Catherine Jinks

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Meg lives alone. Her little house in the bush outside town is the perfect place to hide. This seclusion is one of the reasons she offers to shelter Nerine, a young women escaping an abusive ex-partner. The other is that Meg knows what it’s like to live with the looming threat of a violence at the hands of someone you love.... Nerine is jumpy and her two little girls are frightened. This tells Meg all she needs to know about where they’ve come from, show more and she’s not all that surprised when Nerine asks her to get hold of a gun. But she knows it’s unnecessary. They’re safe now. Or so Meg thinks… Then she starts to wonder about some little things. A disturbed flyscreen. A tune playing on her windchimes. Has Nerine’s ex tracked them down? Has Meg’s husband turned up to torment her some more? By the time she finds out, it’ll be too late to do anything but run for her life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember the first time the old aphorism, "No good deed goes unpunished," held real, tangible, awful Truth for you? Strap in....

Meg is the kind of friend you hope you'll have in an emergency or crisis. She's been there, she's done what she could, realizes how important the mere fact of showing up is. She'll give you shelter, she'll offer support, she will feed you and listen to you and Be There in the psychological, supportive sense of the words.

That's because she did not get those things when she so badly needed them during her devastatingly abusive marriage.

Nerine and her two daughters are, as we're shown, in a situation where Meg, her home (which she's ever so aptly named "Bolt Hole"), and her way with others are just exactly what they need. In they come; settle they do not. Nerine is in constant motion, constantly talking taking talking about how horrible the girls' father is (right in front of their scared little faces), how bad their lives were, how the courts have...insanely, incomprehensibly...given this vile predatory abuser visitation rights! Can you even imagine! she asks Meg, never waiting for an answer.

Then the nightmare turns real...awful things having been said, there are suddenly weird and unnerving things happening...frightening but, as yet, not violent things...footprints and noises where and when they shouldn't be, and all the time Nerine's talk talk talk about the horrors of the past makes little Analiese and Collette, her very young daughters, scared and jumpy. Meg, a grown woman with an estranged daughter living in England (can't forgive Mum for staying with the awful narcissistic personality disorder-having Dad), empathizes with all three, tries her best to distract and entertain the girls with rural life's many pleasures. Nerine? Nothing changes her focus. She is wound way too tight, experiences all things as threats and blames everything on the violent, awful ex who will, it comes to seem, jump down from a tree onto them with a machete!

As the unnerving stuff escalates into actual violence (CONTENT WARNING: ANIMAL CRUELTY), Meg begins to piece together some very, very strange facts and comes up with a truly frightening picture.

As I read the story, I was genuinely unsettled and disturbed. I can't say I expected the twist, having thought from the get-go there was going to be one. What it was, however, surprised me. Author Jinks deserves big ups for her unnerving choice of an ending. It was not what I'd thought it would be, and made the story that much more appealing to me.

Animal cruelty cost the book a star. I understood why Author Jinks made that choice, and I wasn't inclined to put the book down for good because of it, but it was dreadful and I warn my more sensitive readers (Kathy!) not to consider this tale for their own shelves.

The topic of incest and the crime of rape are factors in this story. They are hot buttons for many. I will say that Author Jinks does not sensationalize them. They aren't dwelt on with ghoulish and repugnant "look! LOOK at how AWFUL men are!" glee. They are presented as facts, and as crimes; they are part of the women's experiences, and are told to us, the readers, as such.

I quite liked the pace set by Author Jinks. We're not in a hurry to get where we're going; there are interesting side characters and the land itself is a character of a sort. That, from my point of view, set the stakes effectively high for Meg, and for the reader. Anything that disrupts this lovely woman's Bolt Hole is a Bad Thing. And boy oh boy, the bad thing is very, very bad indeed. As Spooktober reads go, I think this one is as scary and as nightmarish as they come. Perfect for y'all ghoulies looking for a safe place to be wound up and scared witless! show less

Traced by Catherine Jinks is possibly the first novel I've read set in Australia during the early stages of the pandemic. It's 2020 and Jane is a contact tracer working for New South Wales Health, and during the course of her daily tracing calls she speaks to a victim of domestic violence named Nicole. Years earlier, Jane helped her own daughter escape a violent situation and recognises Nicole's fear of discovery by her abusive partner. Jane and her daughter Tara are still in hiding from her show more ex Griffin, but Jane's shocked to find the person on the phone is also afraid of a man named Griffin.

The story unravels from there as Jane attempts to help Nicole into a refuge while keeping her location secret from Griffin and trying not to break too many rules at work in the process.

Alternate chapters take us back to 2014 and Jane's life before Tara met Griffin. The reader slowly learns what went wrong in the relationship and how the two women escaped before returning to the present narrative and Griffin's renewed interest in tracking them down.

Griffin is a real piece of work, he's manipulative, obsessive and controlling and this book could be a trigger for readers who have suffered at the hands of a gaslighting domestic abuser. As a character in this book he was a well-written villain and the perfect contrast to Jane's determination to protect her family at all costs.

The Australian setting was enjoyable and the references so Sydney and the surrounding areas were an unexpected pleasure, including this one:

"The only personal thing I knew about Michelle was that she lived in Kellyville and ate salads for lunch." Page 71

I have family living in Kellyville so that was a nice surprise on the page. Both narrative arcs - 2014 and 2020 - are packed with tension to make the reader squirm and boy did I fidget and clench my fists at the scenarios Jane was dealing with in both timelines.

The action really ramped up at the end towards a satisfying climax and I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. Traced is recommended for those who enjoy domestic thrillers and is the third book I've read from Catherine Jinks so I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for her next thriller.

* Courtesy of Text Publishing * show less

This is a really unique, delightful YA book that takes the usual tropes about vampires and turns them on their head. Nina, the narrator, was turned into a vampire at the tender age of 15. She writes novels about Zadia Bloodstone, a fearless vampire heroine imbued with superpowers who uses her unnatural state to fight evil. In real life, Nina is part of the titular Reformed Vampire Support Group, which meets at a church, where people who have been infected with the disease of vampirism meet show more to discuss their problems, which are many. They are all on the wagon and survive by feeding off of guinea pigs. Nina still lives at home with her elderly mother. Her body, an animated corpse, after all, is falling apart; she has extreme headaches, bleeding eyes, and constant nausea. When one of the other members of her group is staked by a vampire slayer, Nina must embrace her inner Xenia Bloodstone and recognize that even though she is a vampire, she still can achieve good in the world. Highly recommended; five stars. show less

Plenty stinks other than lies in the Italian town where Camilla works, a virtual slave, for the Tozzini family. Life for girls in mediaeval Italy is awful but young Camilla is so spirited that even the oppressive weight of Church, family and employer doesn't suppress her. Faced with an arranged marriage to Orazio, an old, ugly vermin-control officer, she inadvertently creates a new saint through creative lying! This is humorous writing with a satisfyingly sharp edge