JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath

Masterton isn’t a big town. The community’s tight, if not always harmonious. So when a child goes missing it’s a big deal for everyone. And when a second kid disappears, the whole town’s holding their own children that little bit tighter.

Lorraine doesn’t have kids, but she has a nephew. She’s holding him a bit tighter, too, because she works for the police, and she knows they don’t have any idea.

Lo’s not a cop, she’s a records clerk. She sits out back among the piles of paper, making connections, remembering things. Working things out that the actual cops don’t want to hear about.

Until the new investigator, Hayes, arrives from Wellington, and realises Lo’s the only person there with answers to any of his questions. Which is just as well—because the clock is running down for the children of the town.

Set in a secluded New Zealand community, Tom Baragwanath’s Paper Cage is a suspenseful crime thriller about a string of disappearances, with police department records clerk Lorraine taking centre stage.

After a couple of children go missing in a small, close-knit New Zealand town, Lorraine takes the case under her wing. Her colleagues seem incompetent and unable to connect the clues, and so when someone in Lorraine’s family is abducted, she takes matters into her own hands – using her intelligence and determination to crack the mystery.

“He sets a hand to my arm; his expression is like light through murky water. He’s close enough for me to see my reflection in his eyes: a round grey woman held in miniature.”

Lorraine is a rather unexpected protagonist in a small-town crime story. Usually, it’s the troubled detective driving the story – often male – and it was refreshing to read a different perspective in this genre. Lorraine rises above what others expect of her, ignoring the distrust and the snide remarks and focusing on the case. As such, there is a definite feminist undertone to the novel.

From NZ-born writer Tom – now living in Paris – Paper Cage is a slow-burn thriller, presenting quite a large but three-dimensional set of characters that orbit around Lorraine. The second half of the novel is much more fast-paced, when Lorraine starts to become more involved in the case and lead us toward the culprit.

“I climb to my feet and head into the hall, feeling their eyes follow me. Truth be told, it’s a relief to get out of that room, even if it means a long morning scouring through the files.”

While on the surface this is a mystery about the disappearance of a few children in a close-knit New Zealand community, at its core Paper Cage explores racism, violence, drugs and alcohol abuse in small suburban towns.

This is quite an expansive list of themes to underpin a crime novel and as such, the plot does deviate quite a bit in the middle of the book and the story became a little convoluted and difficult to engage with. The disappearances of the children felt a little on the backburner while Lorraine’s attention is distracted by Sheena (her niece) and Keith (Sheena’s partner).

“A flicker of hesitation shoots across the detective’s face. We come in through the back, into the anonymous crackle of radio from the communications room. Hayes unlocks the interview room, and I do what I can to make Sheena comfortable.”

With descriptive, vivid writing and recommended for crime and thriller readers, Paper Cage’s readership skews 25+

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

Paper Cage
Tom Baragwanath
September 2022
Text Publishing

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Daisy Darker’s family were as dark as dark can be, when one of them died all of them lied and pretended not to see . . .

Daisy Darker is arriving at her grandmother’s house for her eightieth birthday. It is Halloween, and Seaglass – the crumbling Cornish house perched upon its own tiny private island – is at one with the granite rocks it sits on.

The Darker family haven’t all been in the same place for over a decade, and when the tide comes in they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out, nothing will ever be the same again, because one of them is a killer . . .

In Alice Feeney’s psychological thriller Daisy Darker, a fractured family congregate on a secluded and isolated island to celebrate their grandmother’s 80th birthday. But with no way to escape the island and no way to communicate with the outside world, it’s the perfect conditions for a killer to strike.

One by one, members of the Darker family are murdered in incredibly personal and specific ways. With nine hours to go until low tide and the possibility of escape, who will still be alive come morning?

“She looks over her shoulder, then creeps nearer to the crib. We all seem to lean closer to the TV, as little Rose leans down over the baby, before checking over her shoulder one last time. We hang off her every word as she sings a sweet-sounding lullaby.”

Alice has set up the classic elements of an engaging psychological thriller – a secluded setting with no way to communicate with external parties, a series of murders, and a group of characters known to each other and all harbouring horrific secrets. It’s the perfect concoction for a page-turning mystery.

Whilst at times I found the dialogue to be unrealistic and over-the-top, and pretty much all of the characters to be wildly unlikeable, the strengths of the story lie in its twists and mysteries. There seems to be very little emotions in how Daisy Darker reacts to her family members’ murders, but she functions more as a narrator from afar, allowing us the chance to understand all members of the party so we can make our own opinions on who might be the killer.

Admittedly, I wish the characters possessed more agency to uncover the killer. They seem a bit slow to catch on in the beginning, happy to watch videos and wait for things to happen rather than harnessing some agency and driving the story forward themselves.

“He leaves the lounge and none of us know what to say. My father has always held his feelings hostage. His inability – or unwillingness – to express himself seemed to make my mother voice her own feelings on any subject twice as loud and twice as often.”

The ending makes up for any flaws the precede it. Because truthfully, the suspense and tension in the lead-up to the twist were starting to wane. Flashbacks break the pacing and lull the flow of the book. For a long time, I couldn’t make sense of the wacky storyline, odd murders and the seemingly non-existent motive. I was struggling to tell some of the characters apart, found the flashback videos to be a bit redundant and the poetry a little pointless.

But that twist is a redeeming element to the story and was an actual gasp-aloud moment for me as the reader. Suddenly, a motive is clear and so are Alice’s stylistic devices and plotting choices.

“My father is the first to arrive. Being punctual is his only way of saying I love you. For as long as I can remember he has expressed emotions through timekeeping, unable to demonstrate affection in the ways most other fathers do.”

Utterly compelling with a cracker of an ending, Daisy Darker is recommended for fans of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries. Readership skews 20+

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

Daisy Darker
Alice Feeney
September 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings

Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother’s disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge, because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behaviour raises suspicions and a woman – especially a Black woman – can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

But fourteen years have passed since her mother’s disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of thirty – or enrol in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At twenty-eight, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she’s offered the opportunity to honour one last request from her mother’s will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.

Megan Giddings’ The Women Could Fly follows twenty-seven-year-old Josephine Thomas, whose mother disappeared fourteen years earlier. Under suspicion of witchcraft, her disappearance caused irreparable damage for Josephine and her father. Naturally, people suspect Jo of being a witch too.

Jo and her father, after fourteen years, decide to accept that Jo’s mother is dead. They mourn her, grieve her. Jo reflects over her mother’s belongings in an attempt to gain closure for her mother’s decision to disappear. Her mother’s will, updated and read, stipulates that if Jo travels to an island in Lake Superior, on a specific day, she would receive a substantial inheritance. Jo decides to honour her mother’s wish and what she finds on that island challenges everything she thought she knew about her family.

“After my mother’s disappearance, the usual protocols happened. While the police quietly investigated my dad, I was taken away by the Bureau of Witchcraft to be questioned. A woman who can vanish might not be in danger, instead, she might be a danger to everyone. And if you’re the daughter of a witch?”

If magic were real and available largely to only women, of course men would try to control it – control those with the power to wield the magic. Once a woman turns 28, she must register with the state and be subjected to regular tests designed to uncover witches. Marriage with a man ensures protection, and thus is Jo’s best chance at remaining undetected.

The Women Could Fly explores magic and family, but also patriarchy and power – control over those we do not understand, and unwillingness to try and understand them. This is a multi-layered novel, and Jo’s POV allows for a nuanced, deep understanding of the world around her and how unsafe she feels as a black woman with a witch for a mother.

“I was so tired of people suspecting me, so tired of always having to follow arbitrary rules. How could I live the rest of my life like this? I was almost twenty-eight and exhausted already. I reminded myself that throughout history women had endured far worse things.”

Megan’s writing is raw, sleek and observant. She captures so much with such few words, and set within a world where women must marry by 30, The Women Could Fly feels like a modern-day The Handmaid’s Tale. What she encapsulates within 270 pages allows for a reflective reading experience that sits with the reader.

“He shared food the way I liked to share food, by gingerly cutting off a piece for the other person and putting it on a appetizer plate. He asked me questions. We held hands under the table. I realized we had never done that before.”

Recommended for literary readers, and those interested in books tackling social commentary and power. Readership skews 30+

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

The Women Could Fly
Megan Giddings
August 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Electric and Mad and Brave by Tom Pitts

Matt Lacey is in a mental health facility recovering from a breakdown.

In an attempt to work through a mess of conflicting thoughts and feelings, he writes, unwinding the story of his adolescence with the beautiful, impassive, fierce Christina.

As Matt delves into the more agonising moments of his past, he has to learn to look directly at the pain and love that have made him who he is now.

Brazenly wearing its heart on its sleeve, Electric and Mad and Brave is a heightened and technicolour story about the soaring joy and numbing nightmare of being young and hopelessly in love.

Tom Pitt’s literary debut Electric and Mad and Brave centres around twenty-eight-year-old Matt Lacey, living in a mental health facility in Melbourne and struggling to confront and reconcile with events from his past. When Matt’s therapist suggest he keep a journal to reflect on his childhood and the events that led to his admission into the facility, we are immersed in a compelling and tender history.

Narrated in first person, the book’s stylistic devices allow for an immediate sense of Matt’s mind frame and his willingness (or rather, unwillingness) to confront the truth about his past. We come to realise early on that Matt is an incredibly unreliable narrator – at first, his journal entries are clear and concise. Over time, they become chaotic, they double-back, they re-write events we thought we’d already learned. Matt is being untruthful with the reader and it isn’t until the final chapters that we find out how certain events actually unfolded in Matt’s childhood.

“No – that can’t have been what she’d meant to say. There’d been something else on her lips. Hadn’t there? Yes. In that pause, she’d almost said it: something mad and terrifying. Although maybe she couldn’t say. Maybe to say meant stepping off a ledge into…”

Moving between past and present quite frequently, Matt meets Christina when he is 11 and she is 12. We follow them over the course of their adolescence as their connection grows and attraction develops. Both Matt and Christina’s families are unhealthy and dysfunctional, but in rather different ways. These two kids coming together forces these two families to intersect which sets into motion a string of avoidable events leading to Matt’s breakdown and admission into the mental health facility.

Tom Pitts builds tension and pacing throughout the book, but it’s most notable in the final chapters as the truth about Christina and Matt’s relationship is revealed. Their love is a destructive one, and so we can feel the tension build between them as we move closer and closer to the reveal. Stylistically, there’s a quicker nature to the writing. Shorter chapters, more abrupt observations and descriptions. We’re suddenly moving through at a much faster pace to build and maintain momentum.

“In the days after, I began to view things differently, my memories becoming distorted. I would think of Alek at the dining table with his shiny head, only to suddenly recall that his eyebrows had been skin too – that he’d sat upright in hospital only because he was too weak to stand…”

Electric and Mad and Brave sensitively portrays mental health and trauma, and the process of confronting traumatic events from one’s past.

The book moves between past and present so frequently, sometimes in the middle of a chapter, and I’ll admit I sometimes struggled to follow the flow of events. It was often hard to immediately determine what was past vs. present, what was a memory and what wasn’t. I often found myself having to flick back and re-read certain sections.

“Now I was in the back seat, having still not replied, and my hands were sweating. I looked outside and the landscape was enchanting and warped. Somehow this morning dusk was causing the landmarks to become strange imitations of themselves.”

Poignant, moving and observant, Tom Pitts’ Electric and Mad and Brave is recommended for literary readers. Readership skews 30+

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

Electric and Mad and Brave
Tom Pitts
August 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Cobalt Blue by Matthew Reilly

For 35 years, the United States and Russia each had their own superhero.

Three days ago, America’s hero died.

Today will be bad.

In the face of an overwhelming attack, one young woman – unassuming and anonymous – might be America’s only hope.

Her codename … COBALT BLUE

Matthew Reilly returns with another action-packed thriller in his latest novella, Cobalt Blue. Filled with trademark Matthew Reilly action and conflict, Cobalt Blue is another ‘save the world’ story after America comes under attack following the death of their key superhero.

Rather quickly, we see America and Russia at war with each other. Each of them had their own superhero to defend the country, but when America’s superhero passes way, suddenly there’s nothing stopping Russia from taking advantage of an undefended America.

“Cobalt couldn’t have been more different. For one thing, Dr Chris Cobalt had been 44 at the time of their infection, twenty years older than Furin, and a highly respected astrophysicist. Where the Fury was all strength and rage, Cobalt was thoughtful and reserved.”

Matthew Reilly certainly seems to have a formula he follows, and he brings quite an interesting premise to this new release and positions it firmly within the superhero genre. There are some flashbacks in the story to add depth to some of the characters and provide context to the present-day storyline.

Fast-paced and a compact, easy read at 200 pages, Cobalt Blue will find its audience in Matthew Reilly fans and young, male readers. It’s an accessible read for reluctant readers as well – short chapters and paragraph, with brief, stripped back prose. The pacing accelerates at a quick rate, engaging readers with each passing chapter.

“When he arrived there, he decapitated the Statue of Liberty – flew right through her neck – and impaled her head on top of the One World Trade Center. New Yorkers screamed in terror and fled the streets.”

There is quite a high production value to this one – hardback, jacketed, coloured font. It certainly stands out on a bookshelf, and I like the clean, suave cover.

Admittedly, if you’ve read quite a few Matthew Reilly books in the past, then you’ll find this latest one a bit predictable. He does follow a similar kind of structure with his books, so you’ll know what to expect as you progress through the story. At times a little silly and over-the-top, readers will need to lean into the fun of the story and cast any doubts aside.

“As the superfast rolling fight moved along the length of Fifth Avenue to the airspace in front of the New York Public Library, White even managed to dent the Fury’s facemask and he sprang back in surprise.”

Punchy and pacey, Matthew Reilly’s Cobalt Blue is recommended for thriller and action readers, and fans of Reilly’s previous works. Readership skews male, 15+

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

Cobalt Blue
Matthew Reilly
August 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers