Someone Who Isn't Me by Danuta Kot
When everyone hides the truth, who do you turn to?
Becca’s had a hard time of it, but she has finally got her life together. She has a nice little flat, a steady job pulling pints, and she’s even seeing someone new: Andy, who keeps his private life to himself but is always good for a laugh. And then Andy vanishes. When his body turns up on isolated Sunk Island, Becca learns Andy wasn’t just another punter. He was a police officer, deep undercover, investigating a drugs ring that he believed operated out of Becca’s pub.
Staggered by the betrayal, Becca turns to the only person she thinks she can trust: her foster mum, Kay. But Kay has problems of her own. She’s just moved into a short-term let in the hopes of finding some peace and quiet. But peace and quiet are hard to come by on Sunk Island . . .
Before long, both women are drawn into a terrifying world of drugs, money and death.
About the author
Danuta Kot (who also writes as Danuta Reah and as Carla Banks) grew up with stories. Her Irish mother and her Polish father kept their own cultures alive with traditional tales they shared with their children. For many years, she worked with young people in Yorkshire who were growing up in the aftermath of sudden industrial decline. She uses this background in her books to explore some of the issues that confront modern, urban society: poverty, alienation and social breakdown, using the contexts of the modern crime novel. She now works as a senior education consultant, work that involves travel to establish education and training in other parts of the world. She is a regular academic speaker at conferences and literary festivals and has appeared on radio and television.
Follow her at:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danutareah.crimefiction
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danutajr
Website : https://danutakot.com/
Review
This is a brilliant continuation to the story that began in ‘Life Ruins’ and it follows Becca into the drug culture and gangs around the east coast of Yorkshire. It's a gritty, dark and compulsive book that deals with many powerful socio-economic themes present in today’s society. Although, this is a follow-up you can easily read it as a stand-alone but I do urge you to read the first book as it is excellent!
Becca is working two jobs to support herself - during the day in a supermarket and in the evenings at a local pub. She is barely managing to survive financially and socially she is still quite isolated. So when she gets friendly with Andy a regular in the pub she believes life might be on the up. However, his body was found out on Sunk Island and Becca soon learns he was lying to her as he was an undercover cop trying to break into a local drug gang. She is devastated and get in touch with her foster mother Kay. But Kay has problems in her life as well - one of her cases as a drugs support worker has got in trouble and started to use again. But Kay can't get through to Poppy and is worried. Ironically, she has also temporarily moved to Sunk Island and she swears she keeps hearing noises in the house and outside but can't see anyone!
I ended up listening to this on audible as I was super busy this week with launching Murder at the Bookshop and it was a brilliant audiobook. It took me a while to get into the narrator but I grew to love the voices of Becca and Kay. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and it was paced incredibly well! I loved how the two characters themes were similar but yet from opposite sides of the spectrum. Kay is hoping to change attitudes of drugs whilst Becca is suffering from attacks from local gangs whilst trying to do the right thing for people she cared about. Bridlington as a setting works extremely well to.highlight social issues as it is exactly how the author portrays it. I grew up in Scarborough so I know! This is definitely a character driven novel but the location is just as important.
I found that this was compulsive listening, an intelligent and well-paced narrative that dealt with some strong themes! I just want to know what is going to happen to Becca next - please say another book is coming?!
