Category: Reviews

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was New-To-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Thursday – I shared My Top 5 January Reads. 

Friday – I published my review of Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek, translated by Leri Price.

Saturday – I participated in the #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a chain from All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman to The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

New arrivals

Some ARCs and a birthday book token bundle

The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite (eARC, Penguin via NetGalley)

1461. Through blood and battle Edward has gained England’s throne – king by right and conquest – eighteen years old and unstoppable. Cecily has piloted his rise to power and stands at his shoulder now, first to claim the title King’s Mother.

But to win a throne is not to keep it and war is come again. As brother betrays brother, and trusted cousins turn treacherous, other mothers rise up to fight for other sons. Cecily must focus her will to defeat every challenge. Wherever they come from. Whatever the cost.

For there can be only one King, and only one King’s Mother.

A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray (ARC, Penguin)

There are thousands and thousands of decent homes – very nice homes – with nobody living in them. There are thousands and thousands of broke young people – very nice young people – with nowhere decent to live. This is where Al comes in.

Al lives in wealthy people’s second houses, when the real owners are away. He’s charming, convincing, and easily lost in a crowd. Life is perfect. But unfortunately for him, Al and his friends have just broken into the wrong place, on the wrong day – and found a body. And now they’re in a whole heap of trouble.

Featuring crooked builders, dodgy coppers, and some very dangerous spies, A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering is a gripping thriller about what it’s like to be young, skilled, unemployed – and on the run.

Remember, Remember by Elle Machray (HarperNorth)

Gunpowder, treason and a plot to destroy the British Empire…

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 Coming Storm by Greg Mosse (eARC, Moonflower Books)

He may have prevented the world from falling into ruin, but Alex knows his work is not done yet. There’s still a controlling intelligence out there, pulling together the strands of a new and even more destructive conspiracy.

Battling with personal tragedy on one hand, and the intrusion of new-found celebrity on the other, Alex must re-emerge from self-imposed exile to reunite with Mariam – the woman he loves – and Amaury – his truest friend – to face the fight of their lives.

From the streets of Paris, the lithium mines of southern Mali, and the mighty Aswan Dam, they come up against forces whose intentions are as devious as they are malign. Time is against them, and there’s more at stake than ever.

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus)

Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon’s plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne’s telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that – in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella – she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can’t envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.

Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson (John Murray)

Jamesina Ross is long finished with men. But one night a stranger seeking lodgings knocks on the door of her tenement flat. He doesn’t recognise her, but she remembers him at once. Not that she plans to mention it. She has no intention of trusting anyone enough to let herself be vulnerable again.

A lifetime ago Jamesina Ross was bent on becoming a writer. She had a facility with words. She made up songs about the Highland glen where she lived and the kin who had worked that land for generations. When her community was threatened with eviction, she gave voice to that too. The women stood together, defiant and determined, but Jamesina’s music was no match for one of the most brutal confrontations of the Highland Clearances.

Jamesina has borne the disfigurements of that day ever since, on her face and inside her head. It marked the end of a life of promise and the beginning of a very different one. Her lodger thinks that if she would only dare to open the past, she might have the chance of a future.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding (Hutchinson Heinemann)

n 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discovered an island where they could make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys’ descendants remain there, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbors: a pair of sisters raising three Penobscot orphans; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their nocturnal brood; the prophetic Zachary Hand To God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who carves Biblical images in a hollow tree.

Then comes the intrusion of “civilization”: eugenics-minded state officials determine to “cleanse” the island, and a missionary schoolteacher selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will succumb to the authorities’ institutions or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah’s Ark.

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber)

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabrine, with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude – and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

• Backlist Burrow Reading Challenge: Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler, The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller & All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman
• Book Review: Other Worlds Were Possible by Joss Sheldon
• Book Review: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
• Book Review: How to be Brave by Louise Beech