To think Cathy glass has jumped the shark?

[Droveouttotheocean]

Anyone else a fan?

I used to love her books but the last few have been pretty bad. The latest - claiming that a teenage mum and baby were both fostered by Cathy (not a mum and baby placement - two separate fostering) seemed crazy to me.

There is one out tomorrow set during the pandemic. I’ll be interested to read it despite the fact I think they’ve gone really downhill.

Agreed. I found that book so bizarre!

The book about the baby has made me read CG with a more jaded eye. I just don’t believe her now. What’s really irritating is that she presents the families she deals with as mostly being nice middle class families who have fallen on hard times which really isn’t representative of fostering

Her earlier books tended more towards writing about families that were dysfunctional and chaotic, so I wonder if she feels she has exhausted that perspective - or perhaps that now there are so many personal memoirs describing that kind of childhood, there is nothing she can add, so she is focusing more on unusual circumstances that give rise to foster care being needed?

I was really hoping someone said easy chair it's my favourite.
Has anyone read her latest book about a mother and baby placement?
Set in pandemic so lots of discussion about how good she is at wearing masks, hand sanitising and a really long speech about how even though they are allowed to meet on Christmas day they decided against it. I also reck she loves boris.
I listen to them as audiobooks just for extra rubbing in of how much better a person she is than all of us.
Daily showers or baths, homeless people spend all their money on drink and drugs, nearly falling off her chair over a 2k debt. She's brilliant.

🤣 love this

"I want to start with the good news," said our Prime Minister, in his jovial and avuncular way.

Does anyone else think her latest one either might be her last or she won’t have many more? She’s about up to date now unless you conveniently only takes very short placements, and the stories are getting a bit nonsense now.

Another thing I’ve noticed, in her books she is constantly busy with sometimes only a week or two between the supposed placements. When is she meant to be writing all these books she’s been churning out for years?

She did an interview a while ago where she says she gets up really early and writes her books before the children get up. The thing that always confuses me is that in her first book she says that her house is 3 bedrooms, one for her and John, one for Adrian and one for the foster child. Then by the 2nd book there are 4 bedrooms and when Lucy arrives there are 5 bedrooms. Her house seems to magically expand. I realise I am way too invested in this!

At one point, she has an extension built which I think enlarges the kitchen and adds an extra bedroom upstairs.

I read a couple of her books but she pissed me off with her judgemental rants. Way too self righteous for my liking!

Not sure when she sleeps then either as she seems to be up late writing the case notes for FC, up multiple times during the night with FC/any small sound, up early with FC and apparently now up even earlier to write her books

Oh I like her, her books are my comfort reads. When I'm feeling utterly useless as a person I want her to adopt me and tell me to choose whether I have a bath or shower and make me a "sandwich lunch" (as she is constantly eating) and tuck me up in bed.

That said, I agree with everything said here! I think some of the earlier books were real stories/amaglamations but some of the endings are absolutely "tidied up" in an unbelievable way or - I think to be kind, she's probably just done a bit of wishful thinking and dreamt up the perfect ending for a lot of the children.

The one with the international adoption was really eye opening. And the boy with the failed adoption absolutely broke my heart.

But some of them are clearly done just to be trendy or topical. Agree that the teen mum + baby would never have happened. And there's one with an autistic child with very posh parents and the dad is particularly angry and grim, but towards the end, he suddenly breaks down to Cathy and opens up about his own childhood abuse and then is magically healed of his demons and forevermore becomes a loving accepting father

Omg yes I have, also by audiobook. The narrator always has a fake joviality that seems really patronising while telling us exactly what a baby swing is incase we’ve never been to a playground and can’t continue a second longer without this knowledge.
She always explains things like ‘The next day, Boxing Day, the 26th of December’ incase the book was so complex you forgot she spent the previous 2 pages talking about Christmas Day and can’t work out the date should she dare not mention the date of Boxing Day for non UK audiences.

I’m waiting for ‘and she breathed in oxygen, the gas that forms a large part of the air that we breathe in, usually through our nose or mouth’. That should up the word count.

I read this book last night! I was pissing myself most of the way through it. Also lol’d at the sum of the MASSIVE debt being revealed (I was trying to guess the amount and came up with approx 40k). Also how all she does it bang on about how much money she spends on the kids, ‘I bought them new clothes, a pram, Xmas presents, of course all FAR more than my allowance.’ Also completely paid off the aforementioned debt as a surprise. She can’t have made a single penny from fostering, ever. Also found it funny the way she described the mum she was ‘fostering’ on Xmas day. In her 20’s but ran down the stairs screaming ‘Santas been!!!!’, at 6am, waking up the whole house and ripping off all the wrapping paper to her presents before even getting her actual baby out of bed 😂 of course Cathy had to smugly point out ‘of course we both knew it was me, not Santa’. You don’t fucking say 🤦🏼‍♀️

I think she has changed some of the language for an international audience in the later books - whether her choice or an editor's - I noticed things like in the earlier books Adrian had "a nintendo" and in later ones it's "a gaming console" - sometimes it's because she's trying to be vague about the timeline, but sometimes it's more of a generic term rather than what a British person would call something. Lots of stroller instead of pram etc.

WRT timelines as well - Lucy's story Will You Love Me definitely has some embellishment as it's meant to have happened in the early 90s, but the mum was getting text messages at one point! She was skint and couldn't afford nappies or formula, how on earth would she have a mobile phone??

I like Casey Watson but do feel a bit like these are the exact same books dressed up for a middle class/lefty audience (Cathy) and working class/slightly more conservative (Casey) audience. The foster children are the same but the carer's own children have MC / WC names, even the adopted one (Adrian, Paula, Lucy vs Keiron, Riley and Tyler). Cathy being divorced from her wet ex-husband who works in an office, and Casey having a strong male role model husband working in a factory who plays football. Casey is set in the North as well whereas Cathy is somewhere Midlands or South as far as I can tell. Not London or rural. I bought a couple of the Rosie Lewis ones and they aren't the same - they are more like proper novels, I couldn't get on with the daft romance with the social worker, and the characters are more nuanced. However she references a lot of real world things which send me on an interesting google rabbithole.

Cathy and Casey are extremely easy to read and don't require any concentration, they read like Take A Break articles. I went and bought all the new ones in preparation for night weaning and I can't focus on the Rosie Lewis one when I'm half asleep so it's no use. But Cathy/Casey are perfect. I just re-read all the old ones when I run out because you can never remember the storylines anyway.

It's basically Jacqueline Wilson for grown ups. I used to love her books!

I love listening to the audiobook versions. Mainly because they are comforting but it also feels like an inside joke to myself. I love how she has four accents -

1. Posh cathy
2. Anyone a bit rough
3. Anyone a bit foreign
4. Male

All exactly the same for every character in that category. I love her rants about her ex husband, the humble bragging about how big her house is, how great her children are, what a jolly good person she is. Wouldn't change it haha.

I was expecting it to be 10k MINIMUM. Though I do understand for a non working single mum thats a large amount surely its pocket change to cath.
She whinges about staying up for Christmas every year. I particularly love this time she mentions how they were all wrapping presents using the paper she had bought - so petty I love it.

@bertiebotts Jacqueline Wilson for grownups is an excellent way of putting it. I have kindle unlimited so I've added some of caseys to my library. I'll report back!

or shower and make me a "sandwich lunch" (as she is constantly eating)

Or a pasta bake (see Cathy's book 'Happy Mealtimes')

I bought her parenting book and immediately returned it, it was so patronising and basic! I thought it might have useful info about how to deal with challenging behaviour, but (I suppose in hindsight, obviously) it seems to assume that the background is total chaos and explains how to impart some very basic stability, rules etc with the implication that this is a novel idea and will solve everything.

I love reading this thread. These posts are so true, really make me laugh

@BertieBotts You made me laugh but I agree. I want Cathy to look after me too and make me a sandwich lunch!

Be so intriguing to know what she's like in real life

I am a foster carer and adoptor and have read a few of her early books ( though a good while ago now ). I always think the is too perfect to be real ( though I have no doubts she is a foster carer in reality) and she relates long conversations all the time that she couldnt possibly remember so yes I think there us a lot of artistic licence . As a fellow fc she makes me feel.inadequate tbh .

On the subject of “anyone foreign” once you’ve noticed it you can’t unnotice it, she always says when someone isn’t white even when it has no relevance. The first time I noticed it was when a black FC said something on a training course.