Pretty good re-read.

"If anything is to be learnt from this shared history of ours, it is that our capacity to challenge its legacies remains largely untapped."

A Kick in the Belly is a powerful historical examination of the lives of enslaved West Indian women. However it's far more than that, Dadzie uses her intro and afterwards to highlights how modern slavery, human trafficking, exploitation of African resources are all problems that plague us today and make this history and the legacy of the history so important.

This book almost certainly has some heavy passages and traumatic content and therefore is not one I recommend lightly.

However it's an area of history not commonly touched on in mainstream texts, as part of my history degree, we had a couple of clssses on slavery which predominantly focused on the American South and whilst this did examine slave resistance, culture, community etc, this wasn't a gendered history and largely excluded slavery in the Caribbean.

The reason this book is so important is because Stella Dadzie makes the history of academics accessible, and applies a gendered focus which is generally less widespread in accessible media.

Until reading this book I had never though about the impact of women menstruating in the middle passage, the specific impacts on women's gynaecological health and fertility caused by the hardships they faced. Whilst I had some knowledge of women's roles, the punishments they faced, living in fear of rape and the brutalities of slavery. There were many aspects of women's experiences specifically that this book focused on that I had not necessarily considered in the way Dadzie discussed.

One of the most interesting elements for me was Stella Dadzie's discussions surrounding women's subversion of their white owners through taking control of their fertility. This was not something I'd read about in the context of slavery, but was something I'd focused my masters thesis on in context of Apartheid South Africa. It brought to light how women throughout history have resisted and subverted power in ways in which are not always clearly documented, but points to the agency and the resilience of women throughout history. By having abortions and preventing pregnancy these enslaved women consciously stopped slave owners from gaining more slaves. These were powerful acts of resistance from enslaved women that have not necessarily been recorded, not to mention the psychological effects and trauma this had on these women.

Stella Dadzie's work is an excellently researched and well put together exploration of enslaved women's position in the Caribbean. It's an important area of our history that gets too little focus and she provides a light into the past to help remember these women and their rebellious acts.

This was so much fun and I can't wait to read the sequel!

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

Talia Hibbert is an absolute queen of romance for me and I adore literally everything she writes. I've been so excited for Eve's book which was the final book in the Brown sisters trilogy and it did not disappoint at all.

Eve is the youngest sister of the Brown sisters and her parents have put their foot down and given her an ultimatum that she needs to get a job and stop quitting otherwise they won't give her back her trust fund. Jacob, the love interest, is an uptight B&B owner focused on perfection and control. He definitely does not want a chaotic, purple-haired tornado named Eve coming into his B&B. That is, until Eve runs him over...

For those unfamiliar with the romance genre, romance tends to fall into specific tropes and this was a enemies to lovers romance which aren't always my favourite, but this was absolutely fantastic. Hibbert NAILED the romantic tension between Jacob and Eve.

The whole storyline just warmed my heart as the pair were so cute and loveable. I devoured this book and I will almost certainly be re-reading the whole trilogy in the near future as it brings me great joy.

I'm really excited that Hibbert has signed a new deal with Avon romance set in Skybriar focusing on the Montrose siblings who first appear in this book. This new trilogy will be Austen inspired, so I'm super thrilled that I will have more from Hibbert to look forward to!

Well that was lots of flirty fun. A little more wild than the first one but I enjoyed how strong Isobel was.