#WWWWednesday – 1st May 2024

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

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Currently reading

Under the Banner of Valor by Gary Corbin (eARC) 

Val Dawes and the WAVE Squad get called into action after Clayton’s family planning clinics receive an ominous threat: Close the clinics, or else.

WAVE Squad member Valorie Dawes takes this threat personally, as her closest friend since childhood, Beth, discloses that she’s pregnant and is considering an abortion.

Can Val support her friend and keep her safe from the armed madman? Or will Beth’s stubborn recklessness thrust her into harm’s way?

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus)

How do you find the courage to make your own life?

Marianne Clifford, teenage daughter of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, falls helplessly and absolutely for eighteen-year-old Simon Hurst, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon’s plans are blown off course, he leaves for Paris and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

It is Marianne who tells this piercing story of first love, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, whilst her smart, ironic narration tellingly reveals so much more. Finding her way in 1960s Chelsea, and supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella, she continues to seek the life she never stops craving. And in Paris, beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst continues to nurse the secret which will alter everything.

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Recently finished

The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse (Moonflower Books)

The Montford Maniac by M.R.C. Kasasian (Canelo) 

Darkness Does Not Come At Once by Glenn Bryant (Book Guild)

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What Cathy Will Read Next

How To Make A Bomb: A Novel by Rupert Thomson (eARC, Apollo via NetGalley)

If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial. Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it.

Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life.

Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Inés, a Spanish academic with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn’t end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on the south coast of Crete. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he claims he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that has become impossible to bear? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence, or is he utterly self-deluded?

As he tries to make sense of both his personal circumstances and the world surrounding him, he finds himself embarking on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster.