I consumed this book within a week. (A week!) It was a page turner so unlike the last book I read. I actually heard a review of it on Radio National and thought that sounds like an interesting story. Well it was but it didn’t meet my expectation. The review made it sound like it was dark and sinister. And honestly after the last book I read, I wanted something hard and exciting! But alas, The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood felt like a laundry softener. Yes it did have some violence in it but it wasn’t scary enough or edgy enough. I needed something harder than that!

So a bit about the plot….the story starts off with two young women (Yolanda and Verla) finding themselves captive by two Bozos – one with a stick (Boncer) and the other with dreadlocks (Teddy) who worships the sun. The women gets their heads shaven and are dressed in some kind of a sack. Later on, they find themselves among 8 other women who are in the same predicament. The women know who they are (publicly well-known) but wonders why they are being captive and mistreated. From here on, the women including the two men find themselves in circumstances that they would never have imagined and expected to happen in their whole life. It is now a matter of survival.

Overall, a good and easy read. I’d certainly recommend it!