Abuse – Judefire33 – The Book Blog

My #BookReview of #SpeakOfTheDevil by @Rose_Wldng published by @BaskervilleJMP on 22.6.2023

Seven women stand in shock in a seedy hotel room; a man’s severed head sits in the centre of the floor. Each of the women – the wife, the teenager, the ex, the journalist, the colleague, the friend, and the woman who raised him – has a very good reason to have done it, yet each swears she didn’t. In order to protect each other, they must figure out who did.

Against the ticking clock of a murder investigation, each woman’s secret is brought to light as the connections between them converge to reveal a killer.

A beautifully written debut thriller about love, loyalty, and manipulation, Speak of the Devil explores the roles in which women are cast in the lives of terrible men . . . and the fallout when they refuse to stay silent for one moment longer.

Huge thanks to Baskerville for kindly sending me a copy of Speak Of The Devil.

Speak Of The Devil is a fantastic feminist thriller, written by Rose Wilding, who I would imagine will go on to be ONE of the writers of our time!

The opening chapter sees the reader meet a group of seven women, on New Year’s Eve 1999, sitting in a semi-circle all facing a kind of altar with a head of a man on it!

We then move through the novel from the point of view of each of the seven women – Ana, Sarah, Kaysha, Josie, Maureen, Olive and Sadia – we find out from each of them how this man has impacted their lives and how they have all come to this moment.

And it is amazing how Rose Wilding has written Speak Of The Devil, each woman’s story slowly eases out with each page and each awful thing that our bodiless man has inflicted on them. It’s a tale of love, fear, abuse, hate, lies, control, correction and murder and it is brilliant. The cast is written with a real feel for how women act and feel in relationships where not everything is as it seems, the plot is wonderful and I love the fact that there is a lesbian lead character! I feel this is an important novel in today’s crime fiction as it lets women have a voice, and I blooming loved it! I could not put it down and read it over 2 days, a total page-turner from beginning to end!

A huge 5-star read and I cannot wait for Ms Wilding’s next novel – a fantastic talented writer. I hope Sperak Of The Devil wins prizes and accolades as it certainly deserves too!

Rose Wilding is a **queer, working class writer with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester**. She lived in Newcastle Upon Tyne until she was 27, where she worked in customer service, collecting idiosyncrasies from everyone she met.

You can buy Speak Of The Devil HERE

You can follow Rose Wilding on TWITTER INSTAGRAM

My #Review of #eighteenseconds by @LouiseWriter published by @MardleBooks on 27.4.2023

Family is the best thing in your life. And the worst.

My mother once said to me, ‘I wish you could feel the way I do for eighteen seconds. Just eighteen seconds, so you’d know how awful it is.’

I thought about it. Realised we could all learn from being in another person’s head for eighteen seconds. Eighteen seconds inside Grandma Roberts’ head as she sat alone with her evening cup of tea, us girls upstairs in bed. Eighteen seconds inside one-year-old Colin’s head when he woke up in a foster home without his family. Eighteen seconds inside the head of a girl waiting for her bedroom door to open.

Writer, Louise Beech, looks back on the events that led to the day her mother wrote down her last words, then jumped off the Humber Bridge. She missed witnessing the horror herself by minutes.

Louise recounts the pain and trauma of her childhood alongside her love for her siblings with delicious dark humour and a profound voice of hope for the future.

Thank you to Mardle Books for kindly sending me an early proof of Eighteen Seconds.

Im not sure what drew me to this memoir by author Louise Beech but I’m so glad, which is a strange thing to say about such a touching and horrific memoir.

This book will not be for everyone, it deals with mental health issues, abuse, suicide and fractured families, that said this is such an uplifting book, and what comes from reading it, is hope, hope that through the darkest of times, we can overcome and find joy and love in those around us, that support us and love us for who we are, not what we’ve been through.

Louise Beech writes with assured honesty and dark humour ( I’m just going to add here that growing up with a chronically ill Mother, my Brother and I have learnt this art, an example…when our Mum used to go to the local chest hospital ( she had chronic asthma ), there was a sign on entering saying “Dead Slow”, well us being kids laughed at it, and I remember my Mum also laughing but my Dad got very cross with us all!), in fact, I actually felt Louise coming off the pages and talking just to me. What an absolute talent, to be able to look back and write of past and current horrors BUT move forward and learn to work through the very situations and emotions that can floor anyone, to survive and become an excellent writer is amazing, to have used writing as a way of dealing with some of the awful things that happened to Louise and her siblings, is such an uplifting event.

My overall feeling when I had finished Eighteen Seconds was that I just wanted to find Louise Beech and give her the biggest hug ever! Not because I feel sorry for her but because I’m in awe of her talent and ability to move on with her life in such a positive way. obviously, I’m not able to do this, but should I ever meet Louse Beech I shall definitely give her a huge Jude hug!.

A touching, heartfelt, moving, horrific and uplifting memoir and well deserving of 5 Stars.

Louise’s debut novel, How to be Brave, was a Guardian Readers’ pick in 2015 and a top ten bestseller on Amazon. The Mountain in my Shoe longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize 2016. The Sunday Mirror called Maria in the Moon ‘quirky, darkly comic, original and heartfelt’. It was also a Must Read in the Sunday Express and a Book of the Year at LoveReadingUK. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was described as ‘engrossing and captivating’ by the Daily Express. It also shortlisted for the RNA’s Romantic Novel of the Year and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019. Call Me Star Girl hit number one on Kobo. It also longlisted for the Not The Booker Prize and won the Best magazine Big Book Award 2019. This Is How We Are Human was a Clare Mackintosh August Book of the Month 2021. Audiobook memoir Daffodils came out in 2022, and novel Nothing Else too. Her memoir is coming in paperback as Eighteen Seconds April 2023.
Louise also writes as Louise Swanson.

You can buy Eighteen Seconds for £9.19 HERE

You can visit Louise’s website HERE

You can follow Louise on TWITTER INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK

No Honour by Awais Khan

The Blurb…….

In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect. And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves.

When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death. Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore and then disappears.

Jamil goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape.

Moving from the depths of rural Pakistan, riddled with poverty and religious fervour, to the dangerous streets of over-populated Lahore, No Honour is a story of family, of the indomitable spirit of love in its many forms … a story of courage and resilience, when all seems lost, and the inextinguishable fire that lights one young woman’s battle for change.

I had seen a lot of reviews for No Honour by Awais Khan, and although its not my normal Genre, I know that Orenda Books never publish a doozey, so i ventured in.

From the first page i was utterly gripped and appalled, this is not a book for the faint hearted, its a hard hitting, emotional story of female honour killing in modern day Pakistan.

I found it compelling and harrowing at the same time, I’m not sure that I’ve read a book that manages to write such beautiful prose about such awful events and activities before, but the further i got into it, the more I knew this is a masterpiece of our time!

It feels weird saying what a superb book No Honour is when its such a sad hard-hitting subject matter, but if we don’t write about these things then nothing will change, and if there’s one thing I’d like to see happen from Awais book, its that it helps change the ancient ways to a more equal society for women.

I was really taken by the lead character’s of Abida and Jamil, their inner strength and love for each other is so well written, you could almost feel their pain and love coming off the pages in waves. And the thing that I liked the most was the ending!

I did have to take breaks from reading No Honour as I found it, in parts, very harrowing, but its not written to shock, it is integral to the storyline.

I’m so glad I read No Honour, it is definitely a 5 star read, and opened my eyes to how other cultures live, which lead me to Google to find out more!

Awais Khan

Awais Khan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham University. He has studied creative writing with Faber Academy. His debut novel, In the Company of Strangers, was published to much critical acclaim and he regularly appears on TV and Radio. Awais also teaches a popular online creative writing course to aspiring writers around the world. He is currently working on his third book. When not working, he has his nose buried in a book. He lives in Lahore.