#WWWWednesday – 13th December 2023

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

A NetGalley ARC and a book for my personal Backlist Burrow reading challenge.

The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan Jean Kwok (Hodder & Stoughton)

Japanese-occupied Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s children are in terrible danger.

Her eldest child Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. Jasmin, the youngest, lives confined in a basement for her own safety. And her son, Abel, has disappeared without a trace.

Cecily knows too that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

Back Trouble by Clare Chambers (Cornerstone)

On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he’d reached an all-time low when a topple on a London street lays him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip starts to write the story of his life.

But the mundane catalogue of seaside holidays, broken relationships and unspoken truths, reveals more surprises, both comic and touching, than Philip or his family ever bargained for. Even, perhaps, a happy ending.

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Recently finished

The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok (Viper)

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (Transworld)

Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler (No Exit)

Robert Quinlan and his wife Darla teach at Florida State University. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain below the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified.

William Quinlan, Robert and Jimmy’s father, a veteran of World War II, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across all their lives once again when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father’s bedside.

And a disturbed homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a devastating impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family. (Insightful & immersive – full review to follow)

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

Munich Wolf by Rory Clements (Zaffre)

Munich in the 1930s is a magnet for young, rich, aristocratic Brits. They come to learn German, but also to go wild, free at last from the suffocating constraints of strait-laced England. They ski in the Alps, swim in the lakes, drink in the beer cellars and fall for the charms of dashing SS officers. What they don’t see – or choose to ignore – is the cold, brutal, underbelly of the Nazi movement which considers Munich its spiritual home.

But not every German is a Nazi. Murder squad detective Sebastian Wolff is one of those walking a tight line between doing his job and falling foul of the political party he abhors.

When a high-born English girl is murdered, Wolff is ordered to solve the crime. He has a fine record and, importantly, he is fluent in English. But he realises the mission is a poison chalice, for Hitler is taking a personal interest in the case – as is his young English acolyte Miss Unity Mitford.

Wolff is hemmed in on all sides. At work, he is watched closely by the secret police, at home he could be denounced at any moment by his own son, a fervent member of the Hitler Youth. And when he begins to suspect that the killer might be linked to the highest reaches of the Nazi hierarchy, he fears his task is simply impossible – and that he will become the killer’s next victim.