Category: Read

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of With Face Aflame by A. E. Walnofer as part of the blog tour organised by Zoë at Zooloo’s Blog Tours.

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books I’d Want With Me On A Desert Island. 

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.  I also published my review of One August Night by Victoria Hislop as part of the blog tour organised by Anne at Random Things Tours.

Thursday – I shared my publication day review of historical novel, Cecily by Annie Garthwaite.

Friday – I celebrated completing The Classics Club reading challenge. 

Saturday – I shared my Five Favourite July 2021 Reads.

Sunday – I was delighted to feature Why Are You Here? by Radhika Iyer, the first title to be released by new publisher Castles in the Air Press 

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.

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New arrivals

Wolf at the Door (A Bradecote and Catchpoll Investigation, #9) by Sarah Hawkswood (eARC, Allison & Busby via NetGalley) 

All Hallow’s Eve, 1144. The savaged body of Durand Wuduweard, the solitary and unpopular keeper of the King’s Forest of Feckenham, is discovered beside his hearth, his corpse rendered barely identifiable by sharp teeth.

Whispers of a wolf on the prowl grow louder and Sheriff William de Beauchamp’s men, Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll, are tasked with cutting through the clamour. They must uncover who killed Durand and why while beset by superstitious villagers, raids upon manors and further grim deaths. Out of the shadows of the forest, where will the wolf’s fangs strike next?

Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb (eARC, William Morrow) 

Three cities, two sisters, one chance to correct the past . . .

New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe—together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe forty years earlier; a journey inspired by famed reporter, Nellie Bly.

Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party and Mussolini’s control in Italy.

Constantly at odds with each other as they explore the luxurious Queen Mary, the Orient Express, and the sights of Paris and  Venice,, Clara and Madeleine wonder if they can fulfil Violet’s wish, until a shocking truth about their family brings them closer together. But as they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again. As political tensions rise, and Europe feels increasingly volatile, the pair are glad to head home on the Hindenburg, where fate will play its hand in the final stage of their journey.

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

Three black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm as they build their new lives in the most open society run by the most private people.

Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation’s largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi’s move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life.

A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege – a life she’s not sure she wants – as the object of his unhealthy obsession.

And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny’s office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home.

Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She’s Black is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a black woman navigating a white-dominated society.

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

• Book Review: This Lovely City by Louise Hare
• Top Ten Tuesday
• WWW Wednesday
• Book Review: The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan 
• Book Review: Three Little Truths by Eithne Shortall
• #6Degrees of Separation