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Feedback for CatchEm

13 Jul

Review Rating:

5 Stars – Congratulations on your 5-star review!

Reviewed by Robert Collier III for Readers’ Favorite

CatchEM by Julie Hodgson jumps straight into the lonely aftermath of an assault that the police simply shrug off. Grace Thorne is left trying to piece her life back together with large gaps in her memory after a university night out. But the authorities merely brush the whole thing off as a social misunderstanding. Her twin sister, Shelby, is absolutely furious and channels all her energy into building a secure website called CatchEm to track anonymous reports of sexual assault all over the country. What starts as a private tech-driven crusade quickly pulls back the curtain on a huge system of official neglect as thousands of women log identical stories. This rogue data project instantly triggers an aggressive retaliation from a faceless enemy who starts hammering their servers with cyberattacks and trying to ruin their reputation with fake charges. Can the sisters keep their platform alive long enough to look after the vulnerable people trusting them with their truths?

CatchEM by Julie Hodgson is a deeply moving psychological thriller that does a fantastic job of showing the monumental effort required to stand up to a hidden power structure. It is remarkable how Grace regains her footing. Seeing her overcome her initial emotional numbness to find a fierce new drive right alongside Shelby during a chaotic two-week window really brings the emotional reality of their fight into sharp focus, making their efforts feel like the true heart of the entire story. The pacing is good, making you feel the rising panic as the database hacks and threatening letters from lawyers close in from both sides. It was also fascinating to see characters like Priya and Detective Hall join the fray, because they make the resistance seem like a real grassroots effort run by people forced to choose between safety and doing what is right. The main theme about the strength of shared stories gives the book a deep emotional foundation. It is a gripping look at how ordinary people find their voices when the institutions meant to protect them fail. You finish the final pages with a real sense of admiration for the characters and a reminder of what collective courage can actually accomplish. Very highly recommended.

CatchEM – Kindle edition by Hodgson, Julie. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Summer Fold

01 Jul

The sun stretches its arms across the sky
not reaching but gathering
pulling everything into a slow exhale

we walk through heat-hazed mornings
shoes forgotten on grass still damp
with dew we didn’t notice falling

there is something sublime about this weightless warmth
settling on shoulders like a worn blanket
soft enough to forget what winter felt like

bees blur in golden air
children draw circles in concrete dust
their chalk lines blooming before sunset

and night comes down differently here
no sharp edges left standing
just amber dusk wrapping round wrists
round ankles
around the quiet pulse of home

summer folds us all gently
tucks our restless thoughts beneath skin
teaches us how to breathe without counting seconds

even grief slows down
sitting on porches swaying in rhythm
waiting out another day folded warm inside itself

JH

 
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Posted by on July 1, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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A Strange Idea

25 Jun

There is a strange idea

that to rise,
someone else must fall.

That kindness is weakness.
That compassion costs too much.
That difference is something
to fear.

But look closer.

The world has never been changed
by those who built higher walls.

It changes
every time someone says,
“Come in.”

Do more.

Not for applause,
not for likes,
not because your name will be remembered.

Do more because somewhere
a tired soul is carrying
far more than you can see.

Be kinder.

Everyone is fighting battles
behind careful smiles
and ordinary conversations.

Respect everyone.

The cleaner.
The stranger.
The refugee.
The neighbour.
The person who disagrees with you.
The person who looks nothing like you.

Human dignity
should never be selective.

We are all temporary travellers,
brief sparks beneath the same sky.

So leave gentleness in your wake.

Hold doors.
Share laughter.
Speak softly.
Stand firmly against cruelty.

And when history asks
what we did with our little piece of time,

let the answer be:

We made it kinder.

JH

 
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Posted by on June 25, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye

01 Jun
Daily writing prompt
Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye.
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Every morning, I take my dog, Coco, for a walk. This is what I saw… It almost looks like someone is watching me from the field. But no one was there…

 
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Posted by on June 1, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Enid Blyton, my first ever book

31 May
Daily writing prompt
What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?
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The first book I ever read from cover to cover was Five on Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton when I was eleven years old. I still remember the excitement of turning each page and being swept away into a world of mystery, adventure, and friendship. This story changed everything. It opened a door to imagination and showed me that books could transport you to places far beyond your everyday life.

Looking back, that novel sparked a lifelong love of reading and storytelling. It was the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead me to become a writer myself. Even now, whenever I think about the books that shaped me, Enid Blyton’s adventurous tales hold a special place in my heart.

 
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Posted by on May 31, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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If I had…

29 May
Daily writing prompt
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
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If I had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, I’d do much the same. I’d make sure friends and family never had to worry about a roof over their heads, fund hospitals, schools, animal rescues, and food banks, clear medical debts, and invest in projects that provide clean water and food security. There is only so much luxury one person can enjoy, but helping thousands, or even millions, of people creates a ripple effect that lasts far beyond those 24 hours.

The real dream isn’t having unlimited money. It’s having the power to remove suffering from as many lives as possible. ❤️

 
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Posted by on May 29, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Threads of Her Name

28 May

They told us
history was stone.

Cold.
Fixed.
Carved by careful hands.

But history was never stone.

It was breath held behind closed teeth.
Ink smudged by tired fingers.
A name hidden in the margin
because the page belonged to someone else.

It was women
writing themselves sideways into the record.

A spiral in the corner of a notebook.
A recipe that was really a warning.
A hymn carrying directions to safety.
A thread stitched red through grey cloth.
A footnote refusing to disappear.

They called us emotional
when we remembered too much.

Hysterical
when we noticed the pattern.

Difficult
when we refused to forget ourselves.

Still, we kept recording.

On scraps of paper.
On skin.
On kitchen walls.
In archives that smelled of dust and rain.
In the trembling space between speaking
and being silenced.

Because memory is not passive.

It is resistance.

And every woman who said
No, that is not what happened,
left a door cracked open for the next one.

The next reader.
The next witness.
The next voice brave enough to write her own name
before someone else erased it.

Listen carefully.

You can still hear them.

In libraries.
In classrooms.
In code.
In songs.
In the hush before a woman finally decides
she will not make herself smaller anymore.

The archive does not sleep.

It waits.

And somewhere, even now,
another hand is drawing the spiral
in the margin.

Jh

From a book I’m writing and will be out in the Autumn.

 
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Posted by on May 28, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Taking it back….

18 May

The archives remember kings
because kings built the archives

our names survived in fragments
stitched into the hems of uniforms
pressed into recipe books
buried inside letters no historian thought to unfold carefully

they called us muses
wives
witches
madwomen
assistants

anything but architects

for centuries they edited us down
cut us from photographs
quoted our work without saying our names
turned our bodies into evidence
our anger into diagnosis
our exhaustion into character flaws

they built entire institutions
out of the belief
that we would stay grateful for the corners

but something is changing now

you can feel it in the classrooms
in the courtrooms
in group chats that turn into movements before dawn
in daughters who no longer apologise before speaking
in women comparing notes
and suddenly realising the pain was never personal

we are recovering each other
like lost cities beneath water

there is fury in it
but also tenderness

the kind born when someone says
I thought I was alone in this

and another voice answers
you were never alone
they just worked very hard to keep us separate

now the old language is cracking

the words that kept us small
hysterical
difficult
too emotional
too ambitious
too loud

they no longer fit properly

we are outgrowing them

there are women alive right now
learning to take up space without apology
without shrinking their brilliance
without softening their edges into something more acceptable

women rebuilding themselves from the historical record outward

women who understand that survival was never the final goal

we did not endure centuries merely to remain decorative

we are returning to ourselves

not quietly
not perfectly
not all at once

but together

and that changes everything

JH

 
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Posted by on May 18, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Not right or left

11 May

They do not arrive with books open,
or sleeves rolled for the hard mathematics of truth.
They arrive with one word,
thin as a matchstick,
sharp as something thrown from the back of a classroom.

“Lefty.”

And suddenly the debate is over.

No need to answer the question about hunger,
or why the rich man’s dog eats cleaner meat
than the child beside the station.
No need to explain the smoke climbing from wars
signed by smiling hands in tailored suits.
No need to untangle history,
that long electrical wire
still sparking under our feet.

Just say “lefty”
and the room exhales with relief.

Because names are easier than thought.
Labels fit neatly into pockets.
Arguments do not.

The hater loves shortcuts.
Loves exits marked with insults.
Loves the trapdoor beneath complexity.

Call someone “lefty,”
“dreamer,”
“woke,”
anything that folds a human being
into a cartoon shape.

Then you never have to meet their eyes.

You never have to admit
that compassion is inconvenient,
that empathy rearranges furniture in the mind,
that fairness asks difficult questions
and waits for difficult answers.

Hatred fears debate
the way moths fear daylight.

It survives in slogans,
in chants shouted over microphones,
in comment sections foaming like poisoned rivers.
It survives where nobody listens.

Because real debate
requires a dangerous thing,
the possibility of being changed.

And those who worship certainty
would rather burn libraries
than move one inch from themselves.

So they throw words like stones.

“Lefty.”

A tiny word attempting to bury
entire landscapes of thought.

But language remembers.

The teachers remember.
The workers remember.
The poets remember.
Every quiet soul who ever asked,
“Could this world be kinder than this?”

They remember.

And somewhere tonight,
beneath fluorescent lights humming like tired bees,
a student raises a trembling hand
to ask a forbidden question.

Not left.
Not right.
Just human.

And that question
is heavier than every insult
thrown to silence it.

JH

 
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Posted by on May 11, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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Laughing has no passport,

13 Apr

Laughing has no passport,
no border guard,
no grammar test at the gate.
It spills out
untranslated,
unbothered by syllables
or the weight of where you’re from.
A burst,
a crack in the serious surface of things,
like light sneaking through shutters
in a room that forgot morning.
Your laugh doesn’t carry your history
the way your words do.
It doesn’t stumble on r’s
or soften its t’s
to make itself understood.
It just arrives
bright, sudden,
a shared language with no alphabet.
In a crowded train,
in a quiet kitchen,
in the space between strangers
who will never learn each other’s names
laughter recognises itself.
It says:
I know you.
Not where you’re from,
not what you’ve survived,
but this….
this moment of being undone
by something small and human.
And for a second,
the world forgets its divisions,
because joy doesn’t need translation,
and laughter
has never had an accent.
JH

 
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Posted by on April 13, 2026 in poetry

 
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