#WWWWednesday – 14th February 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

Remember, Remember by Elle Machray (eARC, HarperNorth via NetGalley)

1770. Delphine lives in the shadows of London: a secret, vibrant world of smugglers, courtesans and small rebellions. Four years ago, she escaped enslavement at great personal cost. Now, she must help her brother Vincent do the same.

While Britain’s highest court fails to administer justice for Vincent, little rebellions are no longer enough. What’s needed is a big, explosive plot – one that will strike at the heart of the transatlantic slave trade. But can one Black woman, one fuse and one match bring down an Empire?

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey (ARC, Penguin)

Yorkshire, 1979. Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South. Because of the murders.

Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn’t an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv’s mum stopped talking. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?

So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don’t. But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families – and between each other – than they ever thought possible.

What if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?

In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lola Akinmade Åkerström (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Kemi is ready to change her life. She’s sick of being second-guessed in the boardroom; tired of smiling politely while men gaze at her body; bored of dating surveys that tell her Black African women are the least desired in America. Moving across the world, for a new job, certainly things will be different?

Brittany-Rae is tired of serving others. She’s determined not to struggle like her parents did. As a flight attendant, she’s seen the way the super-wealthy float, untouchable and easy, and she envies it. As a model in her twenties, she had a taste of that privilege. Now pushing forty, she knows that to have one kind of freedom, she must sacrifice another.

Muna began her treacherous journey two years ago. Then, she was a family of three. Now her mother and younger brother are buried somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. She’s been granted asylum, but she can’t shake the feeling that she will never belong. When your only family is a stack of passport photos, it’s hard to grow new roots.

In search of escape, these three women find themselves in Stockholm, a city that prides itself on being egalitarian and open. Instead of a fresh new start, they find silent racism, fetishisation and tokenism – and another society that just wants to put them in a box.

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Recently finished

Sufferance by Charles Palliser (Guernica Editions)

The Shadow Network (Devlin & Dempsey #5) by Tony Kent (Elliott & Thompson)

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What Cathy Will Read Next

The Other Princess by Denny S. Bryce (eARC, Allison & Busby via NetGalley)

A princess enslaved becomes goddaughter to a queen.

By the time she was seven years old, Aina had been born into life as an Egbado princess, witnessed the brutal killing of her entire family, and been enslaved to a rival chieftain. With a death sentence hanging over her head, she would also face being bartered as an exotic trophy, renamed and presented to the distant Queen Victoria as a ‘gift’.

From these traumatic beginnings, Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s will to survive led her to negotiate Her Majesty’s court, friends in high places and to flourish in a world far removed from her rural African upbringing. From West Africa to Windsor Castle, The Other Princess is a vivid imagining of the life of Queen Victoria’s Black goddaughter, shining a light on a woman searching for home, love and identity.