Tag: NetGalley

#BlogTour #BookReview Wahala by Nikki May @RandomTTours @DoubledayUK

whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

Wahala BT Poster TwitterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Wahala by Nikki May, a book you’re going to hear plenty about in the coming months. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Doubleday for my review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, bookstagrammers Elizabeth at libcreads and Anita at booksinherhands.

WahalaAbout the Book

See me, see trouble…

Ronke, Simi, and Boo are three mixed-race friends living in London. They have the gift of two cultures, Nigerian and English, though they don’t all choose to see it like that.

Everyday racism has never held them back, but now in their thirties, they look to the future – Ronke wants a husband (he must be Nigerian); Simi supposedly wants a child (well, her husband does); Boo is frustrated and unfulfilled, caught in a whirl of school runs and lustful dreams. When Isobel, a lethally glamorous friend from their past arrives in town, she is determined to fix their futures for them.

As cracks in their friendship begin to appear, it is soon obvious Isobel is not sorting but wrecking. When she is driven to a terrible act, the women are forced to reckon with a crime in their past that may have just repeated itself.

Format: Hardcover (384 pages)       Publisher: Doubleday
Publication date: 6th January 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Wahala on Goodreads

Purchase links
Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Described as ‘a sharp, modern take on friendship, ambition, culture, and betrayal’, Wahala certainly lives up to its title which means ‘trouble’ in Yoruba.

There’s a Sex and the City vibe to the get-togethers of Simi, Boo and Ronke in bars and restaurants around London in the first part of the book. Being a low maintenance girl myself and the opposite of a social butterfly, I couldn’t quite relate to the obsession with fashion, the gossip over cocktails and the boozy lunches. I guess Ronke was the character I found most engaging perhaps because she seemed more down-to-earth. Her cookery skills helped and the inclusion of some of her recipes for traditional Nigerian food at the back of the book was a nice touch.  I liked the way the author explored the dynamics between the three friends and the pressures on those friendships that arise as the book progresses.

The ups and downs of Simi’s, Boo’s and Ronke’s relationships and the dilemmas they face – in some cases of their own making – are ones that could happen in any partnership, not just between couples of different ethnicity: competing career aspirations, different attitudes towards parenthood or simply feeling weighed down by domestic responsibilities. I have to say what follows seemed to me a case of ‘women behaving badly’ – Ronke being the honourable exception. The men in their lives were positive saints in comparison, especially the lovely Didier. I even had sympathy for Ronke’s boyfriend, Kayode, he of the poor time-keeping, obsessive support for Arsenal football club and fridge stocked only with beer and past its use-by date milk.

As soon as Isobel arrives on the scene with her demand ‘I want to know everything’ it becomes pretty clear her motive is not a genuine desire for friendship. ‘Isobel was good at collecting secrets, not so great at keeping them.’ She becomes an insidious presence in the friends’ lives and the catalyst for the trouble referred to in the title. This was the strongest part of the book for me. The reader sees, although Boo, Simi and Ronke do not, that for reasons of her own, Isobel is an expert in playing on their insecurities, doubts and frustrations – and, at times, their naivety – encouraging them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have; the equivalent of waking up with a hangover and wishing you hadn’t drunk so much the night before, except with much, much more serious consequences.  As the fallout from Isobel’s actions play out, the book builds to an unexpectedly dramatic and explosive finish, one of those conclusions to a book that forces you to go back and re-read the prologue.

Wahala is a deft exploration of the fragile nature of friendship and how easily people can be manipulated.

In three words: Vibrant, insightful, quirky

Try something similar: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

Wahala Graphic 2

Nikki May Author picAbout the Author

Born in Bristol and raised in Lagos, Nikki May is Nigerian-British. At twenty, she dropped out of medical school, moved to London, and began a career in advertising, going on to run a successful agency. Nikki lives in Dorset with her husband and two standard Schnauzers.

Connect with Nikki
Website | Twitter | Instagram

Wahala Graphic 1

#BookReview The Unquiet Heart by Kaite Welsh

whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

The Unquiet HeartAbout the Book

Sarah Gilchrist has no intention of marrying her dull fiancé Miles, the man her family hope will restore her reputation and put an end to her dreams of becoming a doctor, but when he is arrested for a murder she is sure he didn’t commit she finds herself his reluctant ally.

Beneath the genteel façade of upper class Edinburgh lurks blackmail, adultery, poison and madness, and Sarah must return to Edinburgh’s slums, back alleys and asylums as she discovers the dark past about a family where no one is what they seem, even Miles himself.

It also brings her back into the orbit of her mercurial professor, Gregory Merchiston – he sees Sarah as his protegee, but can he stave off his demons long enough to teach her the skills that will save her life?

Format: Hardcover (288 pages)    Publisher: Tinder Press
Publication date: 30th May 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Crime

Find The Unquiet Heart (Sarah Gilchrist #2) on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Unquiet Heart is the second in the author’s historical mystery series featuring medical student turned detective, Sarah Gilchrist. Like its predecessor, The Wages of Sin, it is set in Victorian Edinburgh. There are some references to events and characters in the previous book but it would be possible to read The Unquiet Heart as a standalone.

Sarah Gilchrist continues to resist the expectations of her family – and of society – that she will marry and give up her ambition to qualify as a doctor. She frequently rails against the restrictions placed upon her as a woman. ‘I’m sick of being told that women are weak – too weak for surgery, too weak for intellectual thought.’ And she is roused to anger by the double standards that mean, had she been a man, her medical studies would be ‘the object of praise rather than disgust’. Added to this is the unfairness that, because of previous traumatic events, she is considered ‘damaged goods’, including by her family, even though the damage in question was not of her own making and has had lasting consequences.  

Despite a number of suspicious deaths early on, the pace of the book is a little on the slow side for those interested mainly in the mystery element. In addition, for a lot of the time the action moves largely between the houses of Sarah’s friend, Elizabeth Chalmers, her aunt Emily and the University where Sarah attends lectures, meaning it’s only later in the book that one gets a glimpse of the seamier side of Edinburgh. I would have liked a bit more of the latter, to be honest.

However, readers like me who were intrigued by the relationship between Sarah and Professor Gregory Merchiston that featured in the first book will enjoy the simmering sexual tension between them that continues in this one. But will it ignite into a conflagration or fizzle out?  And are they destined to remain merely pupil and tutor?

Despite the prejudice displayed by others, Merchiston is willing to introduce Sarah to the techniques of forensic medicine, even if this does demand a strong stomach. “Our bodies tell stories, Miss Gilchrist. The language may be foreign to most but learn to translate it and you will be privy to all the secrets of our species, living or dead.”  By the way, I think we really need to learn more about how Merchiston’s housekeeper, Mrs Logan, came to be, in her words, ‘in a music hall dressing room stripped down to my unmentionables armed with nothing but a prop knife’.

By the end of the book, Sarah seems faced with a choice between marriage to a wealthy if unremarkable man and the end of her medical career before it’s even begun, or a less socially acceptable relationship with a man who will preserve, even actively encourage, her ambitions. Unfortunately the latter is also likely to cause a potentially irreconcilable breach with her mother. But are those the only choices available to Sarah?

I received a review copy courtesy of Headline via NetGalley.

In three words: Well-crafted, engaging, intriguing

Try something similar: A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

Kaite WelshAbout the Author

Kaite Welsh is an author, critic and journalist and the former Literature Officer at Creative Scotland. Her work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines from The Times Literary Supplement to Cosmopolitan. Her short fiction, featuring roller derby, Greek myths and ghosts, has been published in several anthologies and she guest lectures on Creative Writing at universities around the UK. She is the author of the Sarah Gilchrist series, and lives in Edinburgh with her wife, cats and a lot of books (Bio/photo: Agent author page)

Connect with Kaite
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram