#WWWWednesday – 1st June 2022

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WWWWednesdays

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!

Currently reading

News of the DeadNews of the Dead by James Robertson (Hamish Hamilton)

Deep in the mountains of north-east Scotland lies Glen Conach, a place of secrets and memories, fable and history. In particular, it holds the stories of three different eras, separated by centuries yet linked by location, by an ancient manuscript and by echoes that travel across time.

In ancient Pictland, the Christian hermit Conach contemplates God and nature, performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice. Long after his death, legends about him are set down by an unknown hand in the Book of Conach.

Generations later, in the early nineteenth century, self-promoting antiquarian Charles Kirkliston Gibb is drawn to the Glen, and into the big house at the heart of its fragile community.

In the present day, young Lachie whispers to Maja of a ghost he thinks he has seen. Reflecting on her long life, Maja believes him, for she is haunted by ghosts of her own.

The Fire KillerThe Fire Killer (DI Barton #5) by Ross Greenwood (eARC, Boldwood Books)

When DI Barton is asked to investigate a seemingly innocuous fire that kills, he believes it’s either children fooling around or a worrying racially motivated crime.

As he delves deeper into the case, he soon realises that there is a history of similar blazes spread out over many years, all within a close area. And after an idea is suggested by pathologist Mortis, Barton suspects he has the arsonist’s motives wrong.

When a night worker comes forward with a tip, Barton narrows down the suspects. Yet all of them act suspiciously and he knows for sure that one or more of them are lying. And when a huge house blaze shocks everyone, Barton fears the killer has lost all control.

Who is The Fire Killer? What will be next to burn?

Recently finished

Twenty-Eight Pounds Ten Shillings: A Windrush Story by Tony Fairweather (HopeRoad Publishing)

Young Women by Jessica Moor (Zaffre)

Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers by Emma Smith (Allen Lane)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Villager Cover ImageVillager by Tom Cox (eARC, Unbound)

There’s so much to know. It will never end, I suspect, even when it does. So much in all these lives, so many stories, even in this small place.

Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into its history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life.

In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill where he writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a group of obsessive fans and a cult following. Two decades later, a couple of teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In 2019, a pair of lodgers discover a one-eyed rag doll hidden in the walls of their crumbling and neglected home. Connections are forged and broken across generations, but only the landscape itself can link them together. A landscape threatened by property development and superfast train corridors and speckled by the pylons whose feet have been buried across the moor.

#BlogTour #BookReview Young Women by Jessica Moor @RandomTTours

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Young Women BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Young Women by Jessica Moor. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Zaffre for my digital review copy via NetGalley.  Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Amanda at The Butler Did It.

YM Graphic 3About the Book

Everyone’s got that history, I guess. Everyone’s got a story.

When Emily meets the enigmatic and dazzling actress Tamsin, her life changes. Drawn into Tamsin’s world of Soho living, boozy dinners, and cocktails at impossibly expensive bars, Emily’s life shifts from black and white to technicolour and the two women become inseparable.

Tamsin is the friend Emily has always longed for; beautiful, fun, intelligent and mysterious and soon Emily is neglecting her previous life – her work assisting vulnerable women, her old friend Lucy – to bask in her glow.  But when a bombshell news article about a decades-old sexual assault case breaks, Emily realises that Tamsin has been hiding a secret about her own past. Something that threatens to unravel everything…

Format: Hardback (320 pages)      Publisher: Manilla Press
Publication date: 26th May 2022  Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Young Women on Goodreads

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My Review

For the first portion of Young Women I thought I knew exactly where the book was going. Tamsin is the manipulative young woman who wheedles her way into Emily’s life, adjusting her behaviour to be exactly what she thinks Emily needs; a life that’s much more exciting and daring than the one Emily is currently living – a diet of meal deals and a flatmate she hardly ever speaks to. And Tamsin’s an actress so she’ll have no problem putting on a performance and pulling the wool over Emily’s eyes until her true motives are revealed. Except it’s not as simple as that.

Everything changes in the second part of the book when the story becomes much more nuanced, as do the characters.  Gradually we learn that Tamsin and Emily, and Emily’s friend Lucy, have experiences in common none of which have resulted in action being taken against the perpetrators. (It may be a concidence but in each case where they’ve reported what they’ve suffered it was to a woman yet no action was taken.)  A neat counterpoint to this is Renee, Emily’s boss at the Women’s Advocacy Group, who is relentless in her support of women who have suffered sexual violence.

In a turnaround, it’s Emily who sees herself taking the dominant role in her relationship with Tamsin. Here’s her chance to demonstrate her activism by supporting Tamsin in calling out the actions of a powerful and influential figure in the film industry. Emily pictures the two of them being seen as a ‘force to be reckoned with’ taking part in joint interviews as the story reaches the press. She even fantasises about quitting her job to make time for it all. (Ironically, Emily’s has been careless in her handling of an actual case she’s been assigned at work.)  Emily is sure she knows exactly how Tamsin will respond, congratulating herself on ‘getting good at writing her’ so she’s disappointed at Tamsin’s reaction. She’s even more shocked at Tamsin’s subsequent actions, although her own are not exactly laudable. What happens next explores issues of consent and the extent to which there is a responsibility to speak out. Does failing to do so somehow make you complicit?

Although I had some reservations about Emily’s risk-taking behaviour towards the end of the book, Young Women raises some interesting moral questions, bringing to mind cases that have made the headlines in recent years.

In three words: Thought-provoking, intimate, intense

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Jessica Moor Author PicAbout the Author

Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University. Her debut novel Keeper was published in 2020 to rave reviews and critical acclaim. Jessica Moor was selected as one of the Observer‘s debut novelists of 2020, and Keeper was chosen by the Sunday Times, Independent and Cosmopolitan as one of their top debuts of the year. Keeper was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize and an Edgar Award. Young Women is her second novel.

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