Book Review: Duckling by Eve Ainsworth

 

Title: Duckling

Author: Eve Ainsworth

Publisher: Penguin 

Release date: 26th May 2022

Synopsis: Duckling's a nickname Lucy has never been able to shake off.

And, if she's honest, maybe it suits her.
She just isn't the type to socialise with other people.
You might say she's reluctant to leave her nest.

Lucy's life is small, but safe. She's got a good routine. But all that's about to change...

When Lucy's neighbour asks her to look after her little girl for a couple of hours - and then doesn't come back - Lucy is suddenly responsible for someone other than herself.

It takes courage to let the outside world in, and Lucy's about to learn there's much more to life - but only if she's brave enough to spread her wings...

Thank you to the publishers for sending me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. 

Review: I'm so excited to be back on a blog tour and sharing reviews again! I always love the opporunity to read a new Eve book, so I jumped at the chance to get on this tour. The joy in what Eve does is to take a situation, often one that I feel quite close to and give it heart and soul. 

In Duckling we meet Lucy, or Duckling a nickname given to her by her Dad that she can't quite shake off but that comes to mean very different things as the book progresses. Lucy lives on a council estate, keeps to herself to the point of being reclusive and unknown to those around her and spends her days watching Columbo and working in a small bookshop. Her solitary life is shaken with the arrival of new neighbors Cassie and Rubi, who at the time couldn't be more different from from Lucy. This juxtaposition is made very clear throughout, intentionally so I believe, so that you really feel the subtly in the changes as they happen throughout the book.  It made you consider people and the way we look at and assume without really knowing and the judgements we make based on that.

I grew up living on a council estate so it all felt very familiar, like I was watching events fold from one of the other flats. Much like Lucy I knew only a fraction of the people on my estate, and could understand the need that she had developed to keep a solitary life. It definitely felt like a need more than anything, a complacency that she had given into that at times made her a difficult character, you wanted to sit her don and give her a talking to, make her try and see something from a different perspective as she goes around and around in her head. This was very much Rubi's role, and those of the people around her trying to coax her out of her shell. But again I know what that's like to shut yourself off and focus on the things that you're in control of. Like her cat, Columbo and looking after her Dad which was a difficult subject for her and one I completely resonated with. These moments though given with a lot of exposition about how she felt, also contained so much that was unsaid that you really felt the weight of them throughout and what makes the journey that this storyline goes on so important. 

It's easy to forget that the bulk of this book only really happens over a matter of a few days. We as people don't change that fast, can't change that fast but what we see here if the impact and influence that people can have on us, if we let them in and the subtle changes that help us to grow as people. I'm reminded of the lines in 'For Good' from Wicked whey they both admit 'who help us most to grow, IF we left them' and 'Because I knew you, I have been changed for good' and that's very much what happens here as characters and plotlines begin to unfold. What would you do in such a situation. How would you respond. We all like to think we would do the same thing, the right thing, but what is that and the the rawness of the uncertainty felt by our characters made you want to know what was going to happen. We could see vaguely where things were going, because the book wasn't about that as much as it was a beautiful character study on the lengths people will go for others and the roles we play in peoples lives, but as each piece was added to the puzzle you hoped and wanted for the ending you know they all deserved. Whether they got that you'll have to read the book and find out.

Rubi was very much the star of the show for me. She had a power and a conviction that was so honest it broke your heart. It's the joy of characters like this that help propel the story, I only wish I could have been as sassy and bold as she was when I was that age, because its a big role to have to take on when you're in a situation as she was that is completely out of your control.

This was one of those books where each time I put it down I wanted to pick it up again (I even brought it to a gig so I could read whilst I was waiting in-between sets) and you thought about the characters when you weren't with them. It was the first time in a while that I stayed up and read in bed and I had tears at the end so suffice to say Eve has done her job again.