JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly

Georgeanne Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and demure attitudes. So when civil war ignites the nation, she follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women a bother on the battlefront. She and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, D.C. to Gettysburg, and while involved in the war effort witness firsthand the unparalleled horrors of slavery.

In the South, Jemma is enslaved on the Peeler Plantation, while her sister, Patience, is enslaved on the property next door. Both live in fear of LeBaron, an abusive overseer who tracks their every move. When Jemma is sold by the cruel Anne-May just as the Union Army comes through, she sees a chance to escape – but only by abandoning those she loves.

Anne-May is forced to run the Peeler Plantation when her husband joins the Union Army and her brother enlists with the Confederates. Now in charge, she uses the opportunity to follow her own ambitions and is drawn into a secret Southern network of spies . . .

Based on true events, Martha Hall Kelly’s Sunflower Sisters is an evocative and engaging historical novel set during the American Civil War. At over 500 pages, Sunflower Sisters takes us from the plantation homes where slaves were treated inhumanely, all the way to war-torn New York City and the horrors of the battlefield front. Not afraid to shy away from the tough realities of war, Martha places a female lens on a historical time in American history.

Since reading this, I’ve realised it’s the third book in a series set in this time period (After Lilac Girls and Lost Roses). However, each book is standalone and you don’t need to read either of the others to follow this one.

Sunflower Sisters is written in third person POV and switches between three women affected by the Civil War — nurse Georgy, Peeler Plantation slave Jemma, and the horrid homeowner Anne-May. Martha writes with intimate and unique POV, giving us incredible insight into how these women felt during this short snapshot of their lives. The writing is seamless and draws the reader in immediately, with three very different voices and three women whose lives will heavily intersect by the end.

“As my sister drove on, I opened the little leather book, the virgin paper smooth and white, to find an ivory-coloured silk bookmark, a pretty little magnolia embroidered at the top. I ran one finger down the silk, so much like the lacy underthings he sold at the shop.”

Despite Anne-May’s flaws, all three women are determined, bold and refuse to give up when faced with hardship. During a time when there weren’t very high expectations placed upon women, all three of these characters rose beyond those around them. They’re headstrong and fierce, and young women will find themselves falling for Georgy and Jemma in particular.

I read a lot of historical fiction and it’s rare to have a ‘villain’ as one of the main characters, let alone with their own perspective we follow. It felt quite refreshing to have Anne-May in the story — I feel like she added something unique to the genre and I liked finding out how her story would progress, the good and the bad.

From the detailed notes at the end of the book, it’s clear how much research went into writing Sunflower Sisters. The extensive work that Martha put in prior to writing is evident in every page.

“I stood on the porch overlooking the tobacco fields that ran down to the river, Ma, Pa, Celeste, and Delly bent at the waist over the young tobacco plants. That scene from up there’d take your breath away, the wide river beyond, until LeBaron rode into view, up on his horse with his whip coiled at his thigh, and you remember it was all just a place to keep us chained for their own use.”

Admittedly, Georgy’s story does lag a little bit in the middle, and I felt unsure of her purpose in the book until her path crossed with Jemma.

Although I did really love the romance that budded between Georgy and Frank, Jemma’s love story felt a bit rushed and underdeveloped and I wasn’t sure if it was necessary in the novel. It felt like it was put in to please readers, and not because the story demanded it.

“To meet our ship, Eliza and I boarded the tugboat Wissahickon, whose captain agreed to deliver us…It all seemed peaceful enough below deck, neatly made beds, the sounds of a well-tended ward, sepulchral whispers and a few moans. But I could feel it coming. That peace would not last long.”

Raw, vivid, expertly written and filled to the brim with three-dimensional characters, Sunflower Sisters is highly recommended reading for fans of historical fiction. A sweeping saga indeed. Readership skews female.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Sunflower Sisters
Martha Hall Kelly
April 2021
Penguin Random House Publishers

Heartsick by Jessie Stephens

Claire has returned from London to the dust and familiarity of her childhood home, only to realise something is wrong with her partner Maggie.

Patrick is a lonely uni student, until he meets Caitlin – but does she feel as connected as he does?

Ana is happily married with three children. Then, one night, she falls in love with someone else.

Based on three true stories, Heartsick is a compelling narrative nonfiction account of the many lows and occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. Bruising, beautiful, achingly specific but wholeheartedly universal, it reminds us that emotional pain can make us as it breaks us, and that storytelling has the ultimate healing power.

Jessie Stephens’ Heartsick documents three lives affected by heartbreak. Whilst names have been changed and small details have been altered, Ana, Patrick and Claire resemble three very real individuals who have — at some point — felt truly alone in experiences with love. Readers will devour this.

Predominantly non-fiction with a slight amount of fictional embellishment cast through inner dialogue, Heartsick will appeal to all readers who’ve experienced romantic trauma — heartbreak, whether you caused it or were the recipient, isn’t a feeling we easily forget.

“I wrote the book for people who know that a self-help book won’t fix it. No book will. And for the people who know there’s no such thing as distraction because there’s someone living behind your eyes and they shape everything you see. I wrote this book because I know what it is to feel fundamentally unlovable. Like there’s something wrong with you. It is their story — Ana’s and Patrick’s and Claire’s. But it is also my story and our story.”

Written in third person and rotating between the three stories in linear fashion like a roll call, Heartsick reads like fiction and will completely absorb readers. The book captures that visceral experience of a relationship ending. Jessie offers great insight into how these three people felt at these pivotal moments in their relationship. The inner dialogue offers characterisation, as well as emotional observations that readers will be able to relate to. Each of the three main characters regularly reflect on their life, allowing for quiet moments in the book.

Despite being non-fiction, Jessie builds tension throughout each chapter. You experience love building between two people, and then you witness the ups and downs of their relationship, and then ultimately the final downfall. I felt great empathy for Patrick, whose love for his girlfriend is so strong, and it’s clear it may not be reciprocated. And Ana being married to the wrong man but being unable to follow what she truly wants is something I’ll be thinking about for days to come.

“We can’t understand how they tucked everything they once felt for us away into a back pocket and forgot about it. As though it never existed. We keep fantasising that they’ll find their old pair of jeans and pull them on, only to rediscover that feeling they’d misplaced.”

Jessie captures love at different ages. We meet Patrick at university and we stay with him until his early 20s. Claire is also in her twenties, but a little older. And Ana is in her 40s, with a husband and children, and a home she resents being inside. The end of the book offers great reflection from each of these characters, as their stories don’t just end with the relationships breaking down. We witness their turmoil afterwards, and them desperately trying to piece their life back together after it shattered.

Heartsick will either make you feel grateful for the love you have now, or will make you feel like you’re not alone as you currently go through love that’s been lost. Heartache and heartbreak is something all humans should be able to relate to, and understand.

“Heartbreak does not seem to be a brand of grief we respect. And so we are left in the middle of the ocean, floating in a dinghy with no anchor, while the world waits for us to be okay again.”

Raw, relatable and honest, and dripping with emotional insight, Heartsick is highly recommended reading. Anyone who has experienced a broken heart is about to remember it.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Heartsick
Jessie Stephens
April 2021
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Hiding Place by Jenny Quintana

Some houses have their secrets. But so do some people . . .

Abandoned as a baby in the hallway of a shared house in London, Marina has never known her parents, and the circumstances of her birth still remain a mystery.

Now an adult, Marina has returned to the house where it all started, determined to find out who she really is. But the walls of this house hold more than memories, and Marina’s reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by the other tenants. Someone is watching Marina. Someone who knows the truth . . .

Jenny Quintana’s The Hiding Place is a crime thriller about an abandoned baby in a share house, and that child’s search for the truth about her parents.

The Hiding Place switches between three POVs — Connie in 1964, and Marina and Eva in 1991. Marina, who was abandoned as a baby, moves into the house she was discovered in to try and find out who her parents were. Eva, her new neighbour, is an emotionally unstable, anxious woman with long-buried traumatic memories. Slowly, we come to understand how these three stories correlate, and why Marina was abandoned.

“The sky hangs low and claustrophobic and Marina loosens her collar despite the chill. She has an odd, prickling feeling as if she’s being watched, but the houses are as silent as they were last night, their windows shuttered — and when she looks back at number 24, there is no shift in curtains, no one looking out.”

There’s quite a large cast of characters in this novel — a lot of people moving in and out of the storyline — and Jenny captures each character and role with enough unique personality that makes it easy for the reader to follow. There are plenty of rooms in the house, and therefore a lot of threads for Marina to follow in her quest for the truth.

Jenny always crafts a premise that will entice readers. The abandoned baby is not the only crime to be uncovered in this novel, and Jenny captures a claustrophobic, eerie setting very well. What secrets and memories does this house hold? In a way, the house feels like another character in the book, holding on to its own secrets and slowly releasing them when necessary.

One of the things I love most about Jenny’s books is how she concludes her chapters. There’s either something reflective about the ending, forcing you to feel the emotion she’s working to transmit, or it’s a cliffhanger that forces you to keep turning the page because you want to see how that thread continues.

“Was Connie in desperate straits? She wasn’t sure. And perhaps she could solve the problem herself. She had heard that moving heavy furniture might bring on a miscarriage, or flinging yourself down the stairs. There were poisons that would flush the baby clean away.”

Admittedly, Marina does feel like the weakest character of the three. Eva’s personality immediately draws you in — she’s mysterious and plagued by childhood memories. You immediately want to know more. And your heart breaks for Connie. She’s hopeful and ambitious, but incredibly naive. And she’s very much in love. Marina’s search for the truth comes across a bit stiff at times, the storyline blocking her personality from shining. She comes across unfeeling, unemotional, devoid of compassion. She’s determined and I admire that, but I found her characterisation to be lacking.

Additionally, the ending was a bit of a letdown. For such a slow burn of a novel, I was expecting big twists or surprises — neither happened. Whilst some people withheld the truth, the circumstances around Marina’s birth and abandonment weren’t quite as enticing as I’d hoped.

“At school, when she had managed to get there, she had been silent and serene, unemotional, a remarkable musical talent. The bullies hadn’t understood her so had left her alone. At music college, she had taken on a similar persona, staying in her room at halls and avoiding communal areas like the students’ union and bar.”

An engrossing tale of long-lost secrets, The Hiding Place is the perfect rainy day read. Recommended for fans of crime, thriller and mystery. Readers of women’s fiction will also enjoy this.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Hiding Place
Jenny Quintana
April 2021
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel – his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature – that asks, what does it mean to love?

This is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint, Klara and the Sun is a magnificent achievement, and an international literary event.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel Klara and the Sun imagines a polluted world where wealthy parents can buy their children Artificial Friends, state-of-the-art androids that educate and accompany their child as they mature. Klara, our protagonist, may not be the most recent model, but she’s observant, intelligent, watchful and remarkable in her own right. Klara is purchased by the young but ailed Josie, whose parents fear may die from her illness like her sister did years earlier.

Despite being set in the future, I didn’t read this as dystopian or science fiction. Admittedly the setting and world-building is deliberately kept quite vague but also, I read this as a story of humanity and connection, set in an alternate world where circumstances are harder to overcome — society has been tainted by pollution and technology has proved superior.

“Still, there were other things we saw from the window — other kinds of emotions I didn’t at first understand — of which I did eventually find some versions in myself, even if they were perhaps like the shadows made across the floor by the ceiling lamps after the grid went down.”

Whilst the plot may appear a little quiet and simplistic, Kazuo’s writing is filled with human observation — insightful description of how humans act, think, move and behave. Themes of loneliness run underneath the novel, subtle but present. Stylistically, Kazuo’s writing is stripped and bare, but poetic and layered.

Kazuo also explores notions of class and importance in the novel. There are numerous references to children being ‘lifted’, and therefore of higher class in society. Being lifted is to be genetically edited, boosting intelligence and academic performance. It’s considered normal, and preferred. Josie’s mother lifted both her daughters, and then both children suffered from side effects. Josie’s older sister died, and it looks like Josie is going to die as well.

Josie’s neighbour Rick is not one of the lifted, and his status is remarked upon quite frequently in the novel. It brings his mother great anxiety and stress, and there’s a scene where a group of women are expressing their disagreement with his situation. Why didn’t his mother ‘lift’ him?

“I found strange for a while not only the lack of traffic and passers-by, but also the absence of other AFs. Of course, I hadn’t expected other AFs to be in the house, and I was in may ways pleased to be the only one, since I could focus my attention solely on Josie. But I realised how much I’d grown used to making observations and estimates in relation to those of other AFs around me, and here too was another adjustment I had to make.”

Some reviewers have criticised the narrative voice in the story, but whilst Klara is at times a bit robotic, her point of view offers a rather unique perspective on Josie’s life and family dynamic. Truthfully, I found this book engrossing and enriching.

“As I say, these were helpful lessons for me. Not only had I learned that ‘changes’ were part of Josie, and that I should be ready to accommodate them, I’d begun to understand also that this wasn’t a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by — as they might in a store window — and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.”

A haunting but warming tale that I’d highly recommend, particularly for fans of literary fiction. I’ve struggled with a few of Kazuo’s previous works but Klara and the Sun is very accessible. I imagine seasoned teenage readers might also enjoy this.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
March 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

The Silent Listener by Lyn Yeowart

Propelling the reader back and forth between the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s, The Silent Listener is an unforgettable literary suspense novel set in the dark, gothic heart of rural Australia.

In the cold, wet summer of 1960, 11-year-old Joy Henderson lives in constant fear of her father. She tries to make him happy but, as he keeps reminding her, she is nothing but a filthy sinner destined for Hell . . .

Yet, decades later, she returns to the family’s farm to nurse him on his death bed. To her surprise, her ‘perfect’ sister Ruth is also there, whispering dark words, urging revenge.

Then the day after their father finally confesses to a despicable crime, Joy finds him dead – with a belt pulled tight around his neck . . .

For Senior Constable Alex Shepherd, investigating George’s murder revives memories of an unsolved case still haunting him since that strange summer of 1960: the disappearance of nine-year-old Wendy Boscombe.

As seemingly impossible facts surface about the Hendersons – from the past and the present – Shepherd suspects that Joy is pulling him into an intricate web of lies and that Wendy’s disappearance is the key to the bizarre truth.

Set in rural Australia, Lyn Yeowart’s psychological thriller The Silent Listener follows the decades-long saga of the Henderson family, and the daily domestic abuse at the hands of Joy’s father George. Switching between the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s, the story is mainly told from Joy’s point of view, although in the earlier setting we do get a small glimpse into Gwen Henderson, before and shortly after she marries George.

Anxiety and fear bubbles beneath the surface of every chapter. The domestic abuse runs heavy through this tale, and at times is both descriptive and hard to swallow. Like many men in society, George is incredibly violent behind closed doors but to the outside world he’s a pillar of the community. After he’s murdered, neighbours and community members express deep sympathy to Joy for her father’s passing, and his funeral is expected to receive a massive turnout. Joy wishes everyone knew the truth about her father.

“I can’t believe he’s confessed. Just like that. I want to shake him, but I’m scared it will kill him, that his body will disintegrate into millions of fragments of dry skin and bone. And I’m not going to let him die that easily.”

I like to think all narrators are somewhat unreliable, but Joy is next level. Her memory of certain events is hazy, and her inner monologue portrays her as a calculating and intelligent, but unhinged. Her father’s violence breaks her as a child, and decades later, she’s still traumatised by what happened. She’s spent most of her life trying to find her brother, who fled the family when she was a teenager.

The chaotic structure of the novel and the surprise twist about her sister Ruth adds another layer to Joy’s unreliability. Just how much of what Joy describes is happening? How much can we trust her?

“Walking down the aisle wearing a borrowed wedding dress, Gwen thought about how quickly the two months had gone by since her first dance with George. But everyone got married quickly these days, at least in Willshire, thanks to the wars and the Depression. Everything was precarious, except marriage, which was forever. Especially, she thought, marriage to George Henderson.”

The Silent Listener captures a secluded setting. The Henderson farm is far enough from neighbours that no one can hear the children scream, and George chooses his friends wisely. Joy suspects people knew about the abuse, but chose not to do anything about it out of loyalty to George.

Lyn also captures the dense, isolated setting of rural Australia with ease. Her description evokes instant imagination in the reader. We can see the dilapidated houses, and the sparse farmland. The dam and its eels, and the danger of snakes. The method of burning rubbish, and the horrid smell that resulted. The one florist in town, and the long, sometimes hot journey into town for supplies once a week. Gwen really couldn’t leave George, even before she had children. She was trapped and George knew it.

“She wondered if the Felicities would go to Hell too, because as Joy knew all too well, it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it was for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, no matter how hard they prayed or how much they thanked the Lord for their wonderful food.”

Lyn’s prose is swift and brutal, her sentences flowing seamlessly. This is a somewhat long read at 460 pages, but with more than one mystery to solve, there’s plenty to keep the reader hooked.

Visceral, gripping and seductive, crime thriller The Silent Listener is highly recommended. For fans of Jane Harper and Chris Hammer.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Silent Listener
Lyn Yeowart
February 2021
Penguin Random House Book Publishers