Tag: NetGalley

#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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#BookReview Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

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Black ButterfliesAbout the Book

Sarajevo, Spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege.

As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

Format: Hardback (288 pages)   Publisher: Duckworth
Publication date: 5th May 2022 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

In its story of a diverse, peaceful community transformed by nationalism into a place of fear, death and destruction, it’s impossible to read Black Butterflies without thinking of the current war in Ukraine and, in particular, the siege of Mariupol. Through the experiences of Zora and others like her who remain in the city – increasingly not by inclination but due to the impossibility of doing anything else – the reader witnesses what it was like to live (although ‘exist’ might be a better world) through what became known as the siege of Sarajevo. Cut off from the outside world and at the mercy of snipers and enemy shelling, food shortages, lack of power and fresh water turn a once civilised thriving city into a virtual wasteland. And when winter comes, bringing with it sub-zero tempratures, every day becomes a battle of survival.

For Zora, being deprived of her ability to make art is almost as bad; being an artist is part of her very identity. It’s why the obliteration of cultural sites within the city and along with it the destruction of books, works of art and Zora’s studio has such a devastating effect on her. Gradually, however, the making of art becomes something akin to an act of resistance, of cultural defiance and an example of a determination to ‘carry on’. For Zora, it also provides a distraction from day-to-day concerns and the increasing privations. Indeed, her experiences bring about a change in her art, transforming her style into something more experimental than the landscapes she produced before. Out of necessity she incorporates the detritus of war into her art, producing bold collages.

Amongst the horror and deprivation, there are snatched moments of happiness: a shared meal assembled from scraps of food, the telling of stories around a makeshift fire, a ‘bring your own art’ exhibition, the warmth of another body next to yours.  The possibility of making a perilous escape from the city brings Zora hope that she might be reunited with her family but also a feeling of guilt for others left behind.

Based on the experiences of those who lived through the Bosnian war, including the author’s own family, Black Butterflies demonstrates the strength of the human spirit, the power of art but also, as the people of Ukraine have discovered, that the peace and security we enjoy can vanish in a moment.  To quote from John Buchan’s The Power-House, ‘You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.’ Black Butterflies is an impressive debut novel.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Duckworth via NetGalley.

In three words: Powerful, moving, thought-provoking

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Priscilla MorrisAbout the Author

Priscilla Morris was born in Cambridge to a Yugoslav mother and a Cornish father. She grew up mostly in London and read Spanish, Italian and Social Anthropology at Cambridge University. After working briefly as a journalist and teaching English in Spain and Brazil during her twenties and early thirties, she received an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia. She now lives between Ireland and Spain and lectures in Creative Writing at University College Dublin. (Photo: Amazon author page)

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