Books

Vigilante

  • Apr 20, 2021
  • Shelley Harris
  • 987 responses.

Vigilante Jenny Pepper never expected to end up like this Tired of her job and the domestic grind and bewildered by her teenage daughter one night Jenny stumbles into a vigilante rescue Suddenly her world is

  • Title: Vigilante
  • Author: Shelley Harris
  • ISBN: 9780297864615
  • Page: 180
  • Format: Hardcover

    • Jenny Pepper never expected to end up like this Tired of her job and the domestic grind, and bewildered by her teenage daughter, one night Jenny stumbles into a vigilante rescue Suddenly her world is exciting again and she s a hero In the costume, she can be anyone she wants And so her secret life begins But when a real villain appears, Jenny s need for adventure beJenny Pepper never expected to end up like this Tired of her job and the domestic grind, and bewildered by her teenage daughter, one night Jenny stumbles into a vigilante rescue Suddenly her world is exciting again and she s a hero In the costume, she can be anyone she wants And so her secret life begins But when a real villain appears, Jenny s need for adventure begins to cost her dearly As she starts to see less and less clearly through the mask, she finds her fantasy life becoming frighteningly real.We all want to be extraordinary, and we all have a moment in our lives when we realise that we re not Vigilante is about a woman who refuses to accept it gracefully

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    About "Shelley Harris"

    1. Shelley Harris

      Shelley Harris was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967, to a South African mother and a British father She has worked, among other things, as a teacher, a reporter, a mystery shopper and a bouncer at a teen disco When she is not writing, she volunteers at her local Oxfam bookshop, helping customers find just the right book Her first novel Jubilee was a Richard Judy Book Club choice, a Top Ten bestseller and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize Vigilante is her second novel.

    987 Comments

    1. Jenny Pepper is bored with the routine of her life She manages a charity bookshop and looks after her husband and daughter but where s the excitement and fulfilment in her life Where s her sense of purpose There s nothing really wrong just her life lacks that certain something An invitation to a fancy dress party sparks her interest and she spends a lot of time and energy on her costume as she intends to go as a female super hero But on her way to the party she stumbles across a woman being mugg [...]

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    2. I received an advance copy of this novel from the lovely people at Orion Books, and was frankly astonished how quickly the story drew me in I doubt if I belong in the demographic of Shelley s usual readership, yet there was something in the characters and the quality of the writing in Vigilante that kept me reading late into the night I think I rather fell for Jenny Pepper, the over protective mother of an angst ridden teenager who prowls the streets of her hometown dressed as a superhero, fight [...]

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    3. A beautifully written, realistic portrayal of a woman struggling to find herself once her daughter no longer needs her in quite the same way as when she was younger A sensitive and raw depiction of a long marriage and motherhood and identity and self worth Loved it.

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    4. I was surprised by how quickly this story drew me in, I wasn t expecting to enjoy it Though it sounded intriguing, the book, when it arrived, put me off the cover, the blurb, made it sound silly and chic litty It was neither I thought too, that it would be funny a quick and easy read, a bit of a laugh It wasn t really any of those things, either It was occasionally funny, in a dark, disturbing, Inside Number 9 sort of way But it was mostly, a surprisingly touching look at a female mid life crisi [...]

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    5. To be honest this book deserves like 3.5 stars I was lucky enough to win a copy in a giveaway, I was hooked as soon as I read the premise and it didn t let me down It was a great story, very suspenseful, I read the whole thing in under a day Jenny is a very likable, relatable character, and the book balances light hearted moments with serious topics well I was pleasantly surprised by an aspect of the daughter s storyline you find out in the first few pages so it s not really a spoiler I know t [...]

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    6. Jenny Pepper is a pretty ordinary woman She works in a charity bookshop, she has an angst ridden teenage daughter who is into steampunk and is most probably gay Her husband is a successful designer and Jenny tidies up a lot Jenny feels fat and invisible She gave up a career as an actress to be a wife and mother When she was an actress, people noticed her Now she s a wife and a mother, she s seems to be wearing her own personal invisibility cloak Jenny is fed up.It is a completely different cloak [...]

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    7. Jenny Pepper abandoned her career as an actor to become a mother now she finds herself increasingly marginal in her teenage daughter s life and unstimulated in her work as the manager of a charity bookshop, the spark long having gone from her marriage Rendered virtually invisible by dint of her age, unglamorous job and gender, tidying up has become her life s purpose until, en route to a fancy dress party, she witnesses a woman being attacked Although lacking the skills of a comic book superhero [...]

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    8. I was drawn by this book believing it would be a light hearted story about a dissatisfied housewife, becoming a heroine to feel alive and necessary once again What I read instead was a gripping story incorporating lots of very contemporary issues Gender equality, violence on women, relationships with teenage children, the role of media and technology amongst youth, crime and police s response to it these were but a few themes explored in Vigilante I certainly did not expect the protagonist to st [...]

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    9. Jenny is a 40ish mum who is bored Bored with daily life in the bookstore she manages even though she loves books Bored that she and her husband never goes anywhere Worried about her teenage daughter who is drifting away from her She is a normal woman, doing normal things.But then the book takes a turn when she helps someone And then maybe she could help Oh Jenny Sure, yes good that you saved people, but that is so dangerous Vigilantism is, oh I am torn She helps people, but well I do not have t [...]

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    10. A generous, thoughtful, and often profound book about a woman who takes life into her own hands I absolutely wept my heart out at the ending, and I am still thinking about Jenny Pepper One of my favourite books this year.

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    12. It has been a month or so since I read this book but it has left a strong positive impression on me enough to award it five stars I thought it was quite different bored housewife acts on impulse, feels free, dramatic things happen, things start to get better but are still not perfect I felt that the escapism wish for Jenny, our main character was well expressed that sense of first world ennui that unfortunately strikes too often dealt with in a fairly novel way.

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    13. Jenny Pepper is everything I love, and want, in a character She is the hero of a book that never usually gets written She is the woman you never see in a movie or a TV series unless she s a passing wife to show how miserable and dull the male lead s life is She is so many women the story that isn t about spies, hit men, soldiers or Kings She is ordinary , but only because we live in a society that says the only interesting stories are the stories belonging to men Jenny is a woman who feels her p [...]

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    14. Quite a unique story, which at first seemed improbable but the I read, the I was drawn into Jenny s life and experiences Shelley has a deft touch that makes it easy to feel empathy for the characters A roller coaster of emotions which was very satisfying.

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    15. KarenmartinreadsNot quite my genre, but a well constructed, humorous look at a real issuending yourself middle aged and invisible.

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    16. Was slow to start that I stopped reading it for two years Thought it was time to finish it, so I skipped a couple chapters and really enjoyed the ending.

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    19. Would I have normally picked up a book starring a mother who donned a mask and cape to transform herself into a secret Vigilante Probably not I watched the odd repeat of Batman and Robin when I was growing up, gave a passing nod to Wonder Woman and her Kapows and Biffs, but that s about as far as my interest in super heroes went But when I heard that Shelley Harris had dressed up in cape, mask and Dr Martin boots and paced the streets of High Wycombe looking for good deeds so that she could get [...]

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    20. Full disclosure I know Shelley personally We have the kind of friendship that sprung from fireside chats in a writers retreat Where your admiration for the person s work, spreads to an admiration of them I like Shelly I love her book.Vigilante has an amazing premise a woman, a real woman, a mother, dresses up like a superhero and fights crime in her sleepy English town Except this isn t a cartoon caper of the likes of Kick Ass, this is a visceral, heartfelt act of courageousness by one woman who [...]

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    21. Jenny Pepper has an ordinary life in an ordinary town She has a husband, a teenage daughter, a job and friends Everything s OK, but Jenny s mundane life is slowly suffocating her Inside her there is a strong, powerful, dynamic superhero just waiting to burst out Jenny s alter ego finds this moment as she is on her way to a fancy dress party wearing a costume and a mask She begins to lead a double life and her adventures take her further into frightening and sinister situations.I got and hooked [...]

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    22. All sorts of books find themselves catching my attention for one or another reason, but there are certain areas I generally avoid Looming large among these the novel about a middle aged modern Briton having a bit of a crisis Regardless of the book s brow height, situations everyday than my own everyday life tend to leave me cold though for some reason and I don t think it s just the glamour of distance Yanks like Franzen are able to make it all count for something This one lured me in with the [...]

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    23. Once again I bought a book to the library and couldn t help wanting to read it myself and I m very glad I did At first I was worried because a book about a middle aged mother who happens to become a vigilante could easily become mocking or too comical, but it somehow manages to avoid that.I mean, sure, she s not actually that good at being a crime fighter so there are bound to be failures and all that, but she still feels empowered and confident Everything was portrayed with a certain amount of [...]

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    24. That was good Really, really good The superhero has always been an elastic metaphor, but few writers have managed to stretch it as far as Shelley Harris does in this book as a metaphor for mid life crisis, for body image issues, for issues of violence and sexuality and gender roles, even for mortality they re all here, and all in a single character This is a thought provoking book, for all its silly seeming framing If you ve any interest at all in the genre, or if you ve an interest in how the e [...]

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    25. I chose Vigilante because I d enjoyed Jubilee a while back yet the books couldn t be different in style This book resonated with me on so many levels middle aged mum Check Teenaged daughter Check Occassional crisis of confidence Check Penchant for dressing up Ers, actually I once won a fancy dress comp as Charlie Chaplin But although the similarities end there, I was sucked so completely into the story, I could ve been stalking the streets in vigilante gear or working in the bookshop, or even b [...]

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    26. It took me a while to get into this as I found it hard to relate to the narrator, who is a mother in her 40s the main reason I usually read YA But once I got into the story, I found myself really enjoying it, the blend of superheroes and reality, vigilantes and self defence classes I would offer a trigger warning for rape, as that s the main crime she ends up rescuing people from, but on the whole, this is an enjoyable and optimistic novel about stepping out of your everyday life and being a her [...]

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    27. Oh crikey, I loved this book I loved it because it ticks so many boxes It s a thriller and a manifesto and a love story all in one, and Harris never forgets that her heroine, Jenny Pepper, is both sassy and flawed, that even a happy marriage can be frustrating and dull and that the love a mother feels for her child can be totally overwhelming Moreover, the novel is set in a town we could live and is peopled with people we could meet any day of our own lives and, without giving anything away abou [...]

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    28. What stuck in a rut wife mother McJob worker woman doesn t fantasize about another version of her life where she s bold, powerful, adventurous Read this unusual novel about a woman who acts out her fantasy as a caped crusader, rescuing teen age girls from a horrible serial rapist We can do it, ladies Recommended.

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    29. Unsettling both in terms of it s take on vigilantism and violent crime, this is an intriguing story of the life of a bored housewife The only niggle I had was the obviousness at least to me of the identity of the villain, and the slightly unfinished storyline regarding her best friend Still, it s definitely worth a read.

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    30. A strange book overall I liked the writing, I believed in most of the characters and I absolutely loved the middle aged woman s perspective in the early stages but the subsequent plot development irritated me I found it unfunny verging on ridiculous and pompous It s a shame because I wanted to like it.

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