Category: Debut Authors

How We Remember by J.M. Monaco

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How We Remember by J.M. Monaco

Published By: Red Door

Buy It Here: here

What The Blurb Says:

Family Secrets. Sibling Rivalries

The blood ties that have kept Jo and her brother Dave together are challenged when an unexpected inheritance fans the flames of underlying tensions. Upon discovering her mother’s diary, the details of their family’s troubled past are brought into sharp relief and painful memories are reawakened.

Narrated with moments of light and dark, J. M. Monaco weaves together past and present, creating a complex family portrait of pain and denial in this remarkable debut novel.

Perfect for fans of Anne Tyler and Sylvia Brownrigg, this is a novel that will stay with you long after you stop turning the pages.

What I Say:

How We Remember by J.M. Monaco is a powerful and often very uncomfortable story about families.  To be a member of a family is something that we all want, and for many, being part of one is everything.  An inbuilt support system, a place where we can be ourselves and a sense of contentment and belonging.

Jo and Dave live with their Mother and Father, and seemingly have a fairly normal family life.  However, when their Mum dies, Jo, Dave and their Father are brought together in grief and also the realisation that their Mum was very organised and had planned everything so that when she did die, they would be provided for.

However, How We Remember is not a saccharine, sickly sweet description of American Family life.  It is at times, dark, brutal and very shocking as it tackles familial sexual assault, addiction, mental health issues, dealing with the reality of living with Multiple Sclerosis on a daily basis and the suicide of a family member.

Jo, now living in London with her husband Jon, returns to America to help her father sort through and organise her mother’s effects and memorial service. Having left the States for a career in academia, and trying to start a family of her own, Jo now has to face the past and the awful events that happened in her childhood and split her family.

The story is told in a dual narrative- past and present, and we see how Jo and Dave became the people they are today.  At the heart of the family split, is the fact that Jo was sexually assaulted by her Uncle, who would give her rides back from baby sitting.  He gave Jo alcohol and drugs without her knowing, and in her hazy unclear minded state, is not completely sure what happened to her, but Jo knows she has been assaulted.  To protect her Mother, she tells her only that Uncle Ron kissed her, but this revelation is enough to break the bond between the sisters.  It is shocking that her Aunt Peggy will only speak to her mother if Jo agrees to say that it didn’t happen, wanting to hide her husband’s assault rather than standing up for her niece.

This is one of the strongest themes of How We Remember.  That the characters do some awful things, but that the idea of family, and the shame that they would face should these incidents come to light, outweigh the concept of morally corrupt issues.

As Jo attempts to navigate her teenage years, we see her fractured relationship with her brother.  I found this relationship uncomfortable to read about. They start as close brother and sister, but as Jo gets older, Dave becomes increasingly hostile towards Jo, they have to share a room with only a sheet between them. Jo is subject to Dave’s sexual attention on a couple of occasions, and for me, this was difficult to read.  His personality changed as he did this – he seemed not to be fully in control of himself, which made it for me even more challenging.  The awful fact of the matter is that in spite of this, Jo does not remove herself from his life.

For me, this was the crux of the novel. That when something so brutal happens, you are in a dilemma. Your head tells you that you should remove yourself from this situation, but your heart tells you that this is your family, and can you really be the one to shatter that bond?

When Jo meets Jon, she finally has some semblance of reality, and a chance for a stable life with a man who requires nothing more of her than her love.  Their story is one of the most powerful for me in this novel.  This routine and some may say mundane relationship is exactly what Jo has never experienced, but the heartbreaking issue is that Jo is unable to carry a baby to full term, and she measures her success as a wife and partner by her ability to show her love to Jon by giving him a baby.  I feel that this sense of frustration and perhaps grief is what leads her to have a one night stand with Nina, an intense and manipulative student she tutors, as almost a way for Jo to find her way back to Jon.

The interesting thing is that all the time Jo is trying to navigate her way through her marriage, her life in America is always like a distant echo in the background.  She is always aware of her brother’s neediness and her father’s inability to function without his wife.  As long as they are alive, she can never really be free and able to fully be herself.

As the novel draws to its close, we see Jo contemplating her imperfect family in an idealised way.  I think this is a really clever plot device by J M Monaco as it made me contemplate my own life and my memories of my childhood.  In today’s world, where at a click of a button, we can edit our reality to show the world how fabulous our filtered life is, How We Remember is an intense and often emotional novel which makes us confront (not always comfortably) what our lives were really like.  Ultimately in spite of the truth, and how hard that may be, we are bound to our families and our love for them makes us put aside any frailities or flaws they may have.

Thank you very much to Red Door Books for asking me to take part in the official Blog Tour, and if you want to see what my fantastic fellow bloggers are saying about How We Remember, you can follow the Tour here..

How We Remember is available:

At Amazon: here

Via Netgalley: here

Or you can purchase it at Red Door Publishing: here

If you would like to read more about J. M. Monaco, please visit her blog: here

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The Rival by Charlotte Duckworth

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Charlotte Duckworth: The Rival

Published By: Quercus on 6th September 2018

Buy It: here

What the Blurb Says:

NOW
Helena is a career woman with no job and a mother without a baby. She blames Ashley for destroying her life. But is what happened really Ashley’s fault?

THEN
When Helena hires Ashley to work for her, she’s startled but impressed by her fierce ambition. They form a dream team and Helena is proud – maybe this is the protégée she’s always wanted to have. But soon Helena realizes that nothing will stand in the way of Ashley’s drive to get to the top. And when Helena becomes pregnant, everything she has worked so hard for is suddenly threatened, with devastating consequences…

What I Say:

I am going to be honest, I was wary of offering to review The Rival. I thought that it was going to be one of those ‘psychological thrillers’ that are all over the bookshops at the moment.  I don’t know about you,  but I am almost at the point where if I see one more novel promising twists and turns that you won’t see coming, I think I might have to scream into a cushion!

So, let me start by telling you that The Rival is so much more and is a brilliant timely and relevant read for all women.

It is a powerful and heartfelt study not only of female ambition and drive, and how women are damned if they work and damned if they don’t, but it also intelligently examines what it means to be a woman in society today.

The narrative in The Rival moves between the past and the present.  We meet Helena, a woman who we learn has lost a baby, and has been the victim of a campaign by her protegee Ashley,  who will stop at nothing to get the life she wants, even at the expense of Helena’s wellbeing.

Helena and her husband live in the countryside, she is currently undergoing therapy and the geographical isolation of her house seems to echo her distance from work and everyday life.  We know that Helena has lost a child and is grieving, unable to connect with her husband. She is haunted by the constant number of cars that crash into the wall of her house, often acting as the medic and counsellor until the ambulance can arrive at the scene.

What is striking about this is that it seems that Helena is slightly in a dream like state, and that as a reader, you immediately sense that this novel is far more layered than it first seems…

When her previous boss David, gets in touch with Helena to offer her a contact to get back into the world of work, she is determined that Ashley is not part of the conversation. It is becoming increasingly clear that we understand something has happened between them which has changed their lives forever.

Ashley is a young, focussed and ambitious young woman, who starts work at Helena’s company (KAMU – Kiss and Make Up).  From the start of the novel, we are in no doubt that Ashley has a career path in mind, and no one, especially not Helena, is going to stop her.

Helena and Ashley start to work together, and from the moment they share office space, Ashley is working on her plan to make sure that Helena becomes dispensable.  She puts all her energies into developing a proposal to move the company forward, and is horrified when Helena seemingly steals her ideas and presents them to David their boss. Furious with Helena, Ashley steamrollers her way onto Helena’s team and every decision she makes is designed to make Helena realise that she is not as powerful as she thinks.

Charlotte’s writing means you feel Ashley’s anger and irritation with Helena seep through every page of this novel and I was both intrigued and appalled by her!  So often, novels just make the ‘bad’ character a stereotyped cartoonish image, with no depth and little understanding of why they act like they do.  What I loved about The Rival is that we see into Ashley’s background, we learn how she has had to deal with so much in her life, and that her ambition is borne of a desire to be the best she can, so that she never ends up like her mum.

With Ashley now pushing forward, and Helena seemingly being excluded from decisions and meetings, Helena discovers she is pregnant.  This, for me, elevates The Rival way above the many novels I have read before.  Charlotte writes frankly and intelligently about women not only in the workplace, but also how they are defined and limited by the expectations of society the minute they become pregnant.

Far from relaxing and enjoying her pregnancy, Helena is constantly on edge as she battles to retain her position in the company.  Ashley now comes into her own, and sees this as the perfect opportunity to usurp Helena – I mean, after all, how can you trust a hormonal pregnant woman who may not come back anyway.  You need a young, driven and focussed woman who will not be leaving early to pick up her child – someone just like Ashley.

This was for me the crux of the novel.  The world would be a far more contented place if women supported each other, but the issue is that we are trying to work within a society that is patriarchal – it does not often support women, and leaves them fighting for their careers.  When you are on maternity leave, you can’t relax, because you know that most of your salary will be spent on childcare when you return to work, and that from the moment you do return, your whole way of working has to change.  You have to work twice as hard, always worried that you will get a call asking you to collect your child. I know when I was working, and my son was poorly, my husband and I would be arguing as to who was the least busy and could afford to take the time off.

Helena starts to realise exactly what Ashley is doing, but of course, she knows that eventually she will have to leave to have her baby, and then everything is out of her control.  Interestingly, Ashley is also irritated that if Helena leaves, she may not have a project to work on and so has to fight for her professional life.  So she cleverly decides to have some meetings in New York, knowing that Helena can’t fly, and Ashley seemingly gets everything she wants…

As Ashley starts to live the life she wants, we finally discover how Helena lost her baby, and The Rival seamlessly comes to its brilliant conclusion (no, am not going to tell you!)!

This is when the jaw dropping, did not see that coming, check back to make sure I read it correctly moments happen, and it was fantastic!

The Rival is a novel that is not easily categorised, and that is part of its fantastic appeal.  It is a clever and satisfying read, that I felt raised so many pertinent issues for all women.  Charlotte Duckworth has written a smart, challenging and timely novel, which is not only a joy to read, but is also compassionate and eloquent.

At the heart of The Rival, lies a simple truth.

If women devoted more time to supporting each other rather than trying to tear each other down, just think of what we could really achieve.

I loved it.

Thank you to Quercus Books and Ella Patel for my copy of The Rival in exchange for an honest review and to participate in this blog tour.

The Blog Tour continues with these amazing bloggers. See what they are saying about The Rival too…

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VOX by C V Dalcher

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VOX by C V Dalcher

Published By: HQ

Buy It: here

What The Blurb Says:

Silence can be deafening.

Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.

Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman.

Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.

For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning…

[100 WORD LIMIT REACHED]

What I Say:

Every day we are assaulted by a cacophony of words and sounds from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep.  We chat, laugh, text, post comments and in my case, settle down with a book and talk some more.

Now imagine a world where women are limited to 100 words a day.  If you go over your limit, a bracelet on your arm will administer an electric shock.  If you go further over the 100 word limit, the intensity of the electric shock will increase until you inevitably die.

This law includes all females, so girls from a very young age also have a bracelet fitted which ensures that they too cannot use more than 100 words too.

So, VOX must be set way in the future, in an alien world far removed from ours?

Guess again.

Welcome to modern day America, ruled by a megalomaniacal President and his brother, assisted by a power hungry Reverend who is the head of the Pure Movement.  A Presidential Election has facilitated the infiltration of this Movement throughout America, which believes that not only is a woman’s place is in the home, under the complete control of her husband, but that she should be seen and absolutely not heard, which is why the bracelet has been introduced into American Society.

Single women are given the laughable ‘choice’ of marrying someone, anyone, or are made to work in brothels.  Anyone who is not heterosexual is criminalised and forced to work in camps where they are ‘re-educated’ to become straight again.

Jean McClellan is a doctor of neurolinguistics, who, like millions of other women is a virtual wordless prisoner in her own home. She is not permitted a bank account or a credit card, and has had to give up her career.  She is trying to ensure that she not only does not flout the rules, but that her young daughter Sonia never goes over the 100 word limit too. Sonia and her brothers attend school, but as a girl, Sonia is not allowed to learn to read or write, and chillingly, her greatest achievement is receiving a certificate for speaking the least number of words (just 3) in a day.

Little by little, the government ensure that women are becoming nothing more than silent, passive bodies, ghosts who glide through their lives absolutely controlled by the men who rule the White House and the men who share their homes.  Even more chillingly, Jean’s eldest son Steven, is being indoctrinated into this state controlled misogyny through school, as the curriculum is changed to reflect the teachings of the Pure Movement, so as soon as the boys start their education, they learn about the place of women in their world.

The scene is set as Jean and her family attempt to live within the horrific misogynistic confines of their world, as she is unable to do anything to protest against the President, because quite simply, to vocalise her anger means she will die and her family will be put in danger. Added to this, Steven is now falling under the spell of the Pure Movement, and has started to treat his mother appallingly, quite simply because that is what he is meant to do in this world.

So far, so depressing.  Until one day, the men from the White House arrive at Jean’s house offering her the chance to remove her bracelet and resume her academic career.  Ironically she is asked to give the power of speech back to the person who was responsible for taking hers away, as the President’s brother is unable to speak following a brain injury.  Jean is placed in an awful dilemma  – should she take the offer and be able to speak and use words (even if it is only until the cure is found) while helping the man who has inflicted this situation on America, or should she morally refuse and stay imprisoned in her silent world instead.

After much soul searching, Jean decides to research a cure for the President’s Brother. She also demands that Sonia has her bracelet removed too.  The fact that Sonia is bewildered and scared by her freedom, unsure and unwilling to use her words because she has never had that opportunity makes VOX a difficult read at times. I cannot imagine how heartbreaking it would be, to live your life in fear of your child attempting to express themselves, for them to have to quell every creative thought in them so that they do not risk injury or more appallingly, their own death.

From this moment on, Jean is pulled into a presidential world filled with intrigue and lies, where she and her research team discover that what people say are not always what they mean, and that their intelligence and determination has the potential to change their world – but not always for the best.

For me, Jean is a completely relateable protagonist.  You feel her pain and sense of frustration that she is forced to live in this way. Her drive to succeed is powered by her desire to ensure that her daughter and all women in America no longer has to live under this chilling and barbaric regime.  VOX shows us how when we are faced with impossible and life changing choices, sometimes we have the greatest power within ourselves to do what it takes to succeed.

VOX is a novel that deserves to be read, discussed and shared with everyone.  If you feel nothing while reading it, if it doesn’t make you rage and feel angry, or make you want to ask how this could possibly happen, then I am not sure we can really be bookish friends!

C V Dalcher has written a novel that works so brilliantly because in today’s world, with the recent political events that have happened, women losing their ability to use words is scarily not something that seems so truly far fetched any more.  Setting the action in modern day America means that we can easily visualize the day to day world, which makes it even more chilling.  The awful idea that something like this could happen in our lifetime makes this a timely and absolutely relevant read for all of us.

In creating a world that is so scared of giving women a voice, it seems that the men in charge of VOX’s world are fearful. Maybe they subconsciously realise that when women come together to stand up against something they believe in, nothing, not even a deadly bracelet can stop women being the ultimate force for change for the world we deserve.

I loved it.

The Rules Of Seeing by Joe Heap

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Joe Heap: The Rules Of Seeing

Published By: HarperCollins

Buy It: here

What The Blurb Says:

Nova is 32 years old and she is about to see the world for the very first time.

Jillian Safinova, Nova to her friends, can do many things. She can speak five languages. She can always find a silver lining. And she can even tell when someone is lying just from the sound of their voice.

But there’s one thing Nova can’t do. She can’t see.

When her brother convinces her to have an operation that will restore her sight, Nova wakes up to a world she no longer understands. Until she meets Kate.

As Kate comes into focus, her past threatens to throw them into a different kind of darkness. Can they each learn to see the world in a different … and open their eyes to the lives they could have been living all along?

What I Say:

Rules of Seeing is a novel that I really wanted to read – I have to admit that the cover made me want to get hold of a copy!  The beautiful proof that I was sent by Charlotte at Harper gave nothing away about the story, it was white, resonating with calmness and I thought I was going to be reading a simple love story.

What I found instead was a unique and powerful, genre defying book about what it means to be able to see, and how sometimes the things that are right in front of us are what will change our lives the most.

Jillian Safinova (Nova to her friends) is a police interpreter. Fiercely independent, witty and kind, she lives her life to the fullest and is not prepared to take any rubbish from anyone.  She also happens to be blind, and has been from birth.  Nova has learned to live in a world of darkness, negotiating everything we take for granted and living happily enough as she juggles her personal and professional life.

Nova’s brother Alex, who is a doctor, tells her of an operation that would potentially restore her sight, and she is then faced with a massive choice.  Take a huge leap of faith and change everything she has ever known to be able to see, or carry on as she is.  The thing is, when Nova decides to have the operation, this is not one of those trite cinematic moments where Nova’s bandages are removed and she jumps from her bed, runs outside and drives a car away.  Imagine going from a state of no vision to a world where everything hurtles towards you at once – you have to learn the rules to survive.  The Rules of Seeing.  Nova has to work her way through all of these in order to understand the world around her that we take for granted.

As she struggles with recovery and rehabilitation, she meets Kate. An architect married to a policeman, Kate is increasingly realising that her husband is far from the upstanding member of the police force he pretends to be.  As well as having a side line in dealing the drugs he has seized in various drug operations, he is an abusive husband.  Kate’s existence is punctuated by the vicious and unprovoked attacks she suffers at his hands.  She believes that she is not worth anything more, and is resigned to living her days in the restricted world that he allows her to inhabit.

So, when Kate bumps into Nova attempting to destroy a vending machine to get the snack she wants, the two women are set on a course that will change their lives permanently.  Kate and Nova are both faced with learning new rules for their lives, and this brings them even closer together as they realise that they are attracted to each other.

What I loved about this novel, was that you really understand what it means to be blind, and more importantly, how truly challenging and frustrating it is to be invisible because of your disability.

Getting your sight back must seem to be the most incredible thing, but what Joe does is show how it can also be the most frightening and isolating thing too.  Imagine going from darkness to a world where you have to learn the rules that everyone else has known from birth.  The difference between objects, what it’s like to travel on a bus or in a car, to learn what an object you know the word for actually looks like.  How do you know how big a car is or how you distinguish colours and shapes?  Nova has to relearn every little thing, absorb it and put it into practice at the same time as continuing with her personal and professional life.

As Nova battles to accept her sight, Kate is stuck at home in London, living with a man who takes pleasure in finding ways to distress his wife.  One of the most appalling things he does is to slowly and deliberately skin a rabbit in front of her, knowing how upsetting it is, relishing the distress he causes and the power he has over her.

All the time, Kate is trying to stop herself falling for Nova, but she can see a glimpse of how happy she could be, if she could make the decision to move away from her husband.  However, when they finally do kiss, Kate, perhaps scared of what Tony would do to Nova if he found out, sends Nova away.  The journey for Nova into a world of sight is at a critical point.  She could carry on with her therapy, or purposefully forget everything she has learned to this point, and retreat into her blindness again. Rejected by Kate and bewildered by what has happened, Nova decides to return to the world she knows best.

A final awful attack on Kate by Tony, gives her the courage to leave him and stay in the flat she was renovating.  It is only then, when Nova comes to see her, that Kate is able to tell her how she has really seen Tony for who he is, and the truth about her home life comes tumbling out.  Joe’s tender and eloquent writing shows how in loving each other, Kate and Nova have found a way to navigate the life changing events they are facing, and that by being together as a couple, they can start to heal and live the lives they truly deserve.  For me, the fact that they do have ups and downs, doubts and fears about their relationship makes them seem even more real.  Who hasn’t read and re-read a text before, during and after sending it. or worried about how long is too long before getting in touch?  Their tentative steps in the relationship means that we are completely engaged by them and want only for their story to end happily

If only life was that simple, and happy ever afters were found with the turn of a page.. Tony, infuriated by his wife’s abandonment has other ideas, and Kate and Nova fall victim to his sadistic nature as he attempts to finally destroy the relationship they have fought so hard for.  Of course, as always, I am going to say nothing more other than you will need to buy The Rules of Seeing to find out whether Kate and Nova’s love triumphs.

The Rules of Seeing is a novel unlike any I have ever read.  It is a powerful, complex and challenging book that shows us unflinchingly not only what it means to be blind, but also how shocking and upsetting living in a violent relationship is.  Far from being a cosy and straightforward love story, it is a novel about how too often we settle for the way things are, and that by having the courage to be willing to really see ourselves and the world around us, we can truly have the life we deserve.

I loved it.