Valentine is Elizabeth Wetmore's debut novel and, in my opinion, one of this year's must-reads.⁠
⁠ ⁠
It's February 1976 in Odessa, Texas, and 14-year-old Gloria Ramírez has just been viciously attacked in an oil field. When she shows up on Mary Rose Whitehead's doorstep, she's barely alive.⁠ As Gloria's story travels around town, people quickly decide she's lying - and that her attacker, the young son of a pastor, is innocent.⁠
⁠ ⁠
Told from the perspective of different women, this book is a portrait of Odessa in the 70s - a white men's town where men die in all kinds of circumstances, but women are almost always killed by their husbands or strangers.⁠
⁠ ⁠
Valentine is definitely one of my favorite books of the year so far. It's a slow, character-driven read with complex backstories and moments you won't be able to forget any time soon. It's a story about gender, class, race, and the way they sometimes decide your destiny.⁠
⁠
The author does a wonderful job of putting the reader in the character's shoes, creating a strong connection that makes you feel (and fear) for them. The women are all fascinating in their own way, representations of the complex roles we play throughout our lives and the fearlessness with which we assume each of them. Reading the book, it was interesting to see that none of the characters felt safe - you couldn't really trust the husband, the lawyer, the neighbor. ⁠All of them had to face life alone, in some way.⁠
⁠ ⁠
It's not an easy read, and don't let the title fool you - it's far from being Valentine's-day-romantic. But it's still a love letter to the strong women who, in towns and countries led by men, have long been the invisible, undeterred backbone of any community. ⁠

I absolutely loved and devoured this book. I hated having to put it down. The writing was so compelling I had to shake myself back into reality whenever I stopped reading.

In this book and in this writer's style I have found my favourite author. I'm already looking forward to what Wetmore will do next.

I have no words to describe this beautifully written, emotionally engaging, heart warming, sometimes heart- wrenching and downright engaging story, but I will recommend it wherever I go. Just read it! Now.

There is no doubting the quality of descriptive passages in this book but too many characters made it seem like I never really got to the detail of their individual stories that I wanted.

I was very surprised to learn that this is a debut but I found Valentine to be a great book held back by a little too much ambition. So many authors seem to rely on multiple perspectives, or shifting back and forth through time. It's a potential pitfall, especially for a new writer, and in this case I did feel that a more straightforward approach would have made more sense. Everything about this book is evocative, from the grand Texas landscapes to the connections between the characters that we meet. At the mid way point I did feel a bit of a pacing slump and my attention wasn't as readily held, possibly because at times it is hard to digest such a brutal story. But this is still a good book by an emerging new talent and I would happily recommend it to fans of the genre.

I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I was expecting more of the story to be based around Glory and what happened to her but this was not the case. I found it quite complicated and the lack of speech marks unhelpful.

Complex tale with lots of sub stories woven in. Found it hard to bring them all together,very detailed and complicated.

My thanks to 4th Estate for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Valentine’ by Elizabeth Wetmore in exchange for an honest review.

Hey there, Valentine...

‘Valentine’ opens with a harrowing incident. On the evening of Valentine’s Day, 1976 in Odessa, Texas 14-year old Gloria Ramírez is brutally raped in an oil field. She is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and her attacker, the son of a preacher, is, according to people in town, ‘a good kid’, who “always been one hundred percent respectful to the local girls.” Sure he is. However, as readers we have seen his true nature.

The rape is the pivotal event of this novel. However, rather than focus on it, the narrative becomes very anecdotal bouncing between the perspectives of various women of the town. While there is nothing wrong with this as such, I found that I struggled to keep focus.

It is quite clear that Odessa, on the verge of an oil boom, is a very male dominated society. There’s no women’s liberation movement or disco here. No quotation marks either.

Not all the men in the story are misogynistic creeps. There is Jesse, a gentle young homeless veteran, who is befriended by ten year old, Debra Ann, whose has been abandoned by her mother and is running feral.

After a great deal of meandering through the middle of the novel, I found that during the final third I reengaged with the plot and characters. There the focus returns to the crime and the court case associated with it. It’s not surprising that the case triggers racist and xenophobic reactions in the community, a situation that sadly is still prevalent today given the current political climate in this part of the USA.

I did find that the final section of the novel pulled together well and improved my overall impression of this assured debut novel.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

It is almost impossible to believe that this is Elizabeth Wetmore’s debut novel; it is just staggering.

Remember when you read Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird; how you felt a reaction that jarred in your soul? Remember when you read stories of great injustice; of men’s propensity to violence against women; the horror of social injustice and the deep resonating sadness of life for those in the margins? Many of these stories flow from times distant, but this, this is the 70’s – a time when I was in my 20’s – relatively recently. Do we learn: who knows?

Set in West Texas in 1976 Wetmore’s descriptions of the landscape and those who inhabit, both human and flora and fauna is woven intricately to reveal a bleak, unforgiving place that swings from harsh, unremitting heat where land and people are scorched, to freezing, hard earth which becomes flooded and turned into swamp – permeated with the putrid smell of oil. A difficult place to breath. Even though there are places of beauty here, sought out by Potter and Corrine, I found it difficult to perceive that beauty, except, perhaps, the descriptions of the sky – magnificent. It put me in mind of Wuthering Heights: I could never feel the beauty of the moors.

But beauty abounds in Valentine and it heartens the soul. It is found in an abandoned child who befriends an injured man. It is found in Mary Rose who will not be put down by the racist, gun-toting good ole boys; the men who inhabit the camps set up for the workers in the oil fields or derricks. It is found in Corrine who mourns the death of Potter her husband. Underpinning all this is the poison of a little Mexican girl who was raped and brutalised and surely would have been murdered but for one lone individual (aided by another) who would not back down. Where were the women to support Corrine – surely they were cowering in the corner afraid to have the focus on them. Who can blame them, not me?

I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever this book is going to create a storm. How can it not, it is heart-breaking and tears will do it no justice? I am profoundly moved and profoundly grateful that Elizabeth Wetmore created Valentine, it will resonate with me for many, many years.

A heartfelt thank you to the author, publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.

Thank you, 4th Estate, and NetGalley for a copy of Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore.
It’s 1976 in Odessa, West Texas. On a brink of an oil rush. 14-year-old girl Gloria Ramirez is raped on Valentines night. She is a daughter of a Mexican immigrant. So, there is no rush to find out who is responsible. Odessa is a male orientated land and rumours and one of them say that she consented. But the poor girl came home that night seriously battered and scarred for life. This story has several people’s points of view, mainly women telling us of the everyday hardships they face in the male orientated land.
Valentine is a beautifully written and thought-provoking novel set in 1970’s Texas. I did enjoy the first half of this book. Showing the hardships in them times of Texas. But I thought that there were too many characters and too much going’s on. That for me personally I got disengaged by the end of this book.

This story is about the lives of women and girls and the secrets and lies in a small town. I thought it would hold my attention more than it did.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore is an amazing book,even more amazingly it's her debut novel.
The book begins with the violent rape of a young Mexican girl and rather than following the investigation and trial as a crime novel it tells of the effects of the attack on various women as the ripples move outwards and even those not directly involved are affected. Set in 1976 in the West Texas Oil town of Odessa it's very much a snapshot of a time and a area where rampant racism and sexism is the norm while women are expected to be housewives ,mothers or eye candy in the locals bars and den of iniquity and be happy with their lot. The story goes from woman to woman telling her story while each vignette is linked to the main story. There are male characters and mostly they're pretty horrible but this is mostly about women and their struggles to be heard and survive.
The writing is quite stunning and I felt I knew the women in the stories personally ,it's also very moving and at times brutal. The Texas of the era doesn't come out well and the trial of the attacker is farcical , the victim, Gloria, doesn't even turn up knowing what to expect while the the more naive Mary Rose Whitehead appears as a witness and learns a bitter lesson about the society she lives in..
There's so much in this book, all of the women have their own cross to bear but they all the end find better things in life ,often in ways they'd never have expected, there are no perfect outcomes but there are satisfactory ones.
I read a lot and every so often I pick up something really special, Valentine comes under that category.

Big thanks to Elizabeth Wetmore, 4th Estate and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

DNF 40%

While I could get behind the lack of quotation of marks, I find the shifting povs to be unnecessary. I was under the impression that different perspectives would focus on Gloria Ramírez and her story but she is a mere blip in the lives of these other 3 or 4 characters. These women go on about their own mundane worries (one has just lost her husband, another one has a young daughter, and one has left her daughter). The needlessly unpleasant Debra-Ann is such a cliché. How is her narrative relevant/of any interest?
So far Gloria has had barely any page-time which is rather frustrating. She should be the one telling the majority of this story.
Elizabeth Wetmore's writing tries and fails to be gritty. There are also some dodgy metaphors that I found really off-putting ('neighbor kids who have spilled out of houses and across lawns like pecans from an overturned basket).
If you are not tired of this type of narrative (in which small towns are full of gossip-y & close minded people) and you don't find a lack of quotation of marks to be irritating, you might want to consider picking this book up.

An astonishingly unforgettable debut from the talented Elizabeth Wetmore, historical fiction set in the searing heat and dust of West Texas, in the cursed bust and boom oil town of Odessa in 1976, a white man's town in every which way, where men die in a variety of circumstances but if a woman dies, its more likely than not to be at the hands of a man. For women, narrow limits and prescribed perameters of life have them desperately dreaming of seeing a wider world, where pregnancy and motherhood are steel traps with a vice like grip that crush spirits, dreams, hopes and imprisons, a life sentence with no parole. Odessa is a town, a community full of fools and sinners, that is as guilty as sin, with its vicious, unapologetic racism running rampant through its veins, where women and girls are abused, condemned and murdered with impunity, and justice is a forlorn unattainable ideal.

Wetmore examines Odessa and the social norms and attitudes of the period through the lives of women and girls, such as the married and pregnant Mary Rose Whitehead, the elderly, stubborn, grumpy and bereaved Corinne Shepherd, mourning the loss of her beloved husband, Potter, 17 year old Karla Sibley working as a waitress, the plucky 10 year old Debra Ann, missing her mother, Ginny, who loves her daughter, but needs more as she escapes the town, and 14 year old Mexican Gloria. Mary Rose's courage shines like a beacon when she stands up for the barely alive, battered and raped Gloria when the girl turns up at her ranch. Her husband, Robert, like the other menfolk, consider her beyond the pale, and a race traitor for her willingness to testify against the paedophile and rapist Dale Strickland, the son of a preacher man. After all, Gloria, who becomes Glory, is Mexican, asking for it, and anyway Mexican girls are not the same as white girls. Mary Rose dares to dream of justice for Gloria, but Corinne has no such illusions.

Wetmore relates an Odessa where the women, despite everything that stands in their path, support and help each other, such as the indomitable Corinne coming to the aid of Mary Rose as her unbridled wrath and rage at injustice push her close to the edges of insanity, Suzanne Ledbetter with her voluntary provisions to those in need, and the women supporting Karla, determining an alternative justice for Dale. Debra Ann's compassion, kindness, and relationship with the drain pipe living ex-soldier, Jesse Belden, allow the two of them to meet each others need to be cared for when they are neglected by everyone else. Victor, Gloria's uncle, looks after her when her mother is deported, illustrating his wisdom in understanding that nothing causes more suffering than vengeance.

This is a stellar character driven read that details the lives and circumstances of this place and this time period, a novel with an ironic title of Valentine, the only true Valentines in the novel are Corinne and Potter, and Potter is dead. Wetmore is unafraid of venturing into sacrilegious territory where her characters can feel the all too real chains and boredom of motherhood, where you can love someone with all your heart and still wish they weren't there. This is a a hugely memorable and terrific read, and I just cannot wait for whatever Wetmore turns her attention to next and writes about. Highly recommended. Many thanks to HarperCollins 4th Estate for an ARC.

A really emotional book and a struggle to read at times, but that’s because it was so good, so well written that I connected with the characters so well and ‘felt’ their journey and you do go on their journey with them. I say a struggle I mean emotionally, because it was still gripping and I couldn’t wait to get back to it whenever I left. The writing is beautiful and I can’t believe this is a debut, but definitely one to watch and should be up for awards, one of the best of 2020 surely.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

This is a fantastic read. It’s 1976 and right at the start of the book a dreadful crime takes place. However, this is not directly about that crime. This is the interwoven tales of a number of protagonists who are linked directly or indirectly to what happened. A searing insight into Texas at the start of the oil boom years which, in structure and in empathy reminded me of Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other. Beautifully written, this is one which will stay with you. A solid 4.5*

With thanks to Netgalley and 4th Estate/Williams Collins for an ARC in consideration of an honest review. Also thanks to the podcast Book Off where I discovered this book when it was championed by Jeanine Cummins.

One of those rare, involving stories that I couldn't wait to get back to but also didn't want to end! Yes, the opening scenes were really tough to get through but underpinned everything else that then followed. I felt like I knew the women of Odessa, that they lived and breathed, and it was a real struggle to say goodbye to them. What a book.

This is the benchmark against which all my further reading in 2020 will now be measured. Absolutely outstanding!

Stories can save your life. This, Corrine still believes, even if she hasn‘t been able to focus on a book since Potter died. And memory wanders, sometimes a capful of wind on a treeless plain, sometimes a twister in late spring. Nights, she sits on the front porch and lets those stories keep her alive for a little while longer.

Told from multiple perspectives, the book opens with a ghastly attack on a young girl in the 1970s Texas oilfields. She escapes and finds a rescuer: a young farmer's wife who prevents the attacker from removing all the witnesses to his crime. The book then pitches into an entirely different tone, from that dramatic and edge-of-your-seat tension, to the slow crawl of the wait for the trial. The farmer's wife slowly goes out of her mind with the threats and the small-town attitudes to a young girl left out on her own at 14. It is implied that she is ruining the life of some young man who grew up in the town.
The elderly lady over the road is mourning her husband, killed accidentally on a "hunting trip". Another woman has up and left her young daughter and husband, tired of the hopelessness of her life. The violence of the town, and the hopelessness, is related by the author to the violence meted out to the original occupants. The blurb from the publisher compares this to Elizabeth Strout, and certainly the layering approach of narratives told from different perspectives is similar.

The writing in this book is so beautiful it's hard to believe it is Elizabeth Wetmores debut novel. I must have felt every emotion reading it. The relationships between the women and girls were fascinating. The difference between their opinions on what happened to Glory maddened and intrigued me. Valentine is not a book I will forget in a hurry. Definitely a re-read and one to recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and the author for the opportunity to read this amazing book.

Set in the West Texas town of Odessa during the oil boom of the 70s, Elizabeth Wetmore's Valentine sets the bar impossibly high for fellow debuts of 2020. 

Though its plot centres on the vicious assault of a fourteen-year old Mexican girl, Gloria Ramírez, the novel itself focuses less on the details of the crime than its effect on the women of the town who must deal with its fallout in both their own and their neighbours' lives. Through its patchwork of female narrative voices, Wetmore creates something which is both grounded in its period and urgently pertinent to the wider geopolitics of America now, tackling issues of race, gender and the crisis of personal versus societal responsibility with seamless skill.

Those expecting a conventional narrative may be surprised by its structure, which has more in common with short-story form than a novel, although it reaches a final catharsis of sorts, both in terms of its central story, and the lives of its main characters, as well as satisfying the reader with almost unbearable moments of tension along the way. It's interesting to note that the novel had its genesis in this shorter form, with one chapter in particular, having been previously published at an earlier date.

Though hard pressed to find weaknesses in any of the narrative voices, three, for me, are standouts: Corinne Shepard, a recent widow, who in the mire of her grief has elected to retreat from life and watches the case from afar, only to find that its ramifications come to her door anyway; Mary Rose Whitehead, a young mother and first responder to the victim, who motivated by her rage to the town's attitude, decides to testify as a witness for the prosecution in spite of the dangers this poses to her and her family; and Debra Ann Pierce, a frighteningly knowing eleven-year-old desperately searching for the atonement she believes will bring back her runaway mother. 

Throughout these interconnected narratives, Wetmore mines both the humanity and beauty of the everyday, as well as its assaults, and it is the devil in these detail that makes these women come alive. She is a voracious observer of character - sometimes blackly comic, sometimes shockingly poignant but never less than true. 

Here, and elsewhere in the novel, the language and relationships sing with all the richness of poetry and though it is an easy read it shouldn't be a quick one. Wetmore's language is deliberate in its economy and not a word is wasted in its precision and evocativeness. As Debra Ann comments at one point these are "words whose loveliness and music make her want to cry when she says them aloud."

If the male characters are dealt with lightly, and sometimes cruelly, then this is perhaps the point, especially at a time when women needed their husband's permission to return to work, and men had few aspirations for their wives aside from adopting the cookie-cutter role models of cheerleaders and baby makers, of waitresses and objects of lust. In secret, and even without, these women are much more than this, their lives as rich in rage, and disillusionment and ambition as their male counterparts. Pointedly, Mary Rose's rifle is nicknamed "Old Lady" and its wrath at her hands is not to be reckoned with. 

Wetmore knows the West Texas landscape intimately to the point where, it too, becomes a character in its own right, rendered in the same muscular, desolate language as the male characters of the novel. The land, like the women, is a place to be dominated and taken at will, plundered when its oil riches are good, abandoned when the wells dry up. But it is also fraught with hidden danger, and here, as elsewhere, Wetmore offers us an almost Darwinian half-smirk at the riggers who push too far and go down with "a fatal case of the stupid." Only one of the male characters, in fact - the young soldier Jesse Belden - seems immune to this treatment. Although traumatised by his experiences, he is still too young to have succumbed to the cynicism and viciousness of his peers, and through his friendship with Debra Ann remains a symbol of male hope.

Ultimately, however, and in homage to the many interpretations of its title, Valentine is a fiercely passionate love letter to the women of West Texas, a celebration of their self-effacement and knowledge, and, above all else, of their survival instinct. It fully deserves to prompt wider conversations about who we were as well as who we are and what we want to be in the future. I cannot recommend it enough. 

My sincere thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an honest review. 

NB: Content warning for descriptions of sexual assault, injury and suicide references.

4-5 stars. This was an emotional and I trifling read for me. It started out quite brutal, which really had my attention. Well written, characters developed amazingly, and unputdownable. I found I was either numb from shock or in chills most of the book, which shows me the writing was quite powerful. Overall, I recommend to those who enjoy fictional account of a true crime type story, showing very well the emotional turmoil many feel after the crime is committed. I think those who love thrillers, true crime, and other genres will enjoy this absolutely brutal and powerful read.
Will make sure I buzz it up on all the different sites!