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
Two books from my Henley Literary Festival 2020 reading list and a book for a blog tour.
The Push by Ashley Audrain (ARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph)
What if your experience of motherhood was nothing like what you hoped for – but everything you always feared?
‘The women in this family, we’re different…’
The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. It was meant to be a fresh start. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn’t right. I have always known that the women in my family aren’t meant to be mothers.
My husband Fox says I’m imagining it. He tells me I’m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she’s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?
The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn (eARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph via NetGalley)
Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home.
Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but against all medical odds, he seems revitalized in nature. Together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible.
Now, life beyond The Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult – until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything.
A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow.
The Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit’s instinctive connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.
Hunter Killer by Brad Taylor (ARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus)
They’re killing his team. He’s coming for them.
The Taskforce were once apex predators, an unrivalled hunting machine that decimated those out to harm the USA, but they may have met their match. While Pike is preparing to join the team on a counter-terrorist mission in South America, a friend is killed in South Carolina. The authorities believe it was an accident, but Pike suspects the attack was meant as a message to him.
When he loses contact with the team in South America, Pike becomes convinced the Taskforce is under attack. His men are the closest thing to family he has. He will do anything – even ignore direct orders to stand down – to find them.
Recently finished
Links from the titles will take you to my review (when I get round to writing then all!)
The Second Marriage by Gill Paul
Dear Child by Romy Hausmann
This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik
Accountant Bilal Hasham and his journalist wife, Mariam, plod along contentedly in the sleepy, chocolate box village they’ve lived in for eight years.
Then Bilal is summoned to his dying mother’s bedside in Birmingham. Sakeena Hasham is not long for this world but refuses to leave it until she ensures that her son remembers who he is: a Muslim, however much he tries to ignore it. She has a final request. Instead of whispering her prayers in her dying moments, she instructs Bilal to go home to his village, Babbels End, and build a mosque.
Mariam is horrified. The villagers are outraged. How can a grieving Bilal choose between honouring his beloved mum’s last wish and preserving everything held dear in the village he calls home? But it turns out home means different things to different people.
Battle lines are drawn and this traditional little community becomes the colourful canvas on which the most current and fundamental questions of identity, friendship, family and togetherness are played out. What makes us who we are, who do we want to be, and how far would we go to fight for it? (Review to follow)
The Magic Walking Stick by John Buchan
A young boy called Bill, buys a walking stick from a roadside peddler. He discovers that it’s a magic stick that will take the owner to anywhere he wishes. Adventures ensue… (Review to follow)
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
In one devastating week, Raynor and her husband Moth lost their house and received a terminal diagnosis that took away their future together. With nowhere to call home, they instead embarked on a journey: to walk the South West Coast Path, a 630-mile sea-swept trail from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.
This ancient, wind-battered landscape lays them bare, stripping away every comfort they have ever known. With almost no money for food orshelter, carrying the essentials for survival on their backs, they wild camp on beaches and clifftops. Until slowly, with every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, the walk sets them on a road of discovery. They don’t know how far they will travel, but unexpectedly, they find themselves on a path to freedom. (Review to follow)
Green Hands by Barbara Whitton
It is 1943, and a month into their service as Land Girls, Bee, Anne and Pauline are dispatched to a remote farm in rural Scotland. Here they are introduced to the realities of ‘lending a hand on the land’, as back-breaking work and inhospitable weather mean they struggle to keep their spirits high. Soon one of the girls falters, and Bee and Pauline receive a new posting to a Northumberland dairy farm.
Detailing their friendship, daily struggles and romantic intrigues with a lightness of touch, Barbara Whitton’s autobiographical novel paints a sometimes funny, sometimes bleak picture of time spent in the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War. (Review to follow for blog tour)
What Cathy (will) Read Next
Those Who Know (Teifi Valley Coroner #3) by Alis Hawkins (ARC, courtesy of The Dome Press)
Harry Probert-Lloyd has inherited the estate of Glanteifi and appointed his assistant John as under-steward. But his true vocation, to be coroner, is under threat. Against his natural instincts, Harry must campaign if he is to be voted as coroner permanently by the local people and politicking is not his strength.
On the hustings, Harry and John are called to examine the body of Nicholas Rowland, a radical and pioneering schoolteacher whose death may not be the accident it first appeared. What was Rowland’s real relationship with his eccentric patron, Miss Gwatkyn? And why does Harry’s rival for the post of coroner deny knowing him? Harry’s determination to uncover the truth threatens to undermine both his campaign and his future.
