wordsofclover's Reviews (2.16k)

When Blythe falls pregnant with her daughter Violet, she's determined to do better than her mother, and grandmother that came before her. But when the baby arrives, Blythe struggles as all new mothers do from lack of sleep, a fussy baby and a husband that remains fairly clueless to the struggles a woman has to go through from birth, to feeding and all of the in between. As Violet grows, Blythe loves her but begins to notice there's something not quite right, though again her husband dismisses her fears. But then tragedy happens, and Blythe realises she may have birth a monster.

Wow, what an intense, thrilling ride for a whole book that is a lot more suspect than any actual action. At first I was wary of the second person narrative as the whole story is told via Blythe's narration directly to her husband Fox but over time this was the perfect way to frame a story that centered around motherhood but was damaged by Fox's constant dismissal of Blythe's worries and fears, and the countless ways he turned his back on his suffering wife.

I really loved how the story built up from Violet as a baby to a child, and how the whole time the reader couldn't ever really be sure if we were getting the truth from Blythe. As someone who didn't have the best mother for a role model, and she was damaged in turn before that, you couldn't blame Blythe for her fears over bonding with her little one, and how those fears could exacerbate a frail connection.

As the story continued, and Violet's actions become more motivated and cold, even cruel, it was just such a tense reading experience but in the best way. Ashley Audrain was able to really hype up the suspense of this book in an excellent way with just words and feelings rather than a load of crazy action scenes - everything we were reading was purely domestic, and in any other setting or book would have been perfectly homely and normal - but not with Violet around. It was sad to see Blythe become such an anguished, lonely figure as the actions of her daughter meant she was the one pushed out into the cold, the one left alone to starve and to cry out warnings that no-one took seriously.

I really liked how this horrific story really gazed at the true moments surrounding motherhood, particularly for first time parents. From the expectation upon women to be the 'perfect mother' to being the ones having to survive without sleep, for their bodies to be wrecked from giving birth and further mutilated if they're breastfeeding. How pain and suffering is part of the normality of motherhood yet when mothers speak up about their emotions and feelings going through all of this, they're often dismissed and ignored by those around them. How you can love your child through it all even when they're causing you pain but also how it should be okay to feel a distance from your child because of what you're going through. Motherhood isn't a perfect from the get go - it's a journey and a struggle.

There was no big bang or explosion at the end of this book but the ending still gave a terrific wave of vindication for the reader (in my case anyway!). 

 If someone was to reintroduce wolves to the forest on your doorstep, what would you do? Inti Flynn is faced with these angry landowners as she begins her new conservation projects in the Scottish wildlands and is determined to prove that wolves and humans can live in peace, if given the chance. As Inti makes friends, as well as enemies, in her new town, she is also trying to piece back together her fragile sister who has been hurt beyond recognition.

This was a fast-paced, tense read that once I started, I couldn't put down. I really enjoyed learning about Inti and her childhood, and I think her condition of mirror-touch synesthesia brought such an added element to the story, and really made the reader experience everything going on to a whole new level.

I am fascinated and terrified by wolves in equal measure, and I really enjoyed how the author opened the reader's understanding of how wolves worked, the ways they were truly wild and yet how they could often be cute, playful and loyal to one another. But there would always be an outlier, one truly wilder than the others and because of that more dangerous. I really felt like the author had given the human characters wolf counterparts (or vice versa) and even as we saw these characters grow and change, maybe so did their wolves.

Inti's relationships and pregnancy all felt very fast-tracked in the book though this is because of the book's overall fast pace. I did find it a bit skeptical that so many people didn't notice Inti's late-stage pregnancy belly and she was able to do so much in her final trimester (literally track a wolf across the mountain in the snow) and the end was almost a bit too picture perfect in a way but I also think Inti deserved some of the peace that she so longed for for her wolves.

 

It's 1995, and best friends Diana and Aurelle are off to college together and ready to lose themselves i party, art and finding themselves. Despite being neighbours for years, the girls only recently connected and found a bond through Diana's experience of being bullied by her older brother her entire life, and Aurelle's experience being swallowed and shadowed by her famous family. But as Diana grows in college, Aurelle becomes smaller and will Diana turn her back on her best friend?

This is such an interesting deep dive into the complexities of female friendship and the type of up an down/weak and strong dynamics there are in many types of relationships from friendships to romantic ones.

I loved the build up of who Diana and Aurelle are going into their first semester, and the almost contradiction of who they should be as character. Diana, who her whole life has been second best to her bully of her brother, should be meek and shy whereas she is strong, confident and opinionated - and then Aurelle, who has been surrounded by love in a family that opened their doors to everyone, is the weaker one, never able to truly find herself because of her connection to her fashion designer mother.

This was a slightly soul torturing book to read as we see all facets of who the girls are, what drives their decision making - their highs and their lows, and how Diana began to climb up the ladder but used Aurelle as a stepping stone, crushing her on their way. So many times I wanted to reach out to Aurelle and hold her close to me, to get her away. A really good example of how abusive, controlling relationships can come in so many different forms and they're not always romantic.

I loved the insight into artists and their muses in this book too, and the conversation it provoked about what was ethical versus borderline problematic/abusive when it comes to muses and consent, and using images or inspiration in ways that could embarrass or hurt. Honestly, Diana became one of the cruelest people through her selfishness and how she looked at Aurelle slipping into the shadows and thought it was okay to continue. Just so hard to read yet so realistic at the same time.

Definitely recommend this one! 

A perfect mix between James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small and Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt, Never Work With Animals is the gritty tell-all book about life as a vet - and it's not as romantic and full of fluffy bunnies (okay, a few fluffy bunnies) as you might think. The book starts off with a bang, literally, as the author starts off his vet tales with the time he had to shoot a bull with a broken leg - and it took a few times to get it right. While this was a little bit of a shocking start to the book, I also think it helps weed out those who might not be able for a book that really shows the reality of life working with animals - and the people that often cause their distress and bring about their end. Gareth makes a good point right at the start that the idea of a vet is extremely romanticised yet in reality it's an extremely tough job full of hard hours, not enough pay, often not enough gratitude or respect from the owners, and full of distressing moments, alongside the nice ones that make it worthwhile.

As someone who once dreamed of being a vet, and often thinks about those 'what if' moments, I really enjoyed seeing the day to day life as a vet even with all those hard moments. I appreciated seeing the darker times as well as the nice ones - the puppies that made it, the ones that didn't and the owners who loved fiercely despite those ones who didn't seem to care at all. There are moments in here that boiled my blood as a pet owner and an animal lover - people who breed their dog (particularly bull breeds who have difficulty giving birth naturally) without any care for her health and only thinking about the money, the ones who put their pets down so they wouldn't have to pay a bill that they probably spent willy nilly on other things, and the strange power people feel over their animals and punish them for things out of their control (such as a woman wanting to put down her 10-year-old dog because the kids wouldn't do anything around the house?!).

I appreciated Gareth's stories as a country vet - it's easy to see that farmers often get a hard rap due to them treating animals as entities but that's unfortunately because they are but that doesn't mean a farmer doesn't care for his animals - and as Gareth writes, it's not unusual to see a farmer cry about a cow he delivered himself as a teenager. How different types of government mandates and veterinary standards means that one bad test can destroy a farmer's livelihood, and eradicate a family tradition that goes back how many years. When put like that you can understand some of the desperate measures the farmers take to avoid such moments, as well as (almost) understand the aggression towards vets tasked with delivering bad news. I'd actually love to read a similar memoir like this but with a female vet with experience as a country vet as some of Gareth's stories referenced altercations between farmers and female vets around TB disagreements and I think this voice could bring a whole other type of story to the forefront.

Overall I enjoyed this though I do think the book needed some editing down when it came to some of the tangents/lectures the author tended to write. While I agreed with a lot of what he was saying from the dangers of practising homeopathy without experience, and not believing scientifically approved methods of care, to vaccines and why it's important to vaccinate your pets, as well as the benefits of plant-based diets, some of these ran on way too long and I got bored of what felt like a man droning in my ear about why his opinion is the right opinion. There were paragraphs upon paragraphs that could easily have been struck off. I just didn't pick up a book about a vet's experiences to learn why the planet is dying- I have other books for that.

If you love animals, and you're not too soft-hearted when it comes to them, I recommend picking this one up. It helps that it has a truly adorable cover!