Today it's my turn on the BlogTour Nowhere Girls by Teuta Metra. It's a story about loyalty, friendship and strength in a world of gender inequality, abuse and harassment. It questions the boundaries of female friendships and what constitutes a real friendship.
Now a fiction writer, Teuta Metra's experience as an Albanian journalist has made her an expert on the struggles of women from her country. Author, journalist and teacher, Teuta now lives in The Netherlands with her husband and two sons.
Follow @Teuta_Metra on Twitter,
Visit teutametra.com/
Buy Nowhere Girls
About the book
Friends Alba and Sara could not be more different. While Alba is forcing her way into the upper echelons of Albanian’s richest and most powerful, Sara is working more than one job as a struggling journalist. Both desperate to escape their corrupt country, they're quickly dragged into a sordid world of politics and lies.
When tragedy strikes their friend Ina, the two women must come together to save her little boy. Can they put away their troubles and secure a better future for the child? Or will their past catch up with them?
Nowhere Girls is a thrilling tale of love, lies and the lengths a woman will go to for freedom.
There are some really powerful and significant emotions one can feel throughout the book and it doesn't come from the characters per se. It emanates from the author through her words. The feelings of anger, frustration at the injustice and the overall desire for change.
The rage, and to me it certainly felt like rage, is directed at the way women are treated in her native country, Albania. To be fair, although the focus is on three friends from Albania in this story, I believe the author feels the same about the way women are treated everywhere.
That and the ineptitude of the way society deals with domestic abuse are the underlying sub-plots in this story about friendship and loyalty between three women. How we are still completely incapable to sufficiently help the victims of domestic abuse in a fast, safe and satisfactory manner. The number of annual deaths due to domestic violence are shocking, the statistics on violent attacks shamefully high and that is without the amount of unreported incidents.
The stories of Alba, Sara and Ina are interwoven in a strange way. Sometimes the connections are based on need rather than the desire to enjoy time with a friend. Alba really appears to be guilty of this, although I found Sara a lot more ruthless than Alba at times. The two women battle with ambition and making their place in their world.
Ina and her story seems to take place in the background, and yet for me it was the one which felt more important to me. How meeting the wrong guy puts her on the path of pain, sorrow and destruction. Sara can see him for what he is, but Ina is drawn into a dangerous web of abuse.
I think Metra should focus all her emotions and write about her anger, frustration and the changes she would like to see for girls and women in her country and around the world. Forget the side stories or the fictional aspect even. The book and publishing world is all about women's empowerment at the moment.
It's a story about loyalty, friendship and strength in a world of gender inequality, abuse and harassment. It questions the boundaries of female friendships and what constitutes a real friendship.
Buy Nowhere Girls at Amazon Uk (paperback) or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Buy Kindle edition at Amazon Uk, Buy at Amazon com
No comments:
Post a Comment