Book Review for Delia Owens’ NYT Best Seller-Where the Crawdads Sing.

 

BOOK REVIEW

Book Review – Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens

I found this book reviewed on Debbie’s blog  I had seen it in my audible recommendations but wasnt sure it would be for me until then.

Not knowing much about marsh people and finding the idea of a girl living alone in those marshes somewhat bewildering it took me a while to get into the book and learn about the whole concept.

Then the character started to really get to me. Not always behaving the way I would have wanted her, she became interesting, likeable and more than the victim.

The odd but pretty loner girl befriends some folks, evades the police and finds romance.
Self sufficient and resourceful she remains hungry for human contact but finds it hard to achieve

There is heart breaking backstory, beautiful coming of age and overall, the murder she is accused of due to prejudice and her own actions.

Beautiful side characters, like the shop keepers who lok out for her, the solicitor who defends her and some friends and love interests lend this a warm feeling in an otherwise legal and societal witch hunt.

Beautiful prose and the tense run up to the culmination of the law suit make this an easy and fast read. Thoroughly enjoyed this.

 

 

Blurb:

#1 New York Times Bestseller
More than 4 million copies sold
A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

“I can’t even express how much I love this book! I didn’t want this story to end!”–Reese Witherspoon

“Painfully beautiful.”–The New York Times Book Review

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

DEBBIE’s introdution:
A most beautiful book I didn’t want to end. I’m not sure I would have picked up this book on my own, but while on vacation, many of us book-swapped at the pool, and this book was getting a lot of attention. So when my friend offered it to me when she finished it, I grabbed it quick.

In this coming of age story about a girl, Kya, abandoned by her family while a mere young child, living in the marsh off the Northern Carolina coast, left to learn about the cruelty of the world she’d been sheltered from, yet, comforted by nature. A story about abuse, neglect, survival, nature, love, friendship, loneliness, social prejudice, maybe murder, and finally redemption. The New York Times said it best ‘painfully beautiful’.

 

Debbie’s 5 Star Review which made me get the book:

A beautiful. and at times, heartbreaking story of survival and awakening from a sheltered life among the marsh lands to a realization of a cruel world. Kya grows up alone in the camouflaged world of nature and as she ventures out into the ‘outside’ world, learns tough lessons about the lack of societal acceptance and injustice.

Left alone to fend for herself, a beautiful and clever, self-reliant child grows up in the peaceful wild. We grow to love this child as we turn to every next page. Kya teaches us through her discoveries about how nature can tell us so much, and a deep look into how one can survive in isolation with nature providing most food and shelter.

Kya is the youngest of the poor Clarkson family, and one-by-one her family all disappeared until she was left to fend for herself to survive at the ripe old age of 6 years old. The story is written beautifully with Owens grabbing our hearts as we become engrossed into this little girl’s life, praying she will be safe as we turn the pages. Kya is smart and learns life through nature and begins her journey of lone survival paddling out the old family raft to the town pier. The only person she’d ever known other than her immediate family – Jumpin’, the kind old black man, sold gas and supplies at the pier, and he developed quite a soft spot in his heart for this child.

Kya knew she could survive fishing and such but still needed staples and her quick mind prompted her to start digging oysters so she could trade them at Jumpin’s for gas and staples. Jumpin’ and his wife Mabel took a shining to this unusual and independent child and they showed her the only kind of love she ever knew since her mamma had left home. Anyone else in the town shunned the poor child.

As she matures into a young woman, she finds friendship with very few, save for Jumpin’ and nature. Later she will meet Tate who teaches her love – until a complication arises, leaving Kya feeling hurt and falling into another relationship with the wrong boy – Chase.

In this book there is a wealth of life lessons shared through Kya’s life. We start off with abandoned children, abusive father, societal racism not only for the color of skin but social standing. We learn about survival, our heartstrings are pulled along as Kya experiences life – fears, confusion, abandonment, love, loneliness, growth, becoming a woman with no warnings, and later on becoming an accused victim targeted because of her lifestyle.

This is the first book I’ve read by Owens and certainly will not be the last. If you’re looking for an engrossing read that will grab your attention and heartstrings as well as teach a lot about nature and humanity, read this book.

 

©DGKaye2020

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Review of “The Only Game In Town” by Peter Black

I had the good fortune to meet the author, former Mayor of Swansea and Welsh Assembly Member on a long trip from the South of England to West Wales where he pitched the book (un-written) to me.
Two weeks I received the book in the mail.

The blurb:
|The men who run Oldport are corrupt, arrogant and unchallenged.

What must happen to loosen their grip on the town?

Harry O’Leary has been leader of Oldport Council for nearly twenty years. Together with local nightclub owner and developer John Baker he has the whole town in his pocket, and both have profited handsomely from it.

Frank McColgan is a local institution. He is the transvestite landlord of the Prince Albert, a pub and brothel in the town’s harbour area, a meeting place for local movers and shakers and the favoured drinking hole for journalists at the Oldport Observer and their eccentric editor, Jerome Wilson.

When Billy Jones arrives looking for his journalist brother, he finds a berth at the Prince Albert, and together with barmaid Jeanie Carter becomes entangled in some of the town’s less-than-scrupulous affairs.

The book on Amazon UK
My review of Peter’s previous book The Assassination of Morgan Sheckler

My review:
A group of extremely colourful characters populate this entertaining book of political intrigue, corruption and manipulation.
Young Billy arrives in Oldport from the country side, trying to make a living for himself at the local pub. He soon falls in with the right and wrong people and befriends some powerful and some not so powerful people; from property developers to bar maids and prostitutes.  This is as much his coming of age as the story of human weaknesses exploited and political agendas pushed in the council buildings as well as in brothels and pubs.

Anyone who has lived party or county politics will be able to relate to the patterns and stereotypes. For me this was a page turning entertaining and thoughtful novel. Black’s background in politics allows us some fascinating insights into the workings of the good and the bad and the very ugly processes.

He’s brought to live some very memorable and entertaining characters, throws in some love interests and a good mix of goodies and badies.
This is very insightful and enjoyable.

Author Bio:

Peter Black is a graduate of Swansea University, a former member of the Welsh Assembly, Deputy Minister for Local Government in Wales from 2000 to 2003, and has been a Swansea Councillor since 1984. Awarded the CBE for service to public life, he is due to take up post in May 2019 as Lord Mayor of Swansea for the civic year 2019-20.
The Assassination of Morgan Sheckler is his first novel. He blogs regularly on political matters at http://www.peterblack.blogspot.com and writes the occasional article for the South Wales Evening Post. These can be read at http://www.peterblack.wales.
Peter can be found on Twitter @peterblackwales and on Facebook at peterblack.wales. He is also on Instagram, where you will be able to find many pictures of his cats.

Q & A with D.G. Kaye, Featuring #HistoricalFiction author Paulette Mahurin

I’m a huge fan of Paulette – in fact she is one of my longest serving author friends and I’m thrilled to announce her new book and share this interview
– Originally posted on https://dgkayewriter.com/q-a-with-d-g-kaye-featuring-historicalfiction-author-paulette-mahurin/

APPRECIATION,  AUTHOR INTERVIEW,  BLOGSHARE,  D.G. KAYE,  GOODREADS,  GREAT INFORMATION,  GUEST AUTHOR FEATURE,  GUEST POST,  HISTORICAL FICTION,  HUMANITY,  INSPIRATIONAL READS,  NARCISSISTS,  ON WRITING,  Q AND A WITH D.G. KAYE,  WORLD WAR II

Welcome to my Q & A today. I’m delighted to have one of my favorite historical fiction authors over here today, Paulette Mahurin.

As many of you who read my Sunday Book Reviews know, historical fiction is one of my favorite genres to read in; and I was hooked on Paulette’s writing ever since reading her gripping book – The Seven Year Dress – the story of one woman who survived WWII and lived to tell. Recently, I reviewed her latest book – Irma’s Endgame, a medical mystery/thriller, which I enjoyed too. But today Paulette is introducing us to her book – The Old Gilt Clock. Paulette’s  royalty profits are donated to save dogs from kill shelters.

 

 

 

About Paulette:

Paulette Mahurin lives with her husband Terry and two dogs, Max and Bella, in Ventura County, California. She grew up in West Los Angeles and attended UCLA, where she received a Master’s Degree in Science. While in college, she won awards and was published for her short-story writing. One of these stories, Something Wonderful, was based on the couple presented in His Name Was Ben, which she expanded into a fictionalized novel in 2014.

Her first novel, The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, made it to Amazon bestseller lists and won awards, including best historical fiction of the year 2012 in Turning the Pages Magazine. Her third novel, To Live Out Loud, won international critical acclaim and made it to multiple sites as favorite read book of 2015.

Semi-retired, she continues to work part-time as a Nurse Practitioner in Ventura County. When she’s not writing, she does pro-bono consultation work with women with cancer, works in the Westminster Free Clinic as a volunteer provider, volunteers as a mediator in the Ventura County Courthouse for small claims cases, and involves herself, along with her husband, in dog rescue. Profits from her books go to help rescue dogs from kill shelters.

 

 

Thanks for being here today Paulette, I’m excited to learn more about your latest book too! Let’s get into some questions!

 

Where do your book ideas grow from?

As glib as this may sound, the tree of life and what spouts organically, what comes to me with spontaneous interest is where my ideas come from. I have a fascination and passion, naturally, about hard topics. Anti-Semitism, homophobia, women’s abuse, racism, to name a few and am drawn to these topics. Ideas come to me and if they hold an interest I research the subjects. For example, when I read of a little known man, a heroic historical resistance fighter whose last words were, “let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards,” I was instantly intrigued. What was this person’s life that brought him to these final words? That became the topic of my last novel, The Old Gilt Clock. The man, William Arondéus, was a World War II underground resistance fighter in the Netherlands who along with his collaborators managed to save the lives of close to a million Jewish people.

D.G. – It’s no secret I love your books, and it’s fascinating to learn what inspires you. I am drawn to same hard topics, and am always mesmerized by learning people’s actions and the whys of behavior, so no wonder I enjoy your books.

 

Do you have any advice you can share for new writers?

The best advice I think any writer can ever receive is what defines a writer is sitting down in the chair and writing. Like the Nike commercial, just do it, it’s the same with writing. Everyone has something to say. We all live stories. Our days have a beginning, middle, and ending. The same is true for all aspects of our lives.

We communicate to friends in stories, usually snapshots of events with personal judgments and narrative commentary thrown in. It’s no different for anyone who wants to write. You just sit down in a chair, put your hands on the keys, and punch in; vomit out what you want to say. Vomit out what you don’t want to say. Don’t hold back. And when the inaccurate critic inside your head starts complaining, you say to that critic, “Shut up!” It doesn’t matter if you sit for a minute or ten hours, typing your ideas down makes you a writer. Period. If you want to write a novel, a novella, etc. then that also is about sitting down and doing it. Tell what comes to you organically and don’t worry about editing, grammar, how flowery it sounds, and for Pete’s sake don’t listen to the inside of your head when it tells you that’s crap and you have no talent. We all have those voices, not a human being alive (with the exception perhaps of a malignant narcissist) who doesn’t have doubts, anti-creative thoughts, feeling it could be better, etc. you name it. Leave all that for after you finish writing what you want to. Then hand it over to an editor.

Writing is a process, the more time you put in the stronger your writing muscle becomes. Some of the greats hated their own work. Millions disagreed. We just can’t know how something we write will be received but if you never sit down and just do it then you miss the opportunity to find out.

D.G. – I love your advice. And I’m sure I speak for many writers when I say, we are our own worst critics.

 

Share with us a book that moved you so much it stays with you.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It is one of the most profound books I’ve read. A non-fiction account of Frankl’s imprisonment and experience in an concentration camp where he lost the love of his life, his wife, and parents. His entire family was wiped out and yet this incredible man watched others and observed the resilience of the human spirit shine through the worst of circumstances. A Viennese psychiatrist by profession, in the most unthinkable situation he saw other dance, sing, and go to their deaths laughing. With everything lost to him, he gained an insight:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human
freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl. I’ve never forgotten this. When dark times happen, I remember this and like a ray of sunbeam shining through a rainy cloud it lifts me.

Frankl made it out of the camps and went back to his psychiatric profession in Vienna, and was subsequently a visiting professor at Harvard. What a teacher he must have been. He certainly changed my life for the better—to me there is no better educator.

D.G. – Wow, I just got goosebumps Paulette. We both read a lot about the atrocities of mankind. I’m sometimes asked from some, why I want to read those sad war stories of evil and sadness. Because I can’t help myself from reading about the human spirit and how some people manage, despite almost zero odds, to overcome despite the heinous world they live through. And Frankl said it so succinctly. I will definitely be looking up that book. Thank you for sharing this. ♥

 

 

Blurb:

During one of the darkest times in human history when millions of innocent Jews and others deemed “undesirables” were being sent to concentration camps to be brutality worked to death or slaughtered, a group of Dutch resistance workers rose up against the atrocities. Their resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands created a vast counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications network to help hide Jewish people from German authorities. The Old Gilt Clock is the story of how one Dutch resistance member, Willem Arondéus, risked his life to defy the Nazis’ plans to identify and deport hundreds of thousands of Dutch Jews. Arondéus’ courage is largely forgotten by history, but not by the Jewish and Dutch people. Written by the award-winning international Amazon bestselling author of The Seven Year Dress, comes a story of Arondéus’ courageous struggle to stand up to the unimaginable evil designs of Hitler. Inclusive is Arondéus’ battle to come out to his homophobic father, who hated his son’s homosexuality. It is also a story about friendships formed in the Dutch resistance movement, their joys and sorrows, their wins and losses, their loves and betrayals, and ultimately their resilience to oppose tyranny and oppression when millions stood silent condoning heinous behavior. Thousands are alive today because of these brave, compassionate men and women.

 

The Old Gilt Clock Excerpt:

Across the ocean in America, where Birgit now lived with her new husband and a baby girl, the Roaring Twenties were reaching an end. It had been a time when blues and jazz bled into the culture, a time of rags-to-riches for black entertainers when the American prosperity was a way of life. But as the end of 1929 approached, it all came to a sudden end with the stock market crash. Not limited to North America, the Great Depression created a worldwide economic desperation that would last well into the 1930s, impacting the Netherlands. It led to political instability and riots. Hit hard was Germany. Already in political turmoil with the rise of brutality in the form of the Nazi and communist movements and the economic destruction levied on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles’ imposition of reparations in the sum of 50 billion gold marks, opportunity was provided for the rise of Hitler.

The end of the roaring twenties took on a new roar. At first, it was a low rumble but by the end of the thirties heading into the forties, it was deafening. The earsplitting grandiose contra-life outcry included talks of plans to create murdering machines. Sane ears discounted the oppressive rumors as madness. Just the talk of idle idiots. Sadly, as ears became unwaxed and able to hear, it became clear they weren’t just listening to rumors.

“There’s no such thing as a gas to kill people.”

“Oh, there isn’t? What of the poisonous asphyxiant gas used in the United States to
execute condemned prisoners?”

Soon it would not be a far stretch from the talk of one criminal being put to death to a
vast number of undesirables. Undesirables! They are not human, according to the proponents, remembered Willem, as electric ripples moved up his spine.

 

Review:

Fifty Sheds of Books
5.0 out of 5 stars The Old Gilt Clock
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2020
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

During these troubling times when fascism is on the rise, it is good to see quality authors like Paulette Mahurin tackling serious issues. In turns, I found this story gripping, sad and uplifting. There appears to be two sides to the human coin: people of evil and their acolytes, basically bullies and cowards, against people who demonstrate amazing bravery and courage. This is a story of incredible bravery and courage, a story that young people in particular should read so that they do not make the mistakes of past generations and our generation.

I found the setting intriguing, the story impeccably researched and the storyline engrossing. The men and women of the Resistance were a breed apart displaying the best of humanity, and the author captures their special qualities in this wonderful book. Paulette Mahurin has created a back catalogue of impressive quality and this book sits with the others as one of her best. Without doubt, she is one of the most impressive novelists writing today.

 

Well, between the blurb, excerpt and this rave review, you know I can’t wait to sink my eyes into this book! Thank you for joining us here today, it was fabulous having you over Paulette. ♥

 

Follow Paulette at her Social Links:

 

PAULETTE MAHURIN BOOKS AMAZON:

http://www.amazon.com/Paulette-Mahurin/e/B008MMDUGO/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

 

PAULETTE MAHURIN AUTHOR PAGE AMAZON:

 

PAULETTE MAHURIN BOOKS FACEBOOK:

  https://www.facebook.com/Paulette-Mahurins-Books-695108163960200/?fref=ts

 

PAULETTE MAHURIN WEBSITE:

http://thepersecutionofmildreddunlap.wordpress.com/

 

PAULETTE MAHURIN TWITTER:

 

PAULETTE MAHURIN GOODREADS:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5895757.Paulette_Mahurin

 

©DGKaye2020

Guest Post: Lucinda Clarke

Great news – a new book by Lucinda. Check it out!

beetleypete

Lucinda is a writer and blogger, as well as a published author who currently resides in Spain. She is a great follower of blogs, and is always fully engaged with every post I publish, especially fiction.

I am very pleased to present her guest post, and to feature some of her books, including her latest novel. That’s her, in the middle. 🙂

Here is her unedited guest post, which includes a short bio too.

Thank you, Pete, for giving me this opportunity to appear on your blog. I am one of your most avid followers and especially enjoy your stories.

I hate writing about myself, but if I go to the big library desk in the sky tomorrow, I shall have no regrets, life has been a roller coaster ride. Born in Dublin, dragged up in the Cotswolds (a pretty part of England), and finished off in Liverpool (not as…

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Guest Post: Mary Smith

I’m a big fan of Mary’s books and Mary herself. Worth checking out her blog as well

beetleypete

I am delighted to feature Mary, a published writer, local historian, and fully-engaged blogger who resides in Scotland. Mary has lived and worked in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and her travels and experiences are fascinating to read about. She has special offers available on one of her her books from today, and I urge you to check it out.

**Please share this post on any social media you use, to help Mary**

Here is her own short bio.

Mary Smith has always loved writing. As a child she wrote stories in homemade books made from wallpaper trimmings – but she never thought people could grow up and become real writers. She spent a year working in a bank, which she hated – all numbers, very few words – ten years with Oxfam in the UK, followed by ten years working in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She wanted others to share her…

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