Category: HF Reading Challenge

#BookReview Tomboy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

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TomboyAbout the Book

It’s 1939. On the brink of World War II, Jane Benjamin wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother. But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie.

Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie O’Rourke. She plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack, and her plan is thrown off track.

While sailing home on the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death, which she now knows was a murder, and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the coming war?

Putting away her menswear and donning first-class ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and destroys. Ultimately – like nations around the globe in 1939 – she must choose what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right.

Format:  Paperback (312 pages)   Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication date: 28th June 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Tomboy is the second in the author’s historical mystery series featuring cub reporter Jane Benjamin. I can reassure readers who, like me, haven’t read the first book in the series, Copy Boy, that Tomboy works perfectly well as a standalone. The references to events in the earlier book provide new readers with a tantalising glimpse of Jane’s colourful journey to date. I say colourful but much of that colour is of a pretty dark hue as the occasional flashbacks to her early life demonstrate. She’s had a tough upbringing, witnessing violence and neglect as part of a family with an itinerant lifestyle. It’s given her a strong survival instinct.

Jane is feisty, resourceful, ambitious and determined her gender shouldn’t be an obstacle to achieving her journalistic ambitions. She’s had to learn to rely on herself from an early age but now finds herself with responsibility for her baby sister, Elsie. It’s a responsibility she feels quite conflicted about; she loves her little sister but she also wants to advance her career and the two don’t mix well. Jane’s clear-eyed about her own shortcomings and honest enough to admit she often makes decisions that adversely affect other people.

I really enjoyed the lively writing style and how the author recreated the atmosphere aboard the ocean liner Queen Mary from the luxury suites to the celebrities hobnobbing in the exclusive Verandah Grill (such as Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne and Fred Astaire) and, at the other end of the scale, the crew members in the bowels of the ship making their own amusement in the ‘Pig ‘n’ Whistle’.  Thrust into an unfamiliar luxury lifestyle through her friendship with tennis star Tommie O’Rourke, Jane finds herself at sea, both literally and metaphorically. A bang on the head and a broken nose don’t help.

The mystery at the heart of the book is not quite of the ‘locked room’ variety as the suspicious death has already occurred before the Queen Mary sets sail, but all the people who might have been involved are amongst the passengers and as Jane delves deeper she uncovers some unexpected things, not always by legitimate methods. I thought things got a little jumbled up towards the end of the book (or perhaps that was just me) and Jane’s angst over whether she was doing the right thing seemed to overshadow the unravelling of the mystery. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my first encounter with Jane in whose company life is never going to be dull.

Tomboy is published today as an ebook and will be available in paperback on 11th August 2022. My thanks to Tabitha at She Writes Press for my digital review copy via NetGalley.

In three words: Lively, characterful, intriguing

Try something similar: The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

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Shelley Blanton-StroudAbout the Author

Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field and into the city. She taught college writing for three decades and consults with writers in the energy industry. She co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors, and she serves on the advisory board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children. She has also served on the Writers’ Advisory Board for the Belize Writers’ Conference. Tomboy is the second book in her Jane Benjamin series. Her debut novel, Copy Boy, was the first. Shelley and her husband live in Sacramento with an aging beagle and many photos of their out-of-state sons.  (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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#BlogTour #BookReview The White Girl by Tony Birch @RandomTTours

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The White Girl BT PosterWelcome to the penultimate day of the blog tour for The White Girl by Tony Birch. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to HarperCollins for my digital review copy.  Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, bookstagrammer Atomic Books 1976.

The White Girl CoverAbout the Book

Odette Brown has lived her entire life on the fringes of Deane, a small Australian country town. Dark secrets simmer beneath the surface of Deane – secrets that could explain why Odette’s daughter, Lila, left her one-year-old daughter, Sissy, and never came back, or why Sissy has white skin when
her family is Aboriginal.

For thirteen years, Odette has quietly raised her granddaughter without drawing notice from welfare authorities who remove fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. But the arrival of a new policeman with cruel eyes and a rigid by-the-book attitude throws the Brown women’s lives off-kilter. It will take all of Odette’s courage and cunning to save Sissy from the authorities, and maybe even lead her to find her daughter.

Bolstered by love, smarts, and the strength of their ancestors, Odette and Sissy are an indomitable
force, handling threats to their family and their own identities with grace and ingenuity, while never
losing hope for themselves and their future.

Format: Paperback (272 pages)    Publisher: HarperVia
Publication date: 28th April 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The White Girl on Goodreads

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My Review

The White Girl is the first book I’ve read by Tony Birch, an author I had never come across before being invited to participate in this blog tour. However on the strength of this book I’ll definitely be searching out more of his work.

“Trouble? Our people have been in one sort of trouble or another from the first day we set eyes on a white person.” 

I knew vaguely about the discrimination faced by the indigenous people of Australia but the experiences of Odette and her granddaughter gave me a first-hand insight into the daily realities of their lives: enforced segregation, the separation of families, restrictions on freedom of movement and the withholding of the right to citizenship. I found it shocking to think that the sort of discrimination one might associate with the period before the abolition of slavery could still be taking place in Australia in the 1960s.

Alongside the state-sponsored discrimination, Odette and fellow Aboriginal people are subject to racial abuse and threats of violence meaning they need to exercise caution about where they go or what they say, all the time on their guard in case they breach the petty rules governing their lives. Such an environment acts as a kind of shield for those with violent and racist inclinations.

The despicable attitude towards Aboriginal people is exemplified in the character of Sergeant Lowe whose warped sense of superiority (reinforced by the legal framework of the ironically named Aborigines Protection Act) convinces him he has a duty to ‘protect’ the children of indigenous families. ‘He would begin with auditing each of the Aboriginal children under his guardianship with a view to deciding the best outcome for their future welfare.’ That ‘welfare’ includes removing children from their families and placing them in institutions.

Odette is the most wonderful character who demonstrates amazing fortitude and a willingness to put the interests of her granddaughter, Sissy, before her own.  The relationship between Odette and Sissy is lovely too, with Sissy showing an increasing maturity as the book progresses and that she has inherited the sharp wits of her grandmother. I also loved Odette’s friend, Millie Khan, one of the few people who has the courage to confront Lowe. ‘Oh, you’ve looked after the welfare of our young girls for a long time now. Most of them are dead, disappeared or were sent mad by what you did to them in the institutions.’

In the book’s poignant epilogue, we learn just what Odette’s love and determination has achieved but also the tragic consequences of the discrimination meted out to the indigenous people of Australia.

The White Girl is a beautifully written and absolutely enthralling story of unconditional love and courage in the face of adversity.

In three words: Powerful, moving, poignant

Try something similar: A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey

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Tony Birch Author PicAbout the Author

Tony Birch is the author of three novels: the bestselling The White Girl, winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing, and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin literary prize; Ghost River, winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2012. He is also the author of Shadowboxing and four short story collections, Dark As Last Night, Father’s Day, The Promise and Common People; and the poetry collections, Broken Teeth and Whisper Songs. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award for his contribution to Australian literature. Tony Birch is also an activist, historian and essayist.

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