Cat WintersAnmeldelser
Forfatter af In the Shadow of Blackbirds
Anmeldelser
https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/bookreview-yesternight-by-cat-winters/
At that time in American history, as the Great War rages, hostilities are high against all people and things German. The death of the German is not looked into too closely--he must have been deserving after all. Perhaps he didn't donate enough to the War cause or failed to turn his back on his own heritage completely. In another town, a German had been hung without trial or good cause, and the jury acquitted the mob who murdered him--believing they had done their patriotic duty.
As anti-German sentiment flourishes, so does the Spanish Influenza, a deadly virus which has taken the lives of many. Ivy caught the bug early on and finally feels herself coming around when her father and brother burst into the house with the news of the German's death. Ivy cannot take it anymore: the drunkenness of her father, the influence of her father on her young brother, and the violence. And so she sets off on her own at the age of twenty-five to make a life for herself.
Ivy has been a recluse for the past several years, rarely venturing out of her house. She has made a living giving piano lessons to area children. Ivy has neglected her childhood friendships and really has no one, outside of her mother. Still, she is determined to do what she must. The feeling and need to make restitution to the murdered German's brother is strong, and that is how, one evening, she finds herself at Daniel's doorstep, unsure what to say and how to act.
I went into The Uninvited with high hopes, I admit. The description lured me in immediately. I wanted to know more about this woman who could see ghosts, about the time period she lived in and everything else the story might hold for me. I was swept into the story right away and curious about Ivy. She's very naive in her own way, but also very smart. Even despite her fears, she takes what comes her way and makes the most of it. There was instance in which I questioned Ivy's judgement, but given the times and the sentiment of living in the moment, I suppose it wasn't that farfetched.
The novel has a host of interesting characters. There is May, a war widow, who has had her share of people looking down on her because she is beautiful and from somewhere else. There are the Red Cross women, Addie and Nella, who cannot drive an ambulance to save their lives, but who are determined to help victims suffering from the Spanish Influenza. Then Lucas whose loyalty to the American Protective League is unwavering, always with an eye out for those who might be unpatriotic. There are the ghosts, of course, relatives of Ivy's, including her brother, Billy, who lost his life in the War. There are the folk in the club, drinking despite the Prohibition, playing jazz and dancing as they try to forget the world outside. It is hard not to be caught up in the times, feel the tension and helplessness, and yet also taking joy in the moment.
I really liked Daniel, the brother of the German furniture store owner, the more I got to know him. He holds his secrets close to his vest. He has had a difficult time of it, not just in the United States, but in his home country of Germany as well. Daniel is full of anger, especially towards Ivy's family. And yet he has a definite soft spot for Ivy herself.
While everything about this novel is fiction, from the setting to the characters and their stories, there is truth in the history. Cat Winters does a good job of capturing the mood and desperateness of the times, including the horrors of war, the effects of fear and ignorance. I was really drawn into the time period and into the lives of the characters the author has created. I especially loved how everything came together in the end.
The Uninvited is not just a ghost story, but it is also one about redemption and hope. It is about missed opportunities and love found. As well as about finding one's way and letting go of the past. Was The Uninvited everything I hoped it would be? Yes and No. It wasn't, in the end, quite what I expected, but that was okay. In many ways, it was even better.
I've reviewed this book as a part of an event I am hosting in September 2021 called GeekDis. GeekDis is a collaborative event for members of the disability community to talk about disability representation in pop culture. You can learn more about GeekDis here!
Originally posted on Just Geeking by.
Odd & True was not at all what I expected, and I’ll be frank, I was quite disappointed with the plot as a whole. This book is listed as fantasy, supernatural and paranormal, however, I personally would put it more in the magical realism category. I spent the majority of the book wondering if I had been fleeced; if there was actually going to be any real magic or paranormal creatures in it. Without giving too much away, I can confirm that yes, this book does actually exist in the realm of fantasy. However, if you’re like me and prefer your fantasy and paranormal novels to be chock-full of those things, then you’re going to be disappointed like I was.
This is essentially a story about two sisters, family and the stories we tell ourselves and are told to keep the monsters of reality at bay. It is very well written, it’s just not personally my cup of tea. From a disability representation perspective, it’s very good. Trudchen, aka Tru, became ill with Polio as a child and as a result her right leg grew at a different rate. This resulted in a discrepancy between her two limbs of two and a half inches. With the aid of a brace and shoe with a taller heel, she is able to walk short distances. Walking is painful for Tru as moving her right leg requires a great deal of force which aggravates her joints, especially her hip.
Throughout the book, Winters never forgets that Tru is always conscious of how she has to move and the pain that accompanies it. As someone with chronic pain, I tend to notice when authors write about chronic pain and then forget about it for the little things, only remembering it when something big happens (for example, getting out of a carriage). There is one scene in particular where Tru has to walk on snow, and I appreciated how Winters took the time to describe how awkward it was for Tru to walk on a completely different surface. A lot of people don’t realise that surface texture makes a huge difference for those of us with physical disabilities that affect our lower limbs.
Likewise, Winters takes on the issue of how people perceive Tru, which in 1909 is completely wrapped up in her identity as a woman as well. Intersectionality is a huge part of the disabled community, and so often it gets completely ignored.
While I wasn’t a big fan of the plot, from a disability perspective Odd & True is a great read.
For more of my reviews please visit my blog!
Cat Winters has a lovely writing style. I found myself floating along her prose, wanting to read more and more.
The protagonist of the story is Ivy Rowan, a young woman in her mid-20s who awakens to her father and brother returning home, drunk and bloody, after murdering a German man in town. The violence of it all snaps something inside Ivy and she decides to leave her home forever. She stays with a war widow school friend, befriends brave teenage girls ferrying dying people to hospitals or sick houses, and falls in love with the murdered German's younger brother, all to the backdrop of WWI, America's xenophobic authoritarianism on home soil, jazz, and the Spanish influenza. Oh and there's ghosts. Women in Ivy's family have always seen harbinger ghosts before someone dies, and this often preoccupies Ivy.
Winters merged all of those well, creating characters that feel real as their world falls apart around them. They're not on the frontlines, where young men are dying en masse, but are fighting a different sort of unwinnable war - one against illness. The Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918 killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people, most of them young healthy adults.
I liked so many of the characters, especially Addie, a Black teenage girl desperate to save lives after her sister died of the flu, and Nela, a Polish immigrant. Ivy comes across their ambulance stalled on train tracks and helps them out, becoming their ambulance driver. The non-white and immigrant populations are not welcome at the town's normal hospital, so the girls borrow the ambulance and drive it at night. I just really liked scenes with them in it because they were so earnest and lovely.
There is romance, as Ivy engages in an illicit affair even while the overbearing American Protective League threatening all on every corner, but Winters gives Ivy many female friends and makes their interactions significant.
3.5 Stars
Well that was quite a clever and powerful reimagining of Hamlet.
Hanalee is our heroine and is investigating the suspicious death of her father. All the while her father's spirit is haunting the neighborhood. I love that the story explored racial hatred and negative attitudes to LGBTQIA people at this time in history. Such a good mash up of ideas Cat has incorporated into this retelling. There were some pacing issues at the beginning but then things picked up as Hanalee delved deeper into the prejudices within the community. An enjoyable YA book.
Let's start with what I liked about this book. I liked the historical details, like all the disgusting flu preventions/remedies (why were they so obsessed with onions?), and the spooky ghost stuff. I liked that Mary Shelley is clever but it's not her One Defining Feature (a common problem in YA fiction). I liked her secretly boy-crazy aunt and the reminder that being the sibling of one's parents does not automatically make them "old." And in general, I really felt immersed in the atmosphere - I could hear the sounds and smell the odors and all of that.
There were a couple things that really bothered me, though. First of all, Mary Shelley Black was named after the author of Frankenstein, which is fine except that her interest in electricity is mentioned more than once. Which tells me that the author never read the original novel, because Shelley was purposefully vague on how the Monster is brought to life; the electricity aspect wasn't even introduced until the 1931 film.
The other thing that bugged me was the inconsistent stance on spiritualism in general. Spirit photos are fakes unless they aren't. A character's sudden ability to smell emotion is never elaborated on. Hauntings don't happen except when they do. This story seems to want to be both skeptical and a believer at the same time, which makes things a little muddy. Enough details are left hanging that I wonder if the author had plans for a sequel.
All that said, I actually really enjoyed reading this, despite its little annoyances. I liked the writing style quite a bit, and I blew through it in only a few days. And as this was Winters's first novel, I think I'll reserve judgement until I've read some of her later works.
The Uninvited is a book that took me completely by surprise. The cover and blurb made it out to be a much darker story than it was and I was in the beginning disappointed that it just seemed to be about Ivy breaking away from her old life, beginning a new life away from the farm and starting to see the brother of the man her father and brother had killed. Nothing bad with that if that's what you're after. It was just not that I wanted. I wanted ghosts and creepiness. I wanted to Ivy to see ghosts, but the only one she seemed to see now and then was Billy, her brother that died in the war. I did enjoy ivy's relationship with Daniel.
But then something happened. I quite enjoyed the story as it was thought that at least it was enjoyable for the moment when WHAM everything was turned on its head in a twist I hadn't seen coming and then a page or two later WHAM twist number two happened. The book went from good to freaking great in just a couple of pages. I mean the last 20% was brilliant. And the ending was perfect...
It's hard to rate this book since the book, for the most part, were good, but not great, that is until the last 20% when everything just went fantastic. But in the end, I gave it 4 stars and I'm looking forward to reading more from Cat Winter.
Thanks to William Morrow and Edelweiss for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
I think this book started off great, I loved the idea of a little girl that could be the reincarnation of a woman that died years ago. And, I was curious to see how it all would turn out. Would Alice find out the truth, and also would she herself find out what really sparked an event from when she was a child and hurt some other children?
As much as I enjoyed reading this book did it not engross me as much as The Uninvited had done. Somewhere along the way the story just turned in a direction I was not nearly interested in reading about as the mystery with the little girl, Janie O'Daire, and the question of reincarnation. One can say that when the story took the turn and I found out what Yesternight meant was the turning point to where I found the book didn't interest me as much as it had before. However, it was still good, it just felt like the whole Janie O'Daire story was dropped and suddenly it was all about Alice Lind and her memories. And, I just didn't find that as intriguing to read about. The ending was interesting, but I can't help feeling that it was a bit obvious in a way, and I also felt that I never really got a good closer to the Janie O'Daire mystery. I mean, what happened next with her? I was more curious to find out about her and what would happen next for her than Alice Lind's problem. But, I guess that's just me.
So, this was not as good as the Uninvited. But, still a pretty interesting book!
I want to thank William Morrow for providing me with a free copy for an honest review!
The Uninvited is a book that took me completely by surprise. The cover and blurb made it out to be a much darker story than it was and I was in the beginning disappointed that it just seemed to be about Ivy breaking away from her old life, beginning a new life away from the farm and starting to see the brother of the man her father and brother had killed. Nothing bad with that if that's what you're after. It was just not that I wanted. I wanted ghosts and creepiness. I wanted to Ivy to see ghosts, but the only one she seemed to see now and then was Billy, her brother that died in the war. I did enjoy ivy's relationship with Daniel.
But then something happened. I quite enjoyed the story as it was thought that at least it was enjoyable for the moment when WHAM everything was turned on its head in a twist I hadn't seen coming and then a page or two later WHAM twist number two happened. The book went from good to freaking great in just a couple of pages. I mean the last 20% was brilliant. And the ending was perfect...
It's hard to rate this book since the book, for the most part, were good, but not great, that is until the last 20% when everything just went fantastic. But in the end, I gave it 4 stars and I'm looking forward to reading more from Cat Winter.
Thanks to William Morrow and Edelweiss for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Narrators: Michael Crouch, Nicole Wood. The various voices of Poe, his muse, and others.
I appreciated the research that the author put into the work.
2 stars for a relatively dull story (sorry Poe, I just don't find you that interesting), but adding a half star for the excellent narration and production.
This isn't a book I'd ever pick up on my own (and I can't imagine any random teens picking it up either except for extreme EAP fans), but it was offered free by audiosync (summer 2021) and I do like Michael Crouch, so I checked it out.
It is a peculiar book that resists categorisation, insisting on creating its own unique place on my mental bookshelf. For me, it's mainly a book about how women empower themselves and each other and how belief is, in itself, a form of magic.
Most of the action of the book is set in 1909 and revolves around two teenage sisters, Odette (Od) and Trudchen (Tru) who are on a mission to hunt the Jersey Devil.
Od and Tru are not the Winchester brothers in early twentieth-century dresses and the story is not primarily about the hunting of a monster, although it is about the creation of heroines.
The story is told from three perspectives in parallel. These tellings interact with one another in a way that makes truth something complex, agile and hard to fix in a single voice.
We hear from Tru, the younger sister who polio has left with a withered leg and constant pain, remembering her unquestioning belief in the stories her older sister told her of how the women in her family were fierce protectors who used magic to hunt monsters and her struggle to see this belief as anything other than a lie told to bolster the spirits of a crippled girl when her sister leaves home and sends back less than credible stories of her current life in a circus.
We get to read Od's account of her childhood and the traumas in it that she used stories and will-power and intimacy to try and shelter her sister from and then we learn of the things that nearly destroyed her in the two years she was away from home.
The third perspective is the present-day (1908) story of Od reuniting with Tru and taking her on a monster hunt.
This is not a light-weight tale. It's full of ugliness, pain and despair. None of it is exploitative but all of it is credible. It makes clear all the ways in which woman are vulnerable and how little support they have, except from each other.
It is also a tale of magic, not in the "clap your hands if you believe in fairies" kind of magic but the sort that you have to make for yourself by belief and courage and love.
There's a lot in the book about people who have lost their magic, or at least their hope. Od tries to explain this to Tru by saying
"Life has a way of knocking the whimsy out of people, Tru."
Yet as Od re-unites with Tru and starts to build up her courage again, she reaches a decision about the central choice the book asks readers to consider:
"I'd decided I'd rather be foolish than ordinary. I'd rather risk chasing monsters that might not exist, searching for a child I'm not meant to find, than to believe we're nothing more than mundane characters, steeped in ordinary lives."
By the end of the book, I could see that embracing the possibility of magic in our lives, of being and doing something more than the accommodating the inevitable and enduring the unacceptable is the first step to making ourselves magical. Magic is not used as a Get Out Of Jail Free card here. You can't just click the heels of your ruby slippers together to make everything alright but, with work and courage and love you can become something better than who you're being told to be even if you can't become the Princess you dreamed of being when you were a child.
This is my first Cat Winters book but it won't be my last. I like the way she makes me think and I love the way her characters see the reality of the world but don't let themselves be entirely determined by its expectations and constraints.
1 
MikeFinnFiction | 10 andre anmeldelser | May 16, 2020 |
MikeFinnFiction | 10 andre anmeldelser | May 16, 2020 | 
Olivia has problems. She is a young woman, living in Oregon in 1900, a member of the middle-upper class society and she needs to be ''respectable''. She is not allowed to disagree with men. She is not allowed to have opinions. She is not allowed to react when young men view her as ripe for the taking. She is not allowed to eat whatever she chooses. She is not allowed to wear the scarf she likes. She is not allowed to become an active citizen. She is not allowed to vote. She is not allowed to vocally exist.
It's just too much...
And why? Because she is a woman. Her society cannot abide with women working or choosing their husbands or voting. The world would be destroyed! So she must obey a father who hires a hypnotist to extract these ugly, unladylike thoughts from the mind of his daughter. Little does he know...
''Miss Mead'', asked Henri Reverie. ''Would you like me to take you away from the world for a while?''
In a delicious book that -hopefully- will make you boil with anger over the atrocious way in which women were viewed a mere century ago, Winters paints the life of a young woman in bleak colours within the very vivid setting of Oregon. Using several exciting themes like the Women's Suffrage Movement, the obsession with hypnosis and all things paranormal that swept the world during the late 19th, early 20th century, the advancing discoveries in the field of medicine, the change in women's fashion to accommodate a more active role in society and the constant threat of the asylum, Winters creates a marvellous story, centred around a very sympathetic, extremely brave young heroine and a young man who dreamed of a different society.
Imagine living in a society where you are not heard. Literally. You aren't supposed to. Your order in a restaurant is decided for you and the one phrase you are told day after day is ''it's all for your own good''. Well, 8 times out of 10 this means the exact opposite. Olivia finds solace in books. In Gothic Literature, to be more specific. In Dracula and Sleepy Hollow, innovative stories with controversial (at the time) female characters who took life in their own hands. There are also references to ground-breaking works like The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and The Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft. Because Olivia has to put up with people who utter sentences such as this:
''More than ever it seems we need a remedy for the growing army of loud, obnoxious women who insist they are the same as men.''
This came out of the mouth of a woman and all is most definitely NOT well...
I am not sure whether hypnosis actually works in the way depicted in the novel, and at times, it seemed a little too convenient, but you know what? It doesn't matter. The setting jumps right out of the pages, the plot is terrific, the dialogue is lively and flowing, and the heroine is perfectly developed. This is an extremely well-written story that makes you appreciate the fragile freedom we've acquired thanks to the unrelenting efforts of the women who fought against the world and won.
''My mind isn't like a rotten tooth. You can't just take it away.''
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
Alice Lind,As expected Yesternight is another marvelous read from [a:Cat Winters|5351847|Cat Winters|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1402093683p2/5351847.jpg].
Alice Lind,
Took a stick and beat her friend.
Should she die?
Should she live?
How many beatings did she give?
Having loved her first adult novel - and her YA's - I had high hopes for this and it did not disappoint.
The writing was phenomenal and the overall story was eerie and atmospheric. I had an incredibly hard time putting it down.
Alice Lind is a child psychologist who travels from town to town administering IQ tests. When she arrives in Gordon Bay, Oregon the last thing she expects is to encounter a child who forces her to question her beliefs about life and death.
Seven-year-old Janie O'Daire is a mathematical genius who claims to have been a woman named Violet Sunday in a past life. Alice struggles to accept the idea of reincarnation as doing so could jeopardize her career but it doesn't take long before she finds herself swept up in solving the mystery of Violet Sunday. Her entanglement with the O'Daires eventually leads to some unsettling suspicions about her own past and an old inn called Yesternight.
A twisty plot and chilling ending certainly make Yesternight one heck of a page-turner and a definite must read!
*ARC provided by HarperCollins/Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
Another spectacular book from Cat Winters.
In A Cure for Dreaming Olivia's father hires a hypnotist to "cure" her of her unladylike thoughts/dreams. By unladylike I'm referring to her wish for women to vote, obtain a higher education, etc. Only, instead of doing so Henri (the hypnotist) instructs her to see the world as it truly is leading her to see a monstrous visage when in the presence of untrustworthy people.
A captivating historical fiction novel based during a time when women's rights were virtually nonexistent. With an added bonus of hypnosis (and a hypnotist you can't help but love). Go read this. Now!
In the Shadow of Blackbirds takes place in the fall of 1918 where America is fighting Germans overseas while fighting the Spanish Influenza at home. This is an atmospheric book based during a dark time in history that was full of fear and death. Imagine doing all you can to prevent yourself from falling ill while still knowing it could all be in vain. That in particular is portrayed incredibly well in this book.
As for the main character, Mary Shelley Black proves to be a strong heroine. Her father has been arrested for being un-American, she finds out her sweetheart Stephen was killed in the war, the death toll from the flu is steadily rising and in the midst of all this she begins interacting with Stephens ghost. The latter brings to light some conflicting questions; why hasn't Stephen moved on and why is his spirit so tormented? How can Mary help him if she doesn't know what the problem is to begin with?
You'll have to read the book to find the answers to these questions but I promise that while you may think you have it figured out you'll most likely be (at least partially) wrong.
In the Shadow of Blackbirds is another tragically beautiful novel by Cat Winters. Whether you've read any of her other books or not you should pick this up! Plus, the illustrations in the book are a wonderfully haunting addition.
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https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/bookreview-yesternight-by-cat-winters/