Tag: Read

WWW Wednesdays – 6th September

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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

TheIndigoGirlThe Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd (eARC)

1739 – Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family’s three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry in pursuit of his military ambitions. Tensions with the British, and with the Spanish in Florida, just a short way down the coast, are rising, and slaves are starting to become restless. Her mother wants nothing more than for their South Carolina endeavor to fail so they can go back to England. Soon her family is in danger of losing everything. Upon hearing how much the French pay for indigo dye, Eliza believes it’s the key to their salvation. But everyone tells her it’s impossible, and no one will share the secret to making it. Thwarted at nearly every turn, even by her own family, Eliza finds that her only allies are an aging horticulturalist, an older and married gentleman lawyer, and a slave with whom she strikes a dangerous deal: teach her the intricate thousand-year-old secret process of making indigo dye and in return—against the laws of the day—she will teach the slaves to read. So begins an incredible story of love, dangerous and hidden friendships, ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice.

FlightBeforeDawnFlight Before Dawn by Megan Easley-Walsh (review copy courtesy of the author)

For over two years, she’s watched him. Now he’s on her doorstep. This is life in the Resistance.

In Normandy in 1943, Victoire leads a band of the Resistance. When Leal, the man she’s had watched for over two years, arrives at her doorstep, she’ll have to face new challenges in war and in love. Robberies, a kidnapping and clandestine night adventures were not at all what Victoire planned for her life. And she most certainly never planned to be betrayed. But war – and love – are unpredictable. Joined by her friend Rainier who is mistrusted by Leal, the mysterious Voleta, and Father Pierre, Victoire and Leal must struggle for survival. When Leal unearths a twenty-five-year-old secret, with Victoire at the center, her whole life is shaken. As the Allies approach, the past, present and future hang in the balance. Can anyone be trusted when the world spins upside down?

Recently finished

AndTheBirdsKeptOnSingingAnd The Birds Kept On Singing by Simon Bourke (review copy courtesy of the author)

Pregnant at seventeen, Sinéad McLoughlin does the only thing she can; she runs away from home. She will go to England and put her child up for adoption. But when she lays eyes on it for the first time, lays eyes on him, she knows she can never let him go. Just one problem. He’s already been promised to someone else.  A tale of love and loss, remorse and redemption, And The Birds Kept On Singing tells two stories, both about the same boy. In one Sinéad keeps her son and returns home to her parents, to nineteen-eighties Ireland and life as a single mother. In the other she gives him away, to the Philliskirks, Malcolm and Margaret, knowing that they can give him the kind of life she never could. As her son progresses through childhood and becomes a young man, Sinéad is forced to face the consequences of her decision. Did she do the right thing? Should she have kept him, or given him away? And will she spend the rest of her life regretting the choices she has made? (Review to follow on 8th September)

OneDayinDecemberOne Day in December by Shari Low (eARC, courtesy of Aria Fiction)

By the stroke of midnight, a heart would be broken, a cruel truth revealed, a devastating secret shared, and a love betrayed. Four lives would be changed forever, One Day in December.

One morning in December… Caro set off on a quest to find out if her relationship with her father had been based on a lifetime of lies. Lila decided today would be the day that she told her lover’s wife of their secret affair. Cammy was on the way to pick up the ring for the surprise proposal to the woman he loved. And Bernadette vowed that this was the day she would walk away from her controlling husband of 30 years and never look back. One day, four lives on a collision course with destiny… (Review to follow on 11th September)

TheSmallestThingThe Smallest Thing by Lisa Manterfield (ebook, review copy courtesy of Xpresso Tours)

The very last thing 17-year-old Emmott Syddall wants is to turn out like her dad. She’s descended from ten generations who never left their dull English village, and there’s no way she’s going to waste a perfectly good life that way. She’s moving to London and she swears she is never coming back. But when the unexplained deaths of her neighbors force the government to quarantine the village, Em learns what it truly means to be trapped. Now, she must choose. Will she pursue her desire for freedom, at all costs, or do what’s best for the people she loves: her dad, her best friend Deb, and, to her surprise, the mysterious man in the HAZMAT suit? Inspired by the historical story of the plague village of Eyam, this contemporary tale of friendship, community, and impossible love weaves the horrors of recent news headlines with the intimate details of how it feels to become an adult – and fall in love – in the midst of tragedy. (Review to follow on 16th September)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

StrangerStranger by David Bergen (paperback, review copy courtesy of Duckworth)

Íso Perdido, a young Guatemalan woman, works at a fertility clinic at Ixchel, named for the Mayan goddess of creation and destruction. Íso tends to the rich women who visit the clinic for the supposed conception-enhancing properties of the local lake. She is also the lover of Dr. Mann, the American doctor in residence. When an accident forces the doctor to leave Guatemala abruptly, Íso is abandoned, pregnant. After the birth, tended to by the manager of the clinic, the baby disappears. Determined to reclaim her daughter, Íso follows a trail north, eventually crossing illegally into a United States where the rich live in safe zones, walled away from the indigent masses. Traveling without documentation, and with little money, Íso must penetrate this world, and in this place of menace and shifting boundaries, she must determine who she can trust and how much, aware that she might lose her daughter forever.

DanKnewDan Knew by F J Curlew (review copy courtesy of the author)

A Ukrainian street dog is rescued from certain death by an expat family. As he travels to new countries with them, a darkness grows and he finds himself narrating more than just his story, more than a dog story.

Ultimately it’s a story of escape and survival but maybe not his. The world seen through wee Dan’s eyes in a voice that will stay with you long after you turn that last page.

 

TheWinnerThe Winner by Erin Bomboy (review copy courtesy of iRead Book Tours)

The most prestigious ballroom dance competition in the United States. Two dancers need to win. Only one can.

Nina Fortunova wasn’t supposed to end up almost thirty, divorced, with her dreams of winning shattered. She teams up with Jorge Gonzalez, a Latin dancer, to reinvent the flashy Smooth style. When the Chairman of the Judges offers to throw the competition in their favor, Nina must decide how far she will go to win, even if it means losing Jorge. Carly Martindale is doing everything she’s been taught not to do—placing her happiness first by dancing with Trey Devereux, the former three-time champion who’s returned to competition for mysterious reasons. Carly becomes obsessed with Trey and allows him to control her every move at great risk to her physical and emotional health. How far will she sacrifice herself, so Trey and she can win? Co-workers, then friends, and now arch competitors, Nina and Carly face off to determine who will be the winner.

Book Review: A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere by Kris Radish

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ADangerousWomanfromNowhereAbout the Book

Briar Logan is a loner who has already survived a wretched childhood, near starvation, and the harsh western frontier in the 1860s. Just when she is on the brink of finally opening her heart to the possibilities of happiness, the love of her life is kidnapped by lawless gold miners–and she steels herself for what could be the greatest loss of her life. Desperate to save her husband and the solitary life they have carved out of the wilderness, Briar is forced to accept the help of a damaged young man and a notorious female horse trainer. Facing whiskey runners, gold thieves, unpredictable elements, and men who will stop at nothing to get what they want, the unlikely trio must forge an uncommon bond in order to survive.

Format: Ebook Publisher: SparkPress Pages: 273
Publication: 12th September Genre: Historical Fiction    

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Barnes & Noble
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere on Goodreads

My Review

Set in 1860s Colorado, A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere’s intriguing opening sees Briar witness her husband’s kidnap by a group of men. It seems Briar and her husband, Porter Logan, have been expecting this eventuality and have done all they can to avoid it and the disruption it will bring to the hard-won peace of their life together. Logan has knowledge and skill that is of value and his kidnappers have riches in their sights and won’t stop at anything to possess it.

Providing hints of just why she is the self-styled ‘dangerous woman from nowhere’, Briar sets out to rescue Logan, armed with an impressive array of weaponry, dogged determination and the survival skills taught her by the people who took her in as a child.

‘Briar didn’t know it then, but she was headed to a place where she would learn to shoot to kill, throw a knife so expertly she could slice a dried apple in half at sixty paces, ride a horse as if they were one, and where she also learned lessons of survival and life…’

Consciously throwing off the woman she has become, Briar channels the inner spirit she calls Mika, identified with the characteristics of the raccoon – intelligent and who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

As Briar sets out on her journey, we gradually learn more about her traumatic childhood, the emotional scars those experiences have caused and the role of Porter Logan in helping her heal to the extent she has. We also see just what a resourceful, fiercely independent and determined person she has become.

‘Her life had been and would always be about survival, and Briar knew she wanted to live, to experience the world Logan had opened up to her, to try to understand the ways of the heart more than she ever had in the past.’

Briar is just one of the powerful female characters who are the driving spirits of this book. There’s Laurie Eberhardt, an example of the strong pioneer women who matched their menfolk in battling the elements to grind out a living on the ranches of the period. And there’s Grace Perry, horse-breaker and crack shot, another loner who’s had to live by her wits to make her way in the world without the succour of home and family but who cannot resist the instinct to help Briar in her quest.

“You need me, Briar. It is impossible for me not to help. It is especially impossible for me not to help another woman.”  

All three of them have experienced hardship, cruelty and loss in their lives but survived through a combination of grit, determination and by acquiring the skills necessary to defend themselves as women alone in a brutal, often lawless environment.  And there’s Jack, a young man with his own traumatic history who has had to learn to survive on his own from early childhood and is seeking redemption for perceived past failures to act. Together, Briar, Grace and Jack embark on the dangerous journey to rescue Logan, each contributing their various skills and becoming in their own way a sort of family. As Jack reflects, “There are different ways to find a home and many people who might be called family”.

There is danger along the way despite the deceptive beauty of the landscape: ‘The sprinkling of red, gold, yellow, and orange leaves is slowly creeping higher each day, as if someone were moving from ridge to the next with a box of paints.’

A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere is an exhilarating combination of Wild West adventure story, moving love story, powerful evocation of the wild landscape of North America and celebration of female power and solidarity.

This book would have been complete perfection for me but for the epilogue. Suddenly the gritty, authentic feel the author had created throughout the rest of the novel seemed to give way to something out of ‘The Waltons’. I didn’t want to know all this stuff, I wanted to be left to imagine it for myself. I would very respectfully suggest: dump the epilogue, the book finishes quite perfectly without it.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, SparkPress, in return for an honest review.

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KrisRadishAbout the Author

Kris started writing the moment she could hold a pencil. She grew up in Wisconsin, graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a journalism degree and hit the ground running. Her father called her “the tornado”. She worked as a newspaper reporter, bureau chief, nationally syndicated columnist, magazine writer, university lecturer, bartender, waitress, worm harvester, window washer….to name a few. Her first two books were non-fiction and then Radish became a full-time novelist. The Elegant Gathering of White Snows, Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn, The Sunday List of Dreams, Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral and Searching for Paradise in Parker, P.A., The Shortest Distance Between Two Women, Hearts on a String, Tuesday Night Miracles, A Grand Day to Get Lost and The Year of Necessary Lies have won her acclaim and a great following. Her eleventh novel, A Dangerous Woman From Nowhere is being released in 2017. She is also the author of three works of non-fiction, Gravel on the side of the Road-Stories From A Broad Who Has Been There, Run, Bambi Run-The Beautiful Ex-Cop and Convicted Murderer Who Escaped to Freedom and Won America’s Heart and The Birth Order Effect: How to Better Understand Yourself and Others. She is working on a book of poetry, two new novels, a book of non-fiction and a few bottles of wine.

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