Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child

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There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for the outlines all of our lives" my life would have been lost in contemplation of the emerging skeleton beneath my skin. It was as though a man’s bones broke through the face of the werewolf. Shining with humanity he stalked through his midnight life towards the first day.’ This was a powerful and thought-provoking debut by author Caitlin Wahrer. The characters were well-developed personalities explored in depth. They experienced many conflicting emotions, which were brilliantly conveyed to the reader. There were moral quandaries, dilemmas, and ambivalence in their thoughts and actions. What they believe is the right path to choose may not always be the good one. When a small-town family is pushed to the brink, how far will they go to protect one of their own? An edgy, propulsive read about what we will do in the name of love and blood NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, and Doubleday Canada provided me with a complimentary advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available! Really a great and thought-provoking read. ⁣

This would make a great book for a reading group discussion since it brings some interesting questions to mind. The Damage is a mystery/family drama that examines the consequences of a sexual assault. Wahrer explores the impact on not only the victim but also on his family. Their experiences lead them to an emotional precipice stoking the desire for revenge.Everything changes when he meets Anna Barton, his son’s girlfriend. Although his wife is suspicious of the girl, who is eight year older than her beloved 25 year old son, the narrator feels an instant attraction to her the moment he meets her. An attraction that appears to be mutual since he and Anna start a passionate affair shortly after meeting. This may be classified as a thriller but I can’t pinpoint a specific genre as it seems to be a combination of several. I would encourage those who enjoy legalese, police procedurals, and thoughtful family drama to consider this too.

When the bodies of missing schoolgirls start turning up, former DCI Kate Burrows is dragged out of retirement. BDM ArcScan understand the fragile nature of Antique, Heritage and Archival books, documents and maps, in fact anything that has any form of printed imprint on it. Our services to the Heritage sector have always been at the very pinnacle of quality and value for money. We appreciate our history and also looking after it, and we have become a leader in heritage digitisation over the years, to allow many of our treasured volumes to become more accessible utilising the various digital platforms and media available today.Damage is very smartly-written and effective in arousing curiosity in readers, leading us to question the characters’ self-destructive actions. A post-theatre dinner with Ed Victor, whom I did not know well at that time, resulted in his request to see the opening chapters of this novel, the writing of which my husband believed was "what I should be doing". I was an Irish word-child, and literature was my life and my life-line. Music and painting seemed to have little influence on me. Language however – novels, poetry, plays which I also read with passion – was the word-world within which I searched for the secrets of life. Always an obsessive reader, I had read six books a week during a particular four years in a small town in Ireland after a double family tragedy, and continued this voracious consumption of novels after I left Ireland. There is much more at work here than mere lust, or even mere love. No, it is sexual obsession that dominates this story, an obsession so pervasive that it propels the narrator to unspeakable lows. It propels the narrative toward its tragic conclusion. I’ll admit I hesitated to read The Damage because as a survivor I worried this would be too painful of an experience for me. But I commend Caitlin Wahrer for doing right by survivors of sexual assault and presenting their struggles and challenges in an accurate, not overly dramatic way.