in this life of criminality. It was interesting to see her pluckiness and street smarts pitted against the women in Ryan’s circle. They’re so awful that I was rooting for her. The author has created an original and pacy thriller, full of intrigue and adrenaline filled moments. I found my usual loyalties and moral code turned completely on their head and was left hoping the con artist would win.
“There’s an old saying: The first lie wins. It’s not referring to the little white kind that tumble out with little to no thought; it refers to the big one. The one that changes the game. The one that is deliberate. The lie that sets the stage for everything that comes after it. And once the lie is told, it’s what most people believe to be true.”
Published by Headline 2nd January 2024
Ashley Elston lives in North Louisiana with her husband and three sons. She was a wedding and portrait photographer for ten years so most of her Saturday nights included eating cake, realizing no shoe is comfortable after standing for more than six hours and inevitably watching some groomsman do the alligator across the dance floor. Now, Ashley helps her husband run their small business and she writes as often as possible.
This has been my ‘in the bath’ book for the last three or four days and I don’t mind saying that I have been like a prune during that time because I kept reading ‘just another chapter’. I also drove my other half crazy by topping up the hot water every time I gave in to the story. I have to follow an unusual reading regime in my house. It was built in 1787 and has a lot of ‘quirks’, including the emptying of my entire tub of bath water into the kitchen below instead of the usual plumbed in route. A further quirk is that if I take my iPad into the bathroom to read from Kindle or NetGalley, it simply switches itself off. I can sometimes bypass this by putting the iPad into airplane mode before going into the bathroom, but it’s not a fail-safe method. So I tend to read real proof copies in the bath and downstairs, keeping my iPad for bed where I don’t want to wake my other half. I don’t like to put on a reading light or do what my sister-in-law does and go to bed in my brother’s night fishing hat with built in head-lamp. She didn’t like to keep him awake by reading with a light on in their camper van.
So now you know that we’re all a bit odd in my family, I’ll come back to the book, one that grabbed me straight away and kept hold of me till the final page. There’s just something compulsive about it. It could be the short chapters that are so snappy and often end on a cliffhanger. It could be the alternating narration between neighbours Natalie and Rani who live across from each other. The women have such strong narrative voices and are both in completely relatable positions in life; Natalie is the beautiful neighbour with the killer job and the lovely house across the road that Rani has been coveting since she moved here. In fact as soon as the For Sale sign went up she was over there with a different name and address, swanky clothes and great back story in order to view it. So when Natalie moves in Rani knows exactly which high end work tops she butters her toast at in the morning and the surprisingly sheltered garden made for children to play in. We all think the grass is greener at times, but few of us would go to the lengths that Rani will.
Natalie does appear to have everything going for her. She’s undeniably beautiful with honey blonde hair and designer clothing. Naturally she’s the high flyer in a corporate law firm, with the opportunity to become the youngest ever woman at her firm to become partner. Her handsome and older husband Charlie is attentive and thoughtful. The pair married in Tuscany and Charlie is keen to start a family, hence the beautiful home in just the right area. Sometimes, when people really love a house they’ve looked at, they might claim to feel immediately at home there or be able to see them living in these perfectly curated spaces but for Natalie it’s less of a feeling and more of a certainty. She has lived here before, right at the beginning of her life, before her dad left and when she had an imaginary friend, Noemi, to run around with. She knows she was running a risk not telling Charles, but when the elderly next door neighbour doesn’t seem to recognise her she seems to have a got away with it. What is luring her back there? Her mother Luella is unlikely to enjoy a trip down memory lane, in fact she’s the first to remind Natalie how her dad left them in a terrible state, financially as well as emotionally. She likes to remind Natalie what a good man Charles is: all Charles wants is to settle and have a family; to look after Natalie; to take the burden of her high-powered career away; help her cultivate the right sort of friends. Surely that can’t be bad?
Rani lives opposite in her cramped flat, being a full-time mum and wearing supermarket clothes. She watches Natalie settle in and we can see a perfect psychological storm starting to build. Rani will happily admit that, at times, Natalie’s lifestyle must be hard to keep up. Although that revelation only surfaces when she realises it does take work to be that put together and professional. At first though, Rani feels almost as if Natalie is a fantastical creature who simply drifts out of bed with not a hair out of place, naturally smelling of roses and never working for her enviable figure. Rani feels out of place next to her, in her daily mum uniform of leggings and a t-shirt. However, these thoughts come from Rani’s anxieties and feelings of inadequacy. Although she loves her beautiful girls, she does miss going to out to work and having something that is entirely hers. She also feels disconnected from Joel, although she loves him the years of babies and toddlers have wiped out any spontaneity or time for themselves. When Joel commits a huge betrayal Rani has a huge choice to make. Can they find a way back to each other?
Just like Rani, we are drawn in more and more by Natalie’s life. Cleverly the author has made sure that we get to see more than Rani, through Natalie’s chapters we get her inner thoughts while everyone else is still seeing the perfect exterior. We know that she’s having nightmares again, full of people close to her but who don’t look quite right. Noemi is back too, breaking into her thoughts and becoming so tantalisingly real. As the two women become friends, I was actually a little bit scared for Rani. She doesn’t know what she’s getting into, although she has an inkling the perfect marriage to Charles may not be all it seems. I was unsure where the danger was coming from, was Charles much more dangerous than he at first appears or is Natalie’s strange past all in her imagination? Why did she choose to live in this house, when her childhood seems like an endless nightmare and Luella comes across as a harsh and controlled woman? It’s as if she adopted the Royal family’s motto for her family; ‘never complain, never explain’. Rani is the first true friend Natalie has had in her adult life, so she’s not always as open as she could be or is so used to thinking what Luella’s take on the situation might be, she comes out with something that sounds wrong. As Natalie starts to enjoy a little freedom, what will Charles’s reaction be and what dangers might the two women face if they start to dig up her past? This book is so well paced and the tension just keeps building. I enjoyed the female characters in the book and the unflinching depiction of domestic abuse that forms part of the story. I found Rani a more engaging and rounded character than Natalie, but of course she would be – none of her past is missing. Natalie comes across as a borderline personality, she has no sense of her own identity and has always gone along with the strongest person in the room, adopting their values and attitudes as her own. Rani has a lot more to lose, not material possessions but a family and roots that she knows keep her grounded. It’s knowing the threat and knowing how much Rani has to lose that kept me reading, even if the bath water was getting a little cold.
Meet the Author
Mira V Shah is a writer, former City lawyer turned legal editor and the proud owner of three good dogs. She is the daughter of Indian African parents and lives in North London with her husband and the pack – merely a few miles from where she grew up, although she often dreams about retiring in Italy should her intermittent lottery entries prove successful.
She wrote her first ever novel in 2020 during the first UK lockdown after studying on the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course. HER was published by Hodder and Stoughton in November 2023.
It seems I’ve barely said goodbye to 2023 and I’m already six books in with my 2024 books. This looks like a bumper year of brilliant books and is likely to cause me some problems when summing up next New Year. It blows my mind to think there will be others that pop along and surprise me too. Here’s my first part and the second will be posted tomorrow. Here’s to a bookish New Year 🥂🍾📚
At The Stroke of Midnight by Jenni Keer.
It’s 1923 and in a decade that promises excitement and liberation, Pearl Glenham and her father are invited to a mysterious country house party on the Dorset coast, by a total stranger. Her father claims not to have any prior association with Highcliffe House, but it’s apparent that he has a shared history with several of the guests, although he won’t admit it. Belatedly discovering that her father was blackmailed into attending, Pearl’s worries are compounded when their host fails to arrive. Intimidated by everyone, Pearl escapes to the nearby cove and finds a mysterious mercury clock hidden in a cave. This strange encounter sets in motion a series of events that will culminate in an horrific house fire, claiming the lives of all the guests, including Pearl herself. But then Pearl wakes up back in the cave, seemingly destined never to live past midnight. She can repeat the day. But can she change its outcome?
Out on 10th March from Boldwood Books
Night Watching by Tracy Sierra
I don’t know very much about this novel, except for the blurb below and the many brilliant reviews from other thriller writers using so many superlatives to describe it.
There was someone in the house.
Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. Then she hears a noise – old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs…
In that split second, she has three choices. Should she hide? Should she run? Or should she fight?
Out on 8th February from Viking.
A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh
Ellen Lark is on the verge of marriage when she and her fiancé receive an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell. Ellen knows immediately what Bell really wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell’s student in a technique called Visible Speech. As he instructed her in speaking, Bell also confided in her about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, on the cusp of wealth and renown, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent to the telephone, which is being challenged by rivals.
But Ellen has a different story to tell: that of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in pursuit of ambition and personal gain, and cut Ellen off from a community in which she had come to feel truly at home. It is a story no one around Ellen seems to want to hear – but there may never be a more important time for her to tell it.
Out on 1st Feb from Tinder Press.
Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle
Daphne believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it – the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; 5 weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally the night of a blind date at her favourite LA restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake. But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information – that if he found out – would break his heart. Rebecca always manages to do something a little bit different with her romances and I’ve loved all of her books so far.
Out on 19th March from Quercus
Christ on a Bike by Orla Owen.
Cerys receives an unexpected inheritance but there are rules attached, twisted rules that have to be followed if she is to receive it in full . As she settles into her new life, she begins to feel trapped and senses that the villagers, her sister and a man she keeps seeing on a bicycle are constantly watching her. Cerys, desperate to control her own future, decides to try break free but the past is ever present and dictates her fate. I found the blurb of this intriguing and I have a recommendation from fellow blogger Ellie and she’s usually great for unusual reads.
Out on 25th Jan from Bluemoose Books.
One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall.
I’ve been lucky enough to have a proof of this one so I can honestly say WOW! This one will blow your socks off. Cole is the perfect husband: a romantic, supportive of his wife, Mel’s career, keen to be a hands-on dad, not a big drinker. A good guy. So when Mel leaves him, he’s floored. She was lucky to be with a man like him. Craving solitude, he accepts a job on the coast and quickly settles into his new life where he meets reclusive artist Lennie.
Lennie has made the same move for similar reasons. She is living in a crumbling cottage on the edge of a nearby cliff. It’s an undeniably scary location, but sometimes you have to face your fears to get past them. As their relationship develops, two young women go missing while on a walk protesting gendered violence, right by where Cole and Lennie live. Finding themselves at the heart of a police investigation and media frenzy, it soon becomes clear that they don’t know each other very well at all. This is an up to the minute look at relationships and the gender war. If so many men are feminists, why are so many women scared to walk home at night?
Out on 4th Jan from Macmillan
Anna O by Matthew Blake
ANNA O HASN’T OPENED HER EYES FOR FOUR YEARS
Not since the night she was found in a deep sleep by the bodies of her best friends, suspected of a chilling double murder. For Doctor Benedict Prince, a forensic psychologist on London’s Harley Street, waking Anna O could be career-defining. As an expert in sleep, he knows all about the darkest chambers of the mind; the secrets that lie buried in the subconscious. As he begins Anna O’s treatment – studying his patient’s dreams, combing her memories, visiting the site where the horrors played out – he pulls on the thread of a much deeper, darker mystery.
Awakening Anna O isn’t the end of the story, it’s just the beginning.
Out on 1st Feb by HarperCollins
Goodbye Birdy Greenwing by Ericka Waller
Great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave and impossible to forget…
Birdie, Ada and Jane are all lost. Life has not turned out as they planned, and all three of them are scared to ask for help, to say yes – or to say no. To take a chance on someone else. Birdie Greenwing has been at a loose end ever since her beloved twin sister and husband passed away eight years previously. Too proud and stubborn to admit she is lonely, Birdie’s world has shrunk. Jane Brown hoped moving to Brighton would be a new start, away from her overbearing mother. While she finds it hard to stand up for herself, her daughter Frankie has no problem telling people what she does and doesn’t want. Ada Kowalski thought training to become an Oncologist in England would be a dream come true. In reality she is isolated, exhausted, the professional detachment she has had to develop now threatens to take over her life.
When a series of incidents brings their lives crashing together, these three unlikely allies find that there’s always more to a person than meets the eye.
Out on 18th April by Doubleday.
The King’s Witches by Kate Foster
Women whisper secrets to each other; it is how we survive.
1589. Princess Anne of Denmark is betrothed to King James VI of Scotland – a royal union designed to forever unite the two countries. But first, she must pass the trial period: one year of marriage in which she must prove herself worthy of being Scotland’s new Queen. If the King and the Scottish royal court in Edinburgh find her wanting, she faces permanent exile to a convent. Determined to fulfil her duties to King and country, Anne resolves to be the perfect royal bride. Until she meets Lord Henry. By her side is Kirsten Sorenson, her loyal and pious lady’s maid. But whilst tending to Anne’s every need, she has her own secret motives for the royal marriage to be a success . . .
Meanwhile, in North Berwick, a young housemaid by the name of Jura is dreaming of a new life. She practises the healing charms taught to her by her mother, and when she realises she is no longer safe under her master’s roof, she escapes to Edinburgh. But it isn’t long before she finds herself caught up in the witchcraft mania that has gripped not just the capital but the new queen . . This is the follow up to Kate’s brilliant book The Maiden.
Out on 6th June from Mantle.
The Knowing by Emma Hinds.
Powerful, intoxicating and full of suspense. The Knowing is a darkly spellbinding novel about a girl fighting for her survival in the decaying criminal underworlds. It is a hard-hitting story of love, obsession and betrayal.
Whilst working as a living canvas for an abusive tattoo artist in the slums of 19th-century New York, Flora meets Minnie, an enigmatic circus performer who offers her love and refuge in an opulent townhouse that is home to the menacing and predatory Mr Chester Merton. Flora earns her keep reading tarot cards for his guests whilst struggling to harness her gift, the Knowing – an ability to summon the dead. Caught in a dark love triangle between Minnie and Chester, Flora begins to unravel the secrets inside their house. Then at her first public séance in the infamous cathouse Hotel du Woods, Flora hears the spirit of a murdered boy prostitute and exposes his killer, setting off a train of events that leaves her fighting for her life. The Knowing is a stunning debut inspired by real historical characters including Maud Wagner, one of the first known female tattoo artists, New York gang the Dead Rabbits, and characters from PT Barnum’s circus in the 1800s. It is so up my street it’s ridiculous and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Out on 18th January from Bedford Square Publishers.
The Collapsing Wave by Doug Johnstone
This is my current read and I’m really enjoying being back with Ava, Heather, Lennox and of course Sandy. This follows on from the first in the series, picking up from that moment in Ullapool where the trio reunited Sandy the Enceladon with his fellow aliens and they made the Great Descent into the sea loch. Now Lennox and Heather are detained nearby, in a purpose built centre called New Broom that’s part prison and part research facility. Run by the American military, the base is dedicated to researching any individual enceladons they can catch. This is a form of torture as they are separated from the whole and forced to communicate telepathically with Lennox and Heather. Meanwhile, Ava is on trial for the murder of her husband after years of domestic violence, but what next for her and her daughter Chloe if she’s acquitted? As Sandy tries to help his detained friends, they all learn just how far the Americans will go to reach their objectives. However, the protest camp near New Broom is filled with people who didn’t believe the government’s explanation for the Great Descent. They know that the the Americans are experimenting on something more than marine life, something extraterrestrial. Could their help ensure freedom for the Enceladons as well as Lennox, Heather and Ava? A brilliant read, full of Doug Johnstone’s usual mix of politics, philosophy and buckets of empathy alongside the aliens.
Out on 14th March from Orenda Books.
The Unfinished Business of Eadie Brown byFreya North
Eadie Browne is an odd child with unusual parents, living in a strange house neighbouring the local cemetery. Bullied at school – but protected by her two best friends Celeste and Josh, and her many imaginary friends lying six feet under next door – Eadie muddles her way through. Arriving in Manchester as a student in the late 1980s, Eadie experiences a novel freedom she never imagined and it’s seductive. She can be who she wants to be, do as she pleases, and no one back home needs to know. As Manchester embraces the dizzying, colourful euphoria of Rave counterculture, Eadie is swept along, blithely ignoring danger and reality. Until, one night, her past comes hurtling at her with ramifications which will continue into her adult life.
Now, as the new Millennium beckons, Eadie is turning 30 with a marriage in tatters. She must travel back to where she once lived for a funeral she can’t quite comprehend. As she journeys from the North to the South, from the present to the past, Eadie contemplates all that was then – and all that is now – in this moving love letter to youth.
Out on Feb 1st from Welbeck Publishing
The London Bookshop Affair by Louise Fein
London, 1962: The world is teetering on the brink of nuclear war but life must go on. Celia Duchesne longs for a career, but with no means or qualifications, passes her time working at a dusty bookshop. The day a handsome American enters the shop, she thinks she might have found her way out of the monotony. Just as the excitement of a budding relationship engulfs her, a devastating secret draws her into the murky world of espionage.
France, 1942: Nineteen-year-old Anya Moreau was dropped behind enemy lines to aid the resistance, sending messages back home to London via wireless transmitter. When she was cruelly betrayed, evidence of her legacy and the truth of her actions were buried by wartime injustices. As Celia learns more about Anya—and her unexpected connection to the undercover agent—she becomes increasingly aware of furious efforts, both past and present, to protect state secrets. With her newly formed romance taking a surprising turn and the world on the verge of nuclear annihilation, Celia must risk everything she holds dear, in the name of justice.
Out on 29th February from William Morrow.
Loot by Tania James
Meet Abbas. Woodcarver, toy maker, dreamer. Abbas is seventeen when he is whisked away to Tipu Sultan’s glorious palace in Mysore. Apprenticed to the clockmaker Monsieur Du Leze, he is ordered to create an ingenious musical tiger to delight Tipu’s sons. In the eccentric Du Leze, Abbas finds an unexpected friend who encourages his skill and hunger for learning, and through whom he also meets the unforgettable Jehanne, who has questions and ambitions of her own.
But when British soldiers attack and loot Mysore, Abbas’s world is turned upside down and his prized tiger is shipped off to a country estate in England. In order to carve out his place in the world, he must follow. A hero’s quest, a love story, an exuberant heist novel that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across the world, Loot is a dazzling, wildly inventive and irresistible feat of storytelling from a writer at the height of her powers.
Out on 25th Jan by Harvill Secker.
This Tale is Forbidden by Polly Crosby
Nesta believes in the fairy tales – the true stories of powerful magical women who shaped and ruled the world decades ago. But the world has changed since then, and now, she is forbidden from wandering too far from the isolated woodland cottage where she lives with her grandmother. Nesta longs more than anything to see the city that lies beyond the forest, and when her grandmother is abducted, she gets her chance, journeying there in the hope of rescuing her.
But once there, she is horrified to see her grandmother’s warnings were true: girls are forced to wear certain clothes and punished if they don’t behave in certain ways. The city’s Authorities have rewritten history, replacing the fairytale heroines with weak girls who must rely on men. Worse still – everyone believes this is how the world has always been. Only Nesta knows the truth. But truth is a dangerous thing, and suddenly she finds herself a target. Can she evade the Authorities long enough to rescue her grandmother and liberate everyone else, bringing magic back into the world? This is a YA debut from Polly, whose writing I absolutely love.
Out on 4th Jan by Scholastic
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
This is the second book in the Emily Wilde series and another beautiful cover to add to my collection. Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore, and has catalogued many secrets of the Hidden Folk in her encyclopaedia with her infuriatingly charming fellow scholar, Wendell Bambleby, by her side. But Bambleby is more than just a brilliant and unbearably handsome scholar. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, in search of a door back to his realm. By lucky happenstance, Emily’s new project, a map of the realms of faerie, will take them on an adventure to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans. But with new friendships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.
Out on 16th February by Orbit Books
Spitting Gold by Camilla Lowkis
Paris, 1866. When Baroness Sylvie Devereux receives a house-call from Charlotte Mothe, the sister she disowned, she fears her shady past as a spirit medium has caught up with her. But with their father ill and Charlotte unable to pay his bills, Sylvie is persuaded into one last con. Their marks are the de Jacquinots: dysfunctional aristocrats who believe they are haunted by their great aunt, brutally murdered during the French Revolution. Sylvie and Charlotte will need to deploy every trick to terrify the family out of their gold – until they experience inexplicable horrors themselves. The sisters start to question if they really are at the mercy of a vengeful spirit. And what other deep, dark secrets threaten to come to light…?
Spitting Gold is a darkly atmospheric and propulsive historical debut that twists and turns, blending gothic mystery with a captivating sapphic romance.
Out on April 18th from Doubleday
Crow Moon by Suzy Aspley
When the crow moon rises, the darkness is unleashed…
Martha Strangeways is struggling to find purpose in her life, after giving up her career as an investigative reporter when her young twins died in a house fire. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, her life changes when she stumbles across the body of a missing teenager – a tragedy that turns even more sinister when a poem about crows is discovered inked onto his back. When another teenager goes missing in the remote landscape, Martha is drawn into the investigation, teaming up with DI Derek Summers, as malevolent rumours begin to spread and paranoia grows. As darkness descends on the village of Strathbran, it soon becomes clear that no one is safe, including Martha… Both a nerve-shattering, enthralling and atmospheric thriller and a moving tale of grief and psychological damage, Crow Moon is a staggeringly accomplished debut and the start of an addictive, unforgettable series.
Out on 14th March from Orenda Books
The Gathering by C.J.Tudor
A small Alaskan town. A missing boy. A brutal murder. A detective brought in from out of state to assist the former sherriff who investigated a similar murder twenty-five years ago. But are they hunting a twisted psychopath – or something even more terrifying? I am determined to read C.J. Tudor’s back catalogue this year as she’s an author I’m very aware of but haven’t had time to read. This one sounds amazing.
Out on 11th April from Michael Joseph.
I have made an error in the above book covers graphic and added Halfway House by Helen Fitzgerald, if you want to know about her brilliant new novel take a look at part one.
When I received an email asking if I’d be interested in a finished copy of Fern Brady’s memoir I was typing ‘Yes please’ before I’d even finished reading the email. Something about Fern made me sit up and take notice when I was half-watching a late night showing of Live at the Apollo. She was such an interesting mix of intelligence, wit, forthrightness and that little bit of indefinable magic that captures an audience and takes them with you. By the time she appeared in Taskmaster I was a big fan. If you listen to my partner, this was because of her approach to tasks, which is very like my own. She dissected tasks in a very analytical way that was completely obvious to her, then when her team mates didn’t catch on (quite often in one case) she would speak to them as if they were insufferably stupid. Apparently the look in Fern’s eyes and her tone of voice reminded him of me watching a quiz show or reality series. Every Monday I become inexplicably wound up by Mastermind, especially when contestants pass questions instead of just throwing an answer out there. It’s obvious to me that if passes count against you in the tie-break situation, it would be better to simply shout ‘banana’ if you don’t know the answer. They might look stupid but they’d have no passes. So I guess I felt something of a kinship with her and the way our brains work, although in other respects we couldn’t be more different.
I had heard that Fern was recently diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum, a very hard won diagnosis for women and something I’ve had some experience of in my mental health work. Any mental health team has it’s share of people who are neuro-divergent, especially older people whose schools were simply unaware of the condition, whatever gender the individual might be. I’ve seen first hand the devastation that can be caused by undiagnosed autism. The inability to fit in at school, the crippling ‘shyness’ that leads to bullying, subsequent depression and anxiety, institutionalisation from long periods on psychiatric wards, coping strategies such as self-imposed isolation, drinking or drug taking. Then all the social issues that come along with these difficulties, like struggling to find or keep employment, poverty, neglect or even being preyed upon by those in society who look out for people to cuckoo or subject to modern slavery. This may sound extreme to some, but I’ve personally seen all of the above happen to people who were not diagnosed early. Not that diagnosis is the cure for all of these terrible life circumstances, but labelling does help because it enables the individual to access benefits, housing, support and some degree of protection in society. Fern was one of these people, born in an era when diagnosis was more common, but usually reserved for boys. The problem is that autism looks very different in women – women don’t fall into the Sheldon Cooper, no girlfriend, obsessive, Star Trek loving, nerd stereotype.
Fern was diagnosed exactly twenty years after she first told a doctor she had autism. Prior to that doctors told her she couldn’t possibly be autistic because she made eye contact and she’d had boyfriends (as if the ability to maintain a heterosexual relationship inoculated you from being neuro-divergent). One night after performing, Fern told her boyfriend that an audience member thought she might have Asperger’s and she should read a book called Aspergirls. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but as her boyfriend started to read up on it he said to her ‘this is an exact description of you’. Often the signs of autism are simply missed in women because we have become too good at disguising or masking how we truly feel in a situation. Women are able, particularly in a work environment, to put on a mask. For example, all through school and university I was terrified of public speaking. I didn’t want everyone’s eyes on me, I would start to feel hot, sweaty and go completely purple in the face. Eventually I became so embarrassed about being purple in the face I became anxious about that too. These symptoms were exacerbated by a terrifying exercise at the beginning of teacher training where we had to pick a song that told a story and then sing it, unaccompanied in our seminar group. I felt like my mum’s pressure cooker, shuddering with heat and pressure until it gave a high pitched whistle and she would let the steam out. It felt like that but with nobody on hand to release the pressure. When things like this happened and even now when I’m involved in confrontation I’m right back there sweating, with a face like a giant blueberry. I didn’t last a term. However, if I am teaching a whole class of people, like one of my therapeutic writing workshops, I barely break a sweat. I have put on the mask of an expert, someone who knows what they’re talking about and how much it can help. So, as an expert, I can do the task.
Fern struggles to fit in wherever she goes in life, whether it’s school, college or work. She can’t fathom the unspoken social codes that govern our existence, especially in groups of women. Her obsessions are not the archetypal trains, sci-fi or comics. As a child she was obsessed with learning languages, culminating in a successful application to Edinburgh University to study Arabic and Persian. She had no desire to visit the countries where these languages were spoken, she just loved doing verb drills and was running out of languages. She played the piano incredibly well at a young age too, but because these were seen as ‘positive’ pastimes it never occurred to anyone to label them as autistic tendencies. She funded her studies at university by stripping, somewhere she felt that she fitted in. Although that was probably due to the fact that most stripper’s dressing rooms have their fair share of misfits. She didn’t have to be herself in the club, she put on a persona and got on with it. The early years of her comedy career were harder, mainly because there were more social codes to navigate, such as having to pretend she would like to have coffee and ‘get to know’ someone instead of just asking if she could be considered for a panel show slot. Sometimes it felt as if people wasted years playing games just to work with someone, when a simple ‘do you want to work together?’ Would have sufficed. She noticed that people didn’t like her to be so direct, particularly standing up in meetings and asking what the point was? This was something I used to do regularly in my last job as an advocate for people with disabilities. I had a huge case load on part-time hours so if someone called a meeting with no obvious point I would ask if they could quickly get to the point so I could assess if it was worth me sitting there. I remember saying that I’d like to get back to my desk and ‘do some real work’. I was there for the clients who needed me, not my colleagues. In hindsight I can see why our receptionist was terrified of me.
I loved the honesty of this book. Fern is brutally honest, even about those things that perhaps don’t show her in the best light. Her frankness about the autism, but also the mental health problems and addictions she experienced as a result of remaining undiagnosed, is admirable because it will help people who are in that destructive cycle. Her teenage years are particularly fraught and painful to read, mainly because she’s totally misunderstood by those who are supposed to love her. I found Fern’s retrospective take on those years and her post-diagnosis discussion with her mother was particularly moving. Fern is staunchly feminist and I loved that her inability to read social cues meant she didn’t internalise some of the bullshit that still exists in society about how women should behave. When in a shared flat at university, her flat mates basically slut-shamed her for having too many men at the flat. Hilariously, Fern replies that there seven days in a week and she’s shown restraint by only bringing a man back four times. There are other laugh out loud moments like this, where Fern is more than happy to create humour from her situation. There were some similarities in religious upbringing that resonated with me and made me smile.
This is not the typical redemptive narrative arc memoir where someone transcends their illness/situation in order to tie up any loose ends and become the ‘superhuman’ that we should all emulate. I have a disability and this is a narrative trope I can’t stand to see in disability memoirs. People don’t overcome a permanent disability, whether it’s visible or invisible; physical or mental. We learn to accommodate it and live alongside it if we’re lucky. Fern shows that beautifully by describing her difficulties working within her industry with her diagnosis. She describes the Taskmaster experience brilliantly and it’s refreshing to read a celebrity admitting to ongoing issues with their health. It’s more of that brutal honesty she’s famous for and it helps to know that what we see on TV doesn’t come without it’s difficulties, particularly the meltdowns which are a result of the stresses and strains of filming. As you can probably tell I identified strongly with this book and I have wondered if it might be worth mentioning to my GP that I have struggled with social codes; have been told that people are scared of my rather forthright opinions and ideas; have physical crashes after periods of stress; avoid parties; have repetitive mind games or movements that calm me and help me go to sleep; prefer to deal with people in writing; watch repetitive programs that are calming to me; prefer to see friends one to one rather than socialise in groups of women. These may just be personality quirks, but I have wondered and could see how a label might help me understand some of my behaviours. I really welcomed Fern’s story in terms of understanding myself better, whether diagnosed or not, but I also admired her ability to bare her soul and find the funny in her difficulties.
Meet the Author
Fern Marie Brady (born 26 May 1986) is a Scottish comedian, podcaster, and writer. Before becoming a stand-up comedian Brady worked as a journalist. She achieved fame as a stand-up comedian by entering stand-up competitions such as at the Edinburgh Film Theatre. As a result of her success as a stand-up she was invited on to comedy panel shows such as 8 Out Of Ten Cats. In 2020 she became a podcaster when she co-created a podcast entitled Wheel of Misfortune.
Brady was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum in 2021, as an adult. She has been active within the field of autism education since learning of her diagnosis. She has written how she has been dealing with the diagnosis in her 2023 memoir Strong Female Character.
The word Vene would have used to describe her mother was ‘cold’ because they’ve always been at odds, even in childhood. So when news of her terminal illness comes, Vene wonders what to do. Is a reconciliation out of the question? She returns to Napa only to find that Olivia is as harsh as she always was. Yet, when Vene finds a cookbook belonging to her mother, it’s like a window on a different woman. Upstairs her dying mother is judgemental and snappy, but between the pages of the cookbook she’s a young woman full of romance and longing, but also duty and a terrible heartache. This is the mum she’s never met and she wants to go on an emotional journey, to connect with the ‘real’ Olivia before it’s too late.
Using a dual timeline, half a century apart Vene tries to unearth the secrets and sacrifice of two different women. I loved the use of food as a medium to communicate emotion and nostalgia. We all have these tastes that rocket us back to childhood in one mouthful. In fact one of my favourite memoirs is Nigel Slater’s Taste which conjures up so many memories of his mother. We don’t always see our parents as people in their own right, especially when there are secrets and we don’t know the truth of everything they’ve endured. Mothers don’t always fully see their daughters, often because they’re so busy trying to protect them from a similar harm to the one they suffered when they were a young woman. In trying not to repeat our youthful mistakes and create a pattern, we make new ones. I thought there was so much insight into women’s emotional history here. There was a running theme of service and sacrifice that reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Are women now able to make life choices completely for themselves or do they sacrifice this freedom to look after the needs of others? As an artist can we ever be fulfilled if we don’t write, paint or create? I thought the setting really emphasised the idea of food and nostalgia too, because just reading it I could imagine myself on holiday there. The place was beautifully described and the recipes with their accompanying wines between the chapters conjured up so many tastes and smells. Don’t read this when hungry! I love Italian food so it was wonderful to read those colours and tastes brought to life.
Emotionally and psychologically the author presents heartbreak in such a raw and honest way. Olivia’s past is full of loss and the pain of that has informed the way she brings up her daughter. The hurt of the past always affects our future relationships in some way, but is it possible to acknowledge that hurt and stop it shaping our future and that of our children? If not, a destructive pattern emerges and there is definitely trauma between these two generations. As our trips into Olivia’s past start to explain more about her present, I was hoping that Vene’s newly found knowledge of her mother’s motivations would open up a space for them to communicate honestly and truly know each other as women. I felt more involved in the past timeline, which often happens to me in dual timeline stories, and found the young Olivia a more engaging character. However, it was the dynamic between the two of them I loved and the sense that women have a lot to learn from each other when they communicate honestly. I wondered about how we value the older women in our families and whether we’ve lost that ability to prize them? Is there a collective wisdom we’re missing out on when we stop seeing our older relatives as people. Every so often it’s good to remind ourselves that these people who happen to be our parents, had lives long before they had us and I wondered whether there were incredible stories buried within the past generations of my own family.
Meet the Author
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jennifer Hamm graduated with a BA in English at UCLA and began her writing career developing screenplays for movies and television. As a travel writer, she has covered the globe on assignment for various magazines and brands. She also writes It’s Only for A Year, a long-running blog chronicling her adventures raising her four boys in two countries. Hamm currently splits her time between London and Los Angeles. OneFriday in Napa is her first novel.
When Ella from Hachette Books messaged me to say there was a book she thought would be right up my street I was a little surprised. I didn’t think the publicists would know me and my book choices well enough to make predictions about what I’d like. I was wrong. She knew exactly who this book was for. ‘It’s about a man turning into a Great White Shark’ she told me, well what’s not to like? I was hooked on the idea before the book even arrived. Lewis and Wren have fallen in love. They’ve no idea that their first year of marriage will also be their last. It’s only weeks after their wedding when Lewis receives a rare and shocking diagnosis. He has an unusual mutation. Although he might retain some of his consciousness, his memories and possibly his intellect, his body will become that of a Great White Shark. Lewis is complicated, an artist at heart he has always wanted to write the great American play for his generation. How will his liberal and loving heart beat on within the body of one of the earth’s most ruthless predators? He also has to come to terms with never fulfilling his dreams, but expressing that anger with shark DNA in his system has huge repercussions. He has to come to terms with leaving Wren behind, for her own safety. Wren wants to fight on. To find a way of living and loving each other as Lewis changes. She is told that there will come a point when this will be too dangerous. Lewis will then have to live in a state run facility or free in the ocean. It’s when she sees a glimpse of his developing carnivorous nature that a memory from her past is triggered. Wren has to make a terrible, heart-wrenching decision.
I felt emotionally devastated by this beautiful novel that uses a fantastical premise to unleash experiences of grief, love, loss and potentially, healing. Wren and Lewis reminded me of my relationship with my late husband. We married after six weeks and even then I knew I wouldn’t have him forever. I had almost seven years until I lost him. This book explained how my own grief experience felt. After Jez’s death I felt furious with anyone who said ‘Jez would think..’ or claimed they could sense his presence. I could feel nothing. No voice, no presence, nothing. It was as if he had never existed. For Lewis there becomes a point when his incessant desire to feed will become his overriding thought, strong enough to wipe out all others, will that include his love for Wren? He will not exist as Lewis anymore, the doctors tell Wren, he will not even know who she is, because he will be all shark. Wren has to come to terms with letting Lewis go, but how do you walk away from the most precious thing in your life? I had a point where I had to decide that I couldn’t look after my husband any more. I was exhausted, we had no carers in place and it didn’t feel safe to try and go it alone. Besides, as his brother told me, I had to start building a life without Jez. I cried more the night he went into nursing care, than when he died, because I felt I’d let him down and I knew he would die. He did, only six weeks later. Wren is told the same after a terrible violent incident occurs at the after-party for the play Lewis’s students have worked on. Wren calls the specialist nurse for advice, but she urges Wren that it’s time. Will they be able to say goodbye?
Despite these similarities to my life, it wasn’t Lewis’s story that broke my heart, It was Wren’s story. This is not the first time Wren has had to say goodbye. When she was barely a teenager her mother also had a rare diagnosis, but her mutation was that of a Komodo Dragon, equally deadly and impossible to live with. One scene between Wren and her mother, as she leaves her in the state facility, was so deeply moving I cried. I found it unbearable. This is what’s astonishing about Emily Habeck’s debut. It seems so fantastical, yet is utterly real in it’s experiences and emotions. Using such unusual animals as the mutation/illness creates a distance from the feelings involved. Some readers might even think the premise ridiculous – but the terrible anticipation, the moment of loss, the grief and relentless momentum of life are exactly the same. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the decision to put an elderly parent in a home or a Komodo Dragon into a facility, the guilt and pain as you walk away feels identical. It isn’t all relentless misery though. We meet Wren’s mother as the teenager she once was, experiencing love for the first time. We also go back to Lewis and his new life in the ocean, as his emotions flit between loss and what’s for dinner. His friendship with Margaret is so funny. She was once a human too and she’s been looking for another hybrid to talk to, and boy does she talk?! She’d try the patience of a shark. In a beautifully unusual way and in an almost poetic prose, this beautiful debut is about life. It’s ups and downs, the horrendous losses and the gains: the naivety of first love, becoming a mother, our love and care for an elderly parent, friendships and realising that a special little girl sees you as her dad. Life is constant adaptation, evolving and developing all the time. Every end is a beginning. This is such a special novel, an incredible debut with such a keen grasp of what being human is all about. I can see this becoming an all-time favourite for me. It quite simply took my breath away.
Meet the Author
Emily Habeck has a BFA in theater from SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts as well as master’s degrees from Vanderbilt Divinity School and Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. She grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Shark Heart is her first novel.
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