On What Cathy Read Next last week
Blog posts
Monday – I published my review of the audiobook of This Lovely City by Louise Hare, one of my 20 Books of Summer 2021.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Secondary Characters Who Deserve More Love.
Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to have a good nose around what others are reading.
Thursday – I shared my review of historical crime novel, A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry, another of my 20 Books of Summer 2021.
Friday – I published my review of Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller, also one of my 20 Books of Summer 2021.
Saturday – I shared my thoughts on the audiobook version of The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Simon Mawer.
As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.
New arrivals
Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun, translated by Janet Hong (eARC, Head of Zeus)
In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold.
Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she’s lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened.
Told at different points in time from the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on’s classmates, Lemon is a piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel and is a must-read novel of 2021.
The Silence of Scheherazade by Defne Suman, translated by Betsy Göksel (eARC, Head of Zeus)
On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore, and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, seventeen years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.
But let us not rush, for much will happen between then and now. Birth, death, romance and grief are all to come as these peaceful, cosmopolitan streets are used as bargaining chips in the wake of the First World War.
Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time.
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris (hardcover)
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry – freed by the Emancipation Proclamation – seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.
Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: A Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz
- Top Ten Tuesday
- WWW Wednesday
- Book Review: Wolf at the Door by Sarah Hawkswood
- Book Review: End of Summer by Anders de la Motte
- Book Review: Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army by Edoardo Albert
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