Rachel (Rocky) is seemingly living her best life as the irreverent, funny beating heart of her family. Her ageing father is his unique, adorable self; daughter Willa is prone to bouts of existential angst whilst berating the fact that her mother has zero filter; husband Nick is steady, logical, sometimes infuriating.
They are messy, they are flawed, they are completely, ridiculously normal.
And like most normal people, Rocky worries about what might happen next. So when a former classmate of her son Jamie dies in a seemingly random accident, Rocky becomes obsessed.
For if accidents can happen – and they do – is it truly safe to love anyone?
Fresh, honest, laugh out loud funny and genuinely relatable, WRECK follows Rocky and her family through one rollercoaster year as they negotiate the unpredictable and beautiful messiness of life.
I don’t know how Catherine Newman does it, but I feel so at home with Rocky as if she’s a really close friend who you can tell anything to. After Sandwich, we meet the family at home, getting over Grandma’s death and getting back into the swing of life. Rocky’s dad has been living in their outside shed since his wife died and daughter Willa is also at home. Newman lets us live alongside these characters as part of the family and I adore their humour and their warm, chaotic household – not to mention their food always sounds incredible. Rocky is a freelance writer and doesn’t have regular work coming in, so when a young man is killed in his car on the nearby railway crossing she becomes fixated on what happened. If anything Rocky is over empathetic, she can’t stop thinking about how devastated his family must be and trying to work out how it happened. Meanwhile, a strange rash appears on her shoulder and while she’s having a check on sun damage her dermatologist suggests they look into it. This turns out to be a good call as it begins to appear elsewhere on her body. A biopsy of the skin and some bloods should solve the mystery but it becomes a deep rabbit hole with many frightening possibilities.
I am not overstating when I say this book could save my life! As Rocky’s symptoms started to mount I kept reading bits out to my husband and looking up the terms, wondering if somehow the author had magical access to my medical records. I identified so strongly with this story of living while unwell because this has been the last eighteen months of my life. I had two breaks in my spine as a child causing issues with pain and the use of my right arm and shoulder. I was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 21. However I have always had a collection of symptoms that didn’t fit with that diagnosis. With increasing arthritis in my lumbar and sacral spine my pain management consultant asked for a full body MRI. I couldn’t have prepared myself for the list of problems that unfolded. Not only did I have arthritis and impingement of peripheral nerves, I also had a narrowed spinal canal in places, potentially causing issues with my spinal cord. However, I also had a lesion in my spine, one in my spleen and several growths on my thyroid. All of these things are being dealt with by separate specialists, but Rocky’s story popped a little light bulb over my head. Surely I had to ask the question – what if all these issues are connected? I’ve already been told it’s likely I have Hashimoto’s disease and it’s being treated, but I’m having biopsies and I’ve asked to see an endocrinologist to flush out whether it’s one of diagnoses that Rocky is facing. I recognised the sudden feeling that your body is falling apart and is even working against you. I’ve felt that terrible fear that there’s a ticking time bomb somewhere in your body and almost becoming divorced from it. I could see that Rocky felt better when she did something physical such as going to a dance group or plunging into an icy lake, because her body works for her and becomes part of her again.
This author knows how it feels to be going through all the volatile changes of menopause, while simultaneously supporting young adult or teenage children and elderly parents. It’s a hell of a balancing act while getting used to a body that puts on weight where it never has before, thins all the things you want to be lustrous and thick and thickens all the bits that used to be slender. She captures what it’s like to feel invisible to most of the world, but the absolute beating heart of the home. The generation gap is also brilliantly portrayed when Rocky and Willa try to take grandad to a juice bar, his grumpiness giving the perfect edge this warm and nurturing family. While Rocky’s husband is like a little moon, constantly orbiting his wife and tending to those little things like cheesy nachos in bed. It’s interesting when this very liberal family have to cope with family members whose views are not like their own. Jamie and his wife Maya visit from New York for Thanksgiving and it’s clear their values are different, especially when Rocky makes a discovery about her son. He works for a company that consults for businesses, finding ways to make them more profitable and openly says to his mum that he just loves money. Even though she doesn’t agree, Rocky is never happier than when all her children are under her roof.
‘“Yayy, I say. All the kids back under my roof! When I send out my ESP stealth probe in the night to check on everybody, they’ll be in their proper beds”.
Mostly I love the emotion and atmosphere of this author’s novels. I live for a messy pile of books by the couch, usually with a pint mug of tea within reach and the dog and cats all quietly snoozing in their own places. That’s exactly what this family has, an untidy but welcoming house with cats everywhere and always gorgeous food on the go. It feels very conscious of the seasons too as summer turns to autumn and winter, with festivals like Halloween playing their part – I loved the moment when Rocky tries to do the trick or treat routine on the porch not realising the young woman is Willa’s date. Every festival is marked with excellent food, followed by a long tramp through the nearby woods and foraging for things. I always want to be part of their world and feel like I’ve lived with them for a while once the story ends. As my story continues I’m going to take a bit of Rocky’s dermatologist’s wisdom with me. When he gives his diagnosis Rocky is taken aback and he acknowledges her feelings but tempers it with some advice:
“Yikes, I said, and he said, ‘a little bit of yikes. You can visit with the fear but don’t hire a van and move there.”
Out Now from Doubleday
Meet the Author
Catherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things, which was also chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club. She is also the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, and the bestselling children’s book How to be a Person. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She writes the Substack newsletter Crone Sandwich and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.
To qualify that title I’d like to admit that I have far more must buy authors than ten, so this will come in two parts. I thought I’d share with you those authors I’ve been buying without even reading the blurb for years and how my interest started. These are authors I give shelf space to because only a real, solid book will do.
Unlike most people my first Alice Hoffman novel wasn’t Practical Magic and I’d never seen the film either. I was at university in the early 2000s as a mature student and I was reading a literary supplement one Sunday when I saw a review for her book Blackbird House, a collection of stories based around a farmhouse in Cape Cod. Each story builds a continuous narrative through the sense of this place and it’s residents from a lonely fisherman, to an orphan living with a disabled blacksmith and Violet who is a bookish farm girl raising a family through to the 1950s when her grandson brings his Jewish wife to the farm, having survived the Holocaust. From these stories we can see many of the themes that run through Hoffman’s work: magic realism, small towns, the Holocaust and women’s power. I followed this with Blue Diary, a very different tale of love and what we know about those closest to us. Now I pre-order as soon as I see a new book because I’ve never been completely disappointed by any of her work. I love her ability to weave magic into her tales, the lyrical and atmospheric way she creates a sense of place and the way she uses historical events. Here are my three favourites:
Blue Diary – a wife is stunned as her picture perfect life falls apart, when her husband is arrested for the murder of a young girl.
The Museum of Extraordinary Things – CoralieSardie wants to escape the Coney Island freak show where she grew up and performed as a mermaid for her tyrannical father.
The Marriage of Opposites – We’re whisked off to St. Thomas where a young woman embarks on a forbidden relationship and becomes mother to the impressionist painter Camille Pissaro.
My first Jodi Picoult was My Sister’s Keeper like a lot of other people. I read the book way before seeing the film and I was bowled over by how emotional I was about this little girl who didn’t want to be used as a donor for her elder sister anymore. Anna applies to the court for medical emancipation when she is told by her mother she will be donating a kidney to her sister Kate who has a form of leukaemia. I hated this mother who essentially neglects the emotional needs of her eldest and youngest children, because all of her attention is on keeping Kate alive. Anna was deliberately conceived as a donor, with her umbilical cord being used to harvest stem cells and for a while this works. Sadly Kate has relapses and while I was sad for her parents, I couldn’t believe the pressure being placed on this little girl as if her only use is as spare parts. The ending absolutely devastated me and I was so angry. While the novel has its faults I found myself unable to put it down and slowly I worked my way through everything else Jodi had written. Since her novel Nineteen Minutes I’ve been buying them as soon as they’re released. I’ve met Jodi on a couple of occasions and found her so friendly and willing to share her process and talk through the issues raised by her books, she now has the most banned novels in US school libraries because of those subjects. My favourites are:
Plain Truth – an Amish community is shocked when a baby is found dead in one of their barns bringing the outside into their closed community and accusations to one of their young women.
Small Great Things – what happens when a couple who are white supremacists come into a maternity ward but refuse to have black nurse Ruth deliver their baby?
By Any Other Name – an incredible book that poses the question of whether Shakespeare’s plays could have been written by a woman, but submitted by a man. In the present day a female playwright enters a competition with an ambiguous name that disguises her gender.
I borrowed Patrick Gale’s book Notes on an Exhibition from the library and became engrossed in this story about a Newlyn artist and her family, not to mention a secret they’ve been carrying for many years. I love reading about artists, which was why I picked the book up but I also loved the dynamic in the family and how their mother’s mental health affected the everyone. I then looked out for his novels when browsing bookshops and read The Cat Sanctuary, a novel about an a photographer and her novelist lover Judith who live on a remote part of Bodmin Moor. When carrying out an assignment in Africa, Joanna meets Judith’s sister Deborah who is newly bereaved. She brings Deborah back to Bodmin and unleashes an emotional nightmare. I love how he constructs these deeply unhappy or flawed characters, showing us their layers and the reasons why they act as they do. I also enjoy the tension between his characters who live an alternative lifestyle and a society that isn’t very accepting. Having met criticism about his writing of women early in his career, I believe he has deliberately written from a female perspective and I enjoy the way he writes women. My favourites are:
Notes on an Exhibition – Artist Rachel Kelly struggles with bi-polar disorder, having deeply creative manic episodes followed by deep lows. It’s a pattern that affects the whole family and when she dies she leaves a legacy of art and family secrets.
A Perfectly Good Man – 20 year old Lenny Barnes is paralysed in a rugby accident and makes the decision to end his life, in the presence of priest Barnaby Johnson. His death sets in motion a chain of events that lead us to explore what makes a ‘good’ man.
A Place Called Winter – Harry Cane is a husband, father and pillar of the community so when a love affair threatens that existence and potentially brings the police to his door he makes a decision. Abandoning his wife and child he signs up for the pioneer life in Canada.
My mum leant me Charity Norman’s 2012 novel After the Fall which I think might have been an Oprah book club pick that follows the aftermath of an accident in a family home. The Macnamara family live in a remote area of New Zealand on a farm and disaster unfolds one night when the five year old son Finn has a fall. He has fallen from the first floor verandah and has life threatening injuries, having to be airlifted to hospital. His mother Martha, explains to paramedics that he had a fall while sleepwalking, but when she arrives at the hospital she’s hit with a lot of questions she wasn’t expecting. Questions she isn’t prepared to answer. As the novel takes us back in time, we see that when they moved to this remote east coast of the North Island, it came to mean different things for each family member. For 16 year old Sacha it was the beginning of a nightmare that would drag in her whole family. I loved the psychology of the family members, their dynamics and how by trying to keep everyone safe and together, terrible things can happen. I talked about it with my sister-in-law who lives in that part of New Zealand and I’ve read every one of her novels since. A little like Jodi Picoult, Charity Norman writes about families and a societal issue they’re facing. Over the years she’s explored grandparents having to deal with the man who killed their daughter wanting to see his children, a family man who believes he’s transgender and how family members can be radicalise by a cult or the internet. She likes to mix people from very different backgrounds and put them in tough situations or show how a family deal with long held secrets. Her writing evokes so many emotions and my favourites are:
The Son-in-Law – Hannah and Frederick are grandparents bringing up their three grandchildren. They witnessed their father Joseph kill their mother and he is about to be released from prison. Joseph lost everything that day, all he has left are his children who he’s not allowed to see. How will the family cope when their ordered lives are disturbed by the legal implications of their father’s release?
Remember Me – Emily returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has been diagnosed with dementia. As she tries to support him, so many memories of this place come back to her, including the disappearance of neighbour Leah Patrick who never came home from a hike.
Home Truths – Livia and Scott have a great life, good jobs and a nice home in Yorkshire with their two children. When Scott’s brother dies he desperately looks for someone to blame, falling down a rabbit hole of internet chat rooms, alternative medicine and conspiracy theories.
As regular readers will know I love a spooky gothic novel and Laura Purcell is an absolute master of the genre. I picked up her book The Silent Companions when it first came out, simply from reading the blurb in a bookshop. I love historical fiction and I also have a love of ghost stories. I do love horror, as you will see below I became a teenage fan of Stephen King, but I prefer it to be psychological and a slow creeping sensation rather than jump scares and blood. For example I love the short ghost stories of Susan Hill because they are atmospheric, ambiguous and unsettling. I fell in love as soon as I read this first Purcell novel which opens with Elsie Bainbridge in custody and awaiting her execution after burning down her house and being the only survivor. She is now mute, but a doctor at the prison suggests she write her story and we follow that narrative. We realise she was widowed and pregnant when she inherited the estate from her husband and was then in charge of the remaining servants and a diary from the 1600s written by an ancestor called Anne. Each narrative is fascinating and incredibly creepy. I had never come across the concept of silent companions before, but since I’m scared of masks, waxworks and ventriloquists dummies they were definitely perfect nightmare fodder. I have pre-ordered every book since and she doesn’t disappoint.
The Silent Companions
Bone China – Louisa Pinecroft’s family has been wiped out by TB, but her father believes he can benefit the symptoms with sea air and conducts an experiment. At his Cornish home Morvoren, he houses prisoners with the conditions on the cliffs believing it will cure them. Years later, nurse Hester Why is engaged to work at Morvoren House to look after the now mute and paralysed Miss Pinecroft but she struggles to settle in this strange house with it’s strange servants and odd rituals.
The Shape of Darkness – Agnes is a silhouette artist struggling to make ends meet in Victorian Bath. When one of her clients is killed after leaving her house, then another, she engages a child who is a medium to root out their killers.
I LOVE this incredible author and she is quite a recent addition to my must buy list, but her books are just so strong. She writes stories about women, often facing huge changes in life who are touched by something supernatural. My first encounter was her second novel, The Lighthouse Witches, and I chose it after the reading the blurb on NetGalley. I was absolutely hooked. In a remote coastal area of Scotland stands a lighthouse where Liv moves with her two daughters. They’re warned by locals that this place was used for burning accused witches and might be cursed. However, Liv doesn’t believe in curses or witches for that matter. There is a strange, neglected child who turns up from time to time at the cottage and the lighthouse does have a strange energy, but Liv throws herself into her painting and pays it no mind. Yet only months later, her daughter Luna is the only one left. Twenty years later, Luna sister turns up out of the blue like nothing happened all those years ago. In fact she hasn’t aged or changed in any way. This is an extraordinary story, full of atmosphere and touching on the history of witches as well as other, strange and far-fetched tales. I went back and read her debut The Nesting and knew this author was for me. Each book is its own story and my favourite three are:
The Haunting in the Arctic – In 1901 a woman wakes aboard ship, stolen away by crew looking for entertainment on their journey. Decades later the Ormen is a wreck and the only body aboard is mutilated and his cabin locked from the inside. In the present, urban explorer Dominique is travelling to the tip of Iceland to the resting place of the Ormen. However she won’t be exploring alone. Something is with her and it wants revenge.
The Lighthouse Witches
The Last Witch – Innsbruck in 1485 and wealthy wife Helena is keeping house and looking after the children, but when the family’s footman dies she finds herself accused of murder and being a witch. Imprisoned with six women, they use a witch’s totem to ask for help and unleash a spirit that may be more dangerous than their original fate.
I was loaned two historical fiction books by a friend back in the late 1990s, one being Katherine by Anya Seton which is a well known novel about a woman who lived in our area of Lincolnshire and became Queen, the second was a Phillipa Gregory book called The Wise Woman. There were some similarities in that our main character Alys was in love with a feudal Lord, far above her in status very like Katherine and John of Gaunt. Alys is left with nothing but her cunning and magical abilities when the nunnery she’s been sheltering in is destroyed by Thomas Cromwell’s soldiers and its funds diverted to Henry VIII’s treasury. When she falls in love she has to tread a very fine line, her powers will always be in demand but if her magic doesn’t bring the answers those in power want, she’s immediately in danger. Then her only choice will be between the fire and the rope. I found this gripping and being fascinated by the Tudors all my life I soon became drawn in to her Tudor series. Then her ‘cousins war’ series began and I started to learn even more about incredible women who have ended up in our Royal ancestry. Weirdly, after years of reading so much on these two adjoining periods, my mother started to research our ancestry and found we were related to Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Jacquetta is known as matriarch of the Woodville family and was the mother of Elizabeth Woodville who married Edward IV and grandmother to Elizabeth of York who was the mother of Henry VIII. it made me wonder if we’re drawn to certain things for a reason or whether, like Jacquetta, there is a little touch of witchery in us. It’s so hard to pick only three books but here are my favourites.
The Virgin’s Lover focuses on the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, often misrepresented in films about Elizabeth. They were friends when she was a princess in exile, but now she is on the throne of England. Her advisors say she must marry. Robert Dudley is a powerful man and has quickly become the Queen’s favourite, but he isn’t welcomed by everyone and her closest advisor Robert Cecil views him as a problem. No courtier wants to be usurped by another, so maybe a foreign prince would be better? Elizabeth must put her kingdom first.
The White Queen is the story of Elizabeth Woodville who catches the eye of the future Edward IVwhile welcoming his army back from battle. They marry in secret, as Elizabeth’s lowly status and widowhood mean she wouldn’t be his advisor’s choice. Her beauty is captivating and we follow her rollercoaster of a life after Edward’s death as different factions war over the throne and her two sons are imprisoned and disappear from the Tower of London – a mystery unsolved to this day.
The White Princess follows Edward IV’s eldest daughter Elizabeth who has a difficult childhood often spent in sanctuary under Westminster. She is invited to court by her uncle Richard III and goes on to marry his conqueror Henry Tudor as a way of bringing the houses of Lancaster and York together. It’s an uneasy reign, but her second son is crowned Henry VIII.
I’ve been reading Stephen King ever since I was a teenager. For a few summers my friend Cindy and me would spend some of our summer holiday in the Yorkshire Dales having time with her dad, his wife and her five year old half brother. I remember being so excited when I was 18 and drove us there in my own car for the first time. We’re both from the country so would spend our time wandering around the countryside with her dad’s dogs, visiting the pig farms where he worked and watching films or reading in the garden. It’s the only house where I ever had a genuine supernatural experience and it scared us out of our wits! I swear Cindy levitated off the floor onto the couch. Her step mum loved horror and while I don’t like gore, I do love a good ghost story. She would lend me Dean Koontz and James Herbert, but I fell in love with Stephen King. His writing was mesmerising and when I returned home I visited a second hand bookshop at our local antique centre to build my collection. I couldn’t believe how prolific he was and years later he’s still writing at an incredible rate. My first of his novels was Salem’s Lot and I thought it was a great modern vampire story – it made sense that a vampire would work with antiques. What’s so exciting about King is that he’s so prolific I haven’t yet read everything he’s written, so I have a few sitting on the bookshelves I can delve into when I have the time. My favourites are:
The Shining – Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic struggling to write and takes a job as the winter caretaker of The Overlook Hotel. Once Mr Halloran has shown them the ropes it will be Jack, his wife and son Danny who has ‘the shine’ a psychic ability that’s very powerful. They’re alone in this isolated place so who are the twin girls standing in the corridor, or the people in masks going up and down in the lift and the woman in 217 – utterly terrifying. As Jack is drawn further in by the hotel and drink, can Danny use his shine to save them all?
Misery – one of the oddest things about this book is the accident King had not long after it was published, a car wreck in the snow that left him in the same position as Paul Sheldon. Paul had killed off his long term character Misery Chastain and he’s ecstatic, but Annie Wilkes isn’t. When Paul wakes up unable to move in Annie’s home, she’s very angry with him. She suggests that Paul write another Misery book and if he’s good, she’ll nurse him and keep him alive.
ITis a problematic novel but I have to admit I found it utterly terrifying when I first read it. Pennywise the clown has stayed with me forever and I don’t like circuses, clown masks or dummies. In Derry, Maine a group of children will have to battle a terrible evil. Bill’s brother is dragged into the sewer by a clown who has a red balloon as a calling card. Years later the whole gang must return and battle IT one last time.
Like most people I came to Joanne’s work when Chocolat came out and I borrowed it from the library after reading the blurb. I love the mix of food, magic and Vianne who is one of my favourite characters in fiction. That first book felt like a beautiful gift and I didn’t want to leave her world. Vianne is a strong and determined woman who uses her skills to add a little bit of spice to life and of course that magic is sprinkled into her confections. Her shop is like a warm hug, where there is always someone to talk to and a sweet treat to have alongside your coffee or hot chocolate. Vianne’s gift means she knows everyone’s favourites and she becomes the village’s therapist soon knowing all their secrets and troubles. The only person she can’t draw in with her beautiful window displays is the village priest, a born ascetic who hates watching Vianne bewitch his congregation by giving them what they crave. With Easter not far away, the battle lines are drawn. It’s no surprise that my favourites are all from this series, although I do have all her other titles too. I reread these books regularly and I think that’s the sort of book that should have shelf space.
Chocolat
Vianne – Sylvianne Rochas has just lost her mum and the wind blows her to the seaside town of Marseille where she finds a job in a local bistrot, with a room above. She convinces the owner to let her cook, using his late wife’s recipe book. When a new friend teaches her to make chocolates, she adds a whisper of chocolate spices to the recipes. However, she knows this isn’t forever, she has a few months till her child is born then she’ll be on her way again…
The Strawberry Thief- Vianne has settled in her chocolate shop but the winds of change blow frequently here. When the owner of the florist shop across from Vianne’s dies suddenly, he leaves a parcel of land to her youngest daughter Rosette and a confession to Reynaud, the priest. A new shop will open up in place of the florist, a mirror to Vianne’s and perhaps a challenge of sorts?
I had to mention a crime series here because they’re often the series we end up collecting and I promise you I do have many other crime authors I follow avidly. Back in 2012 I bought my first house and lived alone for the first time in my life. It was following a bad break up and I was looking forward to having my own peaceful little haven. I bought a little barn conversion in a village that was a dead end, cut off by the river. I soon realised this was a fascinating village of friendly and eccentric people who really made me feel welcome. Not long after I arrived, an elderly lady and her daughter moved in across the road and because both me and the mum had health problems we were at home a lot. Jane called me over not long after they moved in to go through their books. They’d had shelves built in the new conservatory and both of them had a huge collection, so they were letting go of any extra copies. She guided me towards Elly Griffiths and I became a huge fan almost instantly. I fell utterly in love with archaeologist Ruth Galloway – who I imagine as a red haired Ruth Jones – because she’s most definitely the sort of woman I’d love to be friends with. She’s intelligent and well read and has that slightly dishevelled feel of a woman who knows her brain and her soul are the most important parts of her. She’s a little overweight and her hair never does what she wants it to. I can definitely relate. Her work and all of the history behind it is fascinating and has lead her to friends like Cathbad, the local druid and medicine man. Each case has its own twists and tension, often taking in local Norfolk history. Then there’s Ruth’s personal life running alongside and her incredible chemistry with DI Nelson who I imagine as Phillip Glenister. I love Ruth’s isolated home on the salt flats, always looking out to sea and giving her the peace and quiet she craves. The series has now ended and I will miss Ruth because she has slowly become part of my life for the past 14 years.
The Crossing Places – the first in the series has Ruth called in when a child’s bones are found on the Norfolk coast. Could they be the bones of a child who went missing ten years ago or are they much older. DCI Nelson has received cryptic anonymous letters ever since that ten year old case, could this find bring closure? When another child goes missing Ruth may have to face the fact she’s in danger.
The Night Hawks – Night Hawks are a group of detectorists who comb Norfolk beaches for treasure, but this time they’ve found a body. Ruth is interested in the treasure – a hoard of Bronze Age weapons – but Nelson wants her opinion on the body. It turns out to be a local man just released from prison. He’s also working a double suicide/ murder at Black Dog farm, where according to local legend there’s a spectral hound that appears before you die. As Ruth supervises a dig for bones, she finds the skeleton of a huge dog.
The Last Remains – the final book in the series finds Ruth preoccupied with her personal life and the potential closure of her department at the university. She’s called in when a cafe renovation reveals a walled up skeleton in King’s Lynn. The body is of a young student who went missing in the 1990s from a course run by Ruth’s old tutor and where her friend Cathbad was also a student. Cathbad, weak from his brush with Covid, goes missing and it’s a race against time to find him and the killer.
On a cold night in a remote Irish village, a girl goes missing.
Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.
In a place like this, her death isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.
This was a new series to me, but having read some of Tana French’s earlier novels such as In The Woods I knew it would be something I’d enjoy. I love her writing and here it is such a beautiful balancing act. This is a slow burn novel that’s beautifully atmospheric and manages to convey both moments of high humour and menacing evil. The small village of Ardnakelty is a quagmire. It’s described as gloomy, misty and wet most of the time. There’s something about the weather that’s oppressive and any walk outdoors is liable to leave you muddy and wet. It seems like a harmless place, but it’s full of pitfalls and weeds that can drag you under. The emotional quagmire is impossible to avoid if we look at it through Lena’s eyes. It is so remote, but anyone like Cal thinking they’ve come here for quiet and to avoid other people is in for a shock. He already has Trey, a teenage girl from a difficult family who is like an adopted daughter to him. How much more tied to this place might he become? Villages like this have one shop and one pub and everyone frequents them so eventually there’s a passing acquaintance with everyone. This is a place where neighbours are more like family. They’ve known each other forever, and their mothers knew your mother too. This could be seen as a bonus, but the author depicts it as spider’s web that once you’re stuck it’s impossible to escape. The only question is, who is the spider?
“The cloud is high tonight, letting through a haze of moonlight here and there so that streaks of fields rise ghostly out of the darkness and the air has an icy bite that burrows to the bone.”
The plot reveals itself slowly and once Cal and Trey find the body of local teenager Rachel in the river, the tension starts to build in this small community, until it’s pushed to breaking point. It made me feel angry and utterly powerless in parts. Rachel had been going out with Eugene Moynihan for years and it was apparently Eugene she had been out to meet on that night. Was this a tragic accident or is something more insidious going on? Rachel’s family are devastated and Lena is shocked to find out she was the last person to see her that night. The village gossip is in overdrive with different theories, but the narrative that seems to be emerging is that Rachel might have committed suicide. Cal doesn’t think so, but most people daren’t think anything different. The Moynihans are a big deal in Ardnakelty, living in a huge house with all mod cons and Eugene’s dad Tommy has a finger in every lucrative pie. Cal is told no one is going up against the Moynihans, because Tommy has all the right friends in very high up places. There was part of me that could see this story as an allegory for what’s happening in the world – a money-hungry bully, who is always looking for the next chance and has such a hold over people he could get away with almost anything.
Underneath this main mystery is the narrative of Cal and Lena’s relationship, in fact very early on we get a conversation about their wedding. Despite being engaged, Cal and Lena are still in two separate houses and have made no wedding plans. This suits them, but Lena’s sister Noreen who runs the shop is forever warning them. If they don’t book something round here they’ll lose the only venue. There’s Cal’s worries about Trey who is hoping to gain an apprenticeship as a joiner, has exams to get through and trouble at home where the landlord seems to want them out of their house. All of these things weave in and out of each other, seemingly unconnected but as with everything here patterns and connection exist under the surface. Tommy and Eugene pay Cal a visit, as an outsider maybe he’s the best person to investigate this? Cal refuses but is left with the feeling that will count against him. If he’s to ask any questions he’d rather do it alone, with no one controlling the narrative. What he doesn’t know is that Lena is already asking questions and because she’s from this place she knows who to ask. It’s clear sides are forming, even in the way people arrange themselves at the wake. Cal is with Trey but also his neighbour Mart, the only locals he feels any allegiance to. While Lena is drawn to a women’s table, containing everyone she went to school with and usually avoids. She doesn’t want to join sides, but with Cal increasingly pulled into Mart’s group she knows there’ll be pressure from the Moynihans. Maybe there’s a positive to being part of Ardnakelty, but she can’t see it as yet.
I loved the build up of tension in this small village and the wonderful way the author balances that with humour. There’s a scene with Mart and a squirrel that’s comedy gold and made me laugh out loud then read it to my husband. Mostly it’s the juxtaposition of things; a gang of masked men is menacing, but has a more comical touch when some are Wolverine and other varied superheroes. As the situation escalated I felt angry and powerless to stop what was happening. It wasn’t so much the brawls, it was the quiet threats and controlling nature of what was happening, particularly to the women involved. Tommy Moynihan made my skin crawl but so did Noreen’s mother-in-law Mrs Duggan, the perfect example of someone who appears powerless but actually controls the household and watches the to and fro of the village from her armchair. This fight could knit Cal, Lena and Trey into this place’s history. They could commit to being lifelong Ardnakelty people but if they are, they must find out what’s behind Rachel’s death and end Tommy’s dominance over the place. I became so drawn into this world that I was genuinely upset by the loss and how far apart Lena and Cal become. I loved that he didn’t crowd her and gave her the space to be her own person. I also loved the way he parented Trey and responded to her new relationship. This is an intricate and carefully balanced thriller that’s perfectly grounded in its rural Irish setting. Cal learns that the villager’s allegiance to their land runs deep and they are willing to put absolutely everything on the line for it, even their lives;
“Their tie to their land is different, not in its intensity but in its nature: rooted thousands of years deep, through strata of dispossession, famine, bloody rebellion. This land has been reclaimed and that changes things.”
Out 2nd April from Penguin
Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.
I couldn’t stop talking about Tracy Sierra’s debut novel Night Watching. I inhaled it and I have been lending and buying it for everyone around me since. So I approached her second novel with trepidation, would it be as good as the first? Well I can set your mind at rest. This novel is incredible. The ‘stayed in bed almost all day to keep reading it’ type of incredible. The plot is simple enough. A young boy named Zach is taken by his father on a ‘boy’s trip’ to the wilderness with people he hopes will invest in his business. This is a part of the country he visited often with his mother who taught him everything he knows about skiing these mountains and survival. As they settle into their cabin and make it ready for guests it’s clear that Zach is an innocent boy, easily ordered around by his dad who’s angry that his secretary Ginny hasn’t been up to prepare the cabin as she promised. As they settle in for their first night, Zach is convinced something is lurking around especially when he has the visit the outside toilet alone and in the dark. The noises and shadows are like nothing he’s heard before. Could a monster be up here with them in the mountains? Possibly. But sometimes, monsters aren’t always what we expect.
This author is fast becoming a master of complex and painful family dynamics with an edge of horror. This monster in the snow brought back memories of the first time I read The Shining and there are parallels in the isolated mountain setting, the pressure cooker of people forced together and the young, innocent boy at the centre of the tale. This wilderness is somewhere Zach knows very well, having come up here regularly with his mum and sister and this was one of my first questions. Where are the women in this story? We know Zach came up here with groups of women and their kids, but his mum, sister and even the expected Ginny are nowhere. In a small vignette at the beginning we see a previous trip and Zach’s mum explaining how to check the snow for the likelihood of an avalanche. She impresses upon him the importance of turning back, even if the risk is small it’s not worth taking. It’s clear very early on that Bram, his father, doesn’t have the same attitude to risk. He’s the sort of guy who thinks men take risks and would rather show bravado to his guests than follow the advice of his wife through Zach or the guide that comes with the cabin.
Zach is a beautiful narrator and he’s written with such care, everything he thinks or tells us maintains that innocent, slightly anxious voice. I desperately wanted to protect him and get him out of this situation. As adults we wear masks – the one we wear for our job for example or the ‘telephone voice’ many of us use without really intending to. Children don’t and that creates a tension, especially in an environment where the whole purpose is to impress and sell yourself. Bram makes it clear that these men expect a winner and he has to act like one. Heartbreakingly, Zach has a soft toy he’s smuggled up there but knows it must remain hidden or risk it disappearing. Bram can’t have a weak son. This idea of wearing different masks is beautifully depicted as Zach takes us back to an evening at home where his mother has returned home late and a little drunk. He listens in silence to their argument and curses his mother because she knows the rules. Why does she set out to make him angry? Zach describes his father’s other side as his ‘underself.’
“For Christmas two years ago, someone had given his sister a stuffed octopus that could be flicked inside out. Flip one way, pink, fuzzy and smiling. Flip the other way, green, slick and glowering […] switching outerself to underself.”
He also has this horrible realisation, that we all have at some point in our childhood, that other people might dislike your parent or think they’re an idiot. As they set out and he watches his interactions with the other men he notes that they can see through Bram. The guide sees he knows nothing and Bram’s need to own the best of everything means his mountain gear is flashy, it looks too new. The only other kid on the trip is Russ and he makes it clear that he knows exactly what type of Bram is because his dad is exactly the same:
“My dad, yours? They’re selfish. They nearly got us killed. And for what? Steve said you and me shouldn’t have skied it and they ignored him, because god forbid they don’t get to do exactly what they want.”
How scary must it be as a child to learn that your parent is willing to take huge risks with your life for money? Even worse, Zach finds something that makes him wonder; if his dad has an underself, does everyone else? Coming at this from a psychological viewpoint I loved the way Zach describes his concerns about the men he’s with and his father in particular. The environment brings its own dangers with further snowfall and too many risks taken. Survival becomes a question between which is safest – taking the chance with the environment or staying indoors which is undoubtedly warmer and locks out whatever it is that Zach saw the night he ventured to the outside toilet. There’s always a tipping point and the pressure the author builds is almost unbearable. My heart was in my throat during those final chapters because I felt so protective of this incredible little boy. Tracy Sierra is able to evoke that heart thumping fear we feel as children, sometimes when we’re doing nothing more dangerous than lying in bed in the dark. With Zach she explores the difference between a manageable fear that’s no more than a calculated risk with the right understanding and techniques, the fear that simply comes from encountering something we’ve never seen before and the fear we don’t want to acknowledge because it makes us face a terrible truth.
Out Now From Viking Books
Meet the Author
Tracy Sierra was born and raised in the Colorado mountains. She currently lives in New England in an antique colonial-era home complete with its own secret room. When not writing, she works as an attorney and spends time with her husband, two children, and flock of chickens
Cathy’s Ghost At The Window – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Those Brontë girls did like a haunting. I can’t join the debate on the latest Wuthering Heights adaptation as I’ve not bothered to see the film yet, but I’m not keen on the lurid colours or on Margot Robbie as Catherine. Catherine is a little wild thing, she tramps about on the moors in all weathers and is muddy, dark and moody. Barbie she is not. I don’t know how far this adaptation goes into the supernatural aspects of the novel, but I love it when that plays a part. The 1970’s adaptation with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff shows both of them with wild, knotted hair and covered with dirt. Heathcliff tries to dig Cathy up after her burial and her ghost lures him back to Wuthering Heights where he’s shot by Hindley so they can haunt the moors together. It completely throws away half of the book but the casting and their portrayal of these characters is as close to my impression of them both as I’ve ever seen. The only truly supernatural scene in the novel is thrillingly creepy and occurs as Mr Lockwood, who has come to visit his new neighbours, is stuck at Wuthering Heights overnight due to a storm. He’s placed in a bedroom where Catherine Earnshaw’s name is carved into the bed and the wind is buffeting the trees outside. When he first wakes he thinks a branch is tapping at the window, so he opens the latch:
“ I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch, instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in – let me in!’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself.
‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw. twenty times for Linton), – ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!’
As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel, and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes; still it wailed.
‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.”
Thrillingly creepy!
Lucy Has Tea With Mr Tumnus – The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
Mr Tumnus is a delightful fellow and as a child I desperately wanted to find my way into Narnia so we could be friends. In fact I had an hilarious conversation with a friend where she heartily agreed that she’d like to meet Mr. Tumnus – but the James McAvoy version. She didn’t have tea in mind either! I was horrified. I just wanted to have crumpets in front of the fire with him. I did have a wonderful elderly friend for several years who had a big antique filled Victorian house and a ‘gentleman’s club’ decor. He wore brocade smoking jackets, brooches and had curly blonde hair like a cherub. He would have me round for tea and I loved his comfy wingback armchairs and the various clocks ticking away. I felt so cozy there. I still have his chairs in my study and still get that feel when I sit in them to read.
“And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake. And when Lucy was tired of eating the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest. He told about the midnight dances and how the Nymphs who lived in the wells and the Dryads who lived in the trees came out to dance with the Fauns; about long hunting parties after the milk-white Stag who could give you wishes if you caught him; about feasting and treasure-seeking with the wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about summer when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end. “Not that it isn’t always winter now,” he added gloomily. Then to cheer himself up he took out from its case on the dresser a strange little flute that looked as if it were made of straw and began to play. And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to sleep all at the same time.”
Dracula’s Brides Seduce Jonathon Harker – Dracula by Bram Stoker
When I was at university, presentations were the bane of my life. I absolutely hate public speaking. I decided to look at sexuality in Dracula and spoke for twenty minutes with video clips and a portfolio to discuss four scenes in the novel: Lucy’s 3 suitors all give her blood; Van Helsing and the suitors visit the crypt to kill Lucy and stop her undead wanderings; Dracula tries to seduce Mina; my favourite scene though is when Dracula’s brides try their best to corrupt Jonathon Harker on his visit to Transylvania. I love the drama of this scene and how interesting it is that the fantasy of one man and several women was alive and well at the end of the 19th Century. It is Dracula who stops the women, making it quite clear that Jonathon is his – bringing some interesting sexual ambiguity. Does he wish to seduce Jonathon or kill him? The three brides are a parallel to Lucy Westenra’s three suitors, there to show her insatiable sexuality in contrast to the angelic Victorian ideal, Mina. I remember back to the 1990s and the Keanu Reeves version of Jonathon Harker with one of the brides played by the stunning Monica Bellucci. I used this for my presentation and managed to impress a couple of goth students who thought I was pretty boring up till then.
“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited – waited with beating heart.”
The Costume Ball at Manderley – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
My favourite scene in one of my favourite books of all time is when the terrifying housekeeper Mrs Danvers really shows her hatred for the second Mrs de Winter. Having planted the idea of a costume ball in her head, Mrs Danvers also makes the suggestion that she should look at the paintings on the long gallery for inspiration. There is a beautiful portrait of one of her husband Maxim’s ancestors, Lady Caroline de Winter, in what looks like an 18th Century dress. Mrs de Winter is so excited, she sends for a copy and even tells Maxim she has a surprise. Yet when she appears at the top of the stairs, with Maxim waiting below, everyone who looks up gives a gasp of disbelief. His sister Beatrice even says the name ‘Rebecca’. At the last costume ball held at Manderley, Rebecca had worn the very same thing. There can now be no doubt in her mind that Mrs Danvers meant this to divide them. Their confrontation takes place in the wing of the house that she’s forbidden to enter, Rebecca’s rooms filled with the sound of the sea.
“You’ve done what you wanted, haven’t you?” the heroine says. “You meant this to happen? Didn’t you?” The replies are both defensive and obsessive, accusing her of trying to take Rebecca’s place when no one can and reminiscing about her former employer in a way that borders on love. She says Maxim will always love Rebecca because “she had all the courage and spirit of a boy.” She talks about their evening routine, how she would brush her hair and shows how sheer her lingerie and nightwear were. She was so perfect every man loved her – Maxim, Frank Crawley the estate manager and even her own cousin Jack Favell. She drove them mad with jealousy but ‘it was all a game to her.” She came to ‘Danny’ and laughed at them all. There are definitely sapphic overtones here, but as Mrs de Winter looks out of the open window her voice changes and becomes soft and suggestive. “Why don’t you go? … He doesn’t want you, he never did. He can’t forget her… It’s you who ought to be dead, not Mrs. de Winter.” As they look down to the terrace, way below; Mrs. Danvers urges her to jump, to end it all on the stones below. “There’s not much for you to live for,” she insists, “Why don’t you jump now and have done with it?” Her voice is hypnotic and the heroine looks down and considers jumping. Suddenly, a bang signals a ship that’s run aground in the cove and she’s shaken out of her trance. This is such a creepy and emotionally manipulative scene, adapted perfectly in the 1940s Hitchcock version of Rebecca with the perfect Mrs Danvers.
The Letter Scene – Persuasion by Jane Austen
Oh I do love this one of Jane Austen’s novels and the letter scene is one of the most romantic in all literature. After having his proposal refused by Anne Elliot, on some terribly bad advice from a friend, her suitor joins the Navy. He returns several years later and they are once again thrown into each other’s company. Anne is a little like Jane Eyre, in that her family think her plain and insignificant. She does not expect to get married now. When she and Captain Wentworth meet again they talk but there’s a reserve between them and although Anne knows her feelings haven’t changed she assumes his interest is in the younger ladies of their party. In a small gathering of people in Bath, Wentworth sits down at a desk in the corner and begins to write a letter. When he leaves Anne is surprised to find it’s for her and she could not have guessed the contents. *swoon*
“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.
The Kiss – A Room With A View by E.M.Forster
This beautiful scene in A Room With A View is one of the most romantic moments in all literature for me and it all starts with a mixed group going to see a view. Our heroine Lucy Honeychurch is with her chaperone Charlotte, a rather strait laced character who is surely one of the most annoying women in fiction. Joining them are the novelist Eleanor Lavish, Mr Beebe who is a vicar and another clergyman who lives in Florence and is giving directions. Much to the disgust of Charlotte, Mr Beebe has also invited George Emerson and his father who they meet at dinner in their pensione. They committed a huge sin in Charlotte’s eyes of offering to swap rooms with the ladies, after overhearing Lucy complain they don’t have a view. The Emersons are of unknown origin and George has a job with the railways, definitely not the sort of people the Honeychurches would usually associate with. There is an argument because one of their drivers has brought along his girlfriend. They are flirting together and he has placed his arm round her, keeping her close. The Florentine vicar insists they stop and the girlfriend must walk behind because their behaviour is unseemly. Mr Beebe objects, surely they are doing no harm. This exchange is there to signal where the line is for different classes of people, the young couple are acting completely normally, but stiff Edwardian etiquette deems it unsuitable in the presence of a young woman like Lucy. When Eleanor and Charlotte are sitting in a field, gossiping, Charlotte becomes aware that Lucy is listening and suggests she look for Mr Beebe. With her rudimentary Italian Lucy asks the driver whether he knows where the gentlemen are and he directs her towards a field full of flowers:
“She wandered as though in a dream, through the wavering sea of barley, touched with crimson stains of poppies. All unobserved, he came to her…There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use. No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer for lack of it. He simply enfolded her in his manly arms…”
This scene in the Merchant Ivory adaptation, with Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy and the late Julian Sands as George is depicted in a field of poppies and the chemistry is off the charts.
Pip Meets Miss Havisham – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
There’s no shortage of unusual and tragic women in Dickens but Miss Havisham is an absolutely glorious creation. That first meeting, when Pip is only a child is one of the best entrances in literature and I don’t need to add anything.
“In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.She was dressed in rich materials—satins, and lace, and silks—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on—the other was on the table near her hand—her veil was half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.
“But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the round figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone.”
“Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.”
The Wedding Eve Dream – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Mr Rochester’s courting of his employee, the governess Jane Eyre, is certainly unorthodox and in a modern context throws up so many concerns – the deceit, manipulation, blowing hot and cold, not to mention disguising himself as a gypsy to tell her fortune. Very odd indeed. But all that is nothing when we learn of his treatment of Bertha Mason, his imprisoned and allegedly insane wife. On the eve of their wedding, Jane is ignorant of all this and is going to sleep with her dress and veil hung on the wardrobe, ready for the morning. When she wakes it is still night but candle is lit and someone is in the room.
“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell… Fearful and ghastly to me—oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments… This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow fur rowed; the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes.”
There’s so much to take apart in this incident from Bertha being without the normal garments a proper woman would wear. She is unkempt and the words used, such as ‘blackened’, ’discoloured’ and ‘savage’, can be debated by post-colonial students for hours. There’s also an interesting doubling going on, is Bertha a version of what the young, passionate Jane could become if she doesn’t keep her feelings in check? She mistakes her for the Vampyre, recently written about by Polidori, but this is the culmination of several haunted or violent incidents at Thornfield Hall. Strangely, Mr Rochester thanks God that Jane did not come to any harm. However, the visitor did take her veil and tore it completely in two. This was no dream.
Angel and Tess at Stonehenge – Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Tess is such an awfully tragic tale and it drives me crazy that she isn’t better supported by her family, when they are the ones who put her in the path of creepy Alec D’urberville in the first place. Even worse, by terrible quirk of fate, when she gets a second chance with Angel Clare and decides to tell him about her past it doesn’t go to plan. She writes everything in a letter and slips it under his door the night before the wedding. She assumes he’s seen it and they marry, but we know the letter has been hidden under a mat at the door. When he hears the truth he leaves, so Tess feels she has no choice but to go back to Alec for protection. I would love to give Angel Clare a slap or two. The final scene, where Tess and Angel are reunited but fleeing from the law, they rest at Stonehenge. Setting aside everything that happens afterwards, I find this scene devastating. Tess is a woman abused and brought low by men. Her life has been so tragically hard and sad she feels that all she deserves are those few hours of happiness she has spent with Angel.
“He heard something behind him, the brush of feet. Turning, he saw over the prostrate columns another figure; then before he was aware, another was at hand on the right, under a trilithon, and another on the left. The dawn shone full on the front of the man westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was tall, and walked as if trained. They all closed in with evident purpose. Her story then was true! Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon, loose stone, means of escape, anything. By this time the nearest man was upon him.
“It is no use, sir,” he said. “There are sixteen of us on the Plain, and the whole country is reared.”
“Let her finish her sleep!” he implored in a whisper of the men as they gathered round.
When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching her, as still as the pillars around. He went to the stone and bent over her, holding one poor little hand; her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a lesser creature than a woman. All waited in the growing light, their faces and hands as if they were silvered, the remainder of their figures dark, the stones glistening green-gray, the Plain still a mass of shade. Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her.
“What is it, Angel?” she said, starting up. “Have they come for me?”
“Yes, dearest,” he said. “They have come.”
“It is as it should be,” she murmured. “Angel, I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!”
She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved.
“I am ready,” she said quietly.”
The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
I blame Lewis Carroll for so many things – my fascination with weird looking birds, taxidermy, anthropomorphic animals and my collection of hares. I have dodos, Alice tea sets, several hares including a bespoke Mad March Hare complete with Victorian dress, top and pocket watch, and a five foot white rabbit who stands in the hall. The tea scene is definitely my favourite and it doesn’t require explanation. Just to say, the pictures underneath are from an Alice themed afternoon tea at The Sanderson hotel in London. Utterly brilliant afternoon and less grumpy than this one:
“There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. “Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,” thought Alice; “only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.”
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming. “There’s plenty of room!” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.
“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare”.
When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in an Edinburgh park, the city reels – and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with her murder.
As social media explodes and headlines scream for justice, rumours of bullying spiral into something darker: whispers of rituals, obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong.
Matthew Phillips, a respected heart surgeon, is called for jury duty on the case. But as the trial unfolds – and the girls reveal a chilling defence no one saw coming – he begins to question everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgement.
Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted?
And what really happened to Christian Shaw?
Let the Witch Trial begin . . .
I finished this book and had to give my head a little shake wondering what I’d just read. Harriet’s one of those writers where I end up devouring the book in a couple of sittings and then wish I’d taken my time because it’s come to an end! This grabs you from the very start as we follow Matthew, an esteemed heart surgeon, for jury duty. He is without question the perfect juror – intelligent, used to making life and death decisions and level headed. However, due to his job he could have easily been excused from jury duty so why does he stay? His colleagues seem incredibly annoyed that he has disappeared and is uncontactable for the foreseeable, because it turns out this is a complex murder case. Although Matthew seems an upstanding character he does seem remarkably keen on having a murder case and with this one he’s truly found the most intriguing. This is one of the most complicated and unlikely cases threaded with fanciful notions of devil worship and witchery. Matthew is our eyes so we view the case at the same time he does, as each witness takes the stand for cross examination. What they must prove is this point of Scottish law:
“Murder is constituted by any wilful act causing the destruction of life, whether wickedly intended to kill, or displaying such wicked recklessness as to imply a disposition depraved enough to be regardless of consequences.”
Put simply, the prosecution must prove that the defendants Isobel and Eliza knew that their friend Christian had a heart condition but were reckless enough to bully and fill her with such fear it killed her. Because of the immediacy of the narrative, the reader drinks in each gasp from the gallery and every revelation from the witness box, so much so that it was halfway through the book before I stopped to wonder how such a case could have made it’s way to court? Can someone deliberately frighten someone to death?
Matthew is observant, he has weighed up his fellow jurors and which ones might be trouble. He has checked out the defendants and wonders whether their appearance might prejudice the witnesses and jurors. Eliza is dressed well, whereas Isobel’s demeanour is surly and uncooperative. She looks down at the floor mostly and has a gothic appearance. She is being painted as the ringleader, but is she or are people being swayed by how she looks? The author adds small details that you barely notice at first such as Matthew’s own appearance. Fully suited and booted on his first few days, he is soon without a tie and then in jeans. His hygiene slips too and a rash starts to affect his hands, itching so badly during the evidence he struggles not to move. He drinks more and avoids his family, staying in his small apartment in the city. There’s also the strange journalist who catches his eye, then seems to disappear. One night she appears at his flat with a bottle and an ouija board, wishing to discuss the more gothic aspects of the case. The suggestion that the girls are practising witches is salacious enough to gain the headlines, but Matthew knows he shouldn’t be talking about the case at all. However, we as the reader are compelled to enjoy the suggestions of animal sacrifice, tarot cards and trying to summon the devil. It’s easy to forget that at the heart of this case are two young girls, who may have been unpleasant and even wicked but surely not criminal? We believe our narrator still, but should we? There are multiple layers to the books final chapters, something that this writer excels at. The occult elements are truly vivid and I found myself engrossed and even believing them in part. This is one of those books, where, like The Sixth Sense, you’ll be going back to see how you missed certain things. The final twists left me awe struck. This is a belting thriller, utterly addictive and compelling to the final page.
Out now from Wildfire Books
Meet the Author
Harriet Tyce was born and grew up in Edinburgh. She graduated from Oxford in 1994 with a degree in English Literature before gaining legal qualifications. She worked as a criminal barrister for ten years, leaving after having children. She completed an MA in Creative Writing – Crime Fiction at UEA where she wrote Blood Orange, the Sunday Times bestselling novel, winner of a gold Nielsen Bestseller Award in 2021. It was followed by The Lies You Told and It Ends At Midnight, both also Sunday Times bestsellers. A Lesson in Cruelty was published in 2022 and met with great critical acclaim and her fifth novel Witch Trial will be published on 26 February 2026. She is a contestant on series 4 of The Traitors. Follow Harriet on Instagram @harriet_tyce and find her Facebook page @harriettyceauthor.
Hello all. Welcome to my February favourite reads. It’s been a busy reading month and thankfully I’ve been feeling less foggy and able to read a lot more. I’ve also found more balance in my reading so I’ve been able to read by choice a lot more too. These are the best ones I’ve read this month, a couple still have full reviews outstanding but I’ll tell you a little bit about why I enjoyed them so much.
This beautiful Pride and Prejudice inspired book is an absolute dream to read and felt like being back with old friends. I had always felt that Elizabeth Bennett underestimated her friend Charlotte Lucas and clearly she was a character whose possibilities played on author and comedian Rachel Parris’s mind too. Taken from the point Lizzie rejects Mr Collins’s proposal, the book takes in events from the rest of Austen’s romance and carries on beyond giving us glimpses into events we don’t get to see, such as the Darcy wedding at Pemberley. It’s told from Charlotte’s perspective but with letters from other characters and glimpses into Mr Collins’s past. These give us an insight into his manner and behaviour, while the letters give us a new slant on other characters too. I felt that Charlotte was pragmatic in her choice of husband and found ways to grow within it – sometimes in spite of Mr Collins and other times because of him, rather surprisingly. She has purpose, status and time to educate herself. Even Mr Collins has to admit she has blossomed, but when a spark is lit with a visitor to Rosings will Charlotte pursue the one thing she doesn’t have – romantic love and passion? I loved this and I’m sure many of you will too. It is pitch perfect, funny, sad and incredibly entertaining.
I have raved about Tracy Whitwell’s series following the adventures of Tanzy, actor and reluctant medium. This is the fifth and final instalment so I wanted to savour it. After her eventful trip to Iceland Tanz is back on home soil and soon makes her way back to her childhood home of Newcastle. Both she and her ‘little mam’ have been experiencing dreams about hangings, in Tanz’s case very alarming ones where she has a bag over her head and a noose round her neck. Her visions are powerful and are accompanied by sudden and torrential storms. Knowing she needs some help here, she asks Sheila to come and join her. They’re soon at the very spot where a travelling witch finder condemned several women to death by hanging. Even more alarming than usual, he seems to be able to see Tanz too, coming at her with his ‘pricker’ – the implement he uses to prod his prisoners to see if they bleed. This is toxic masculinity 17th Century style and Tanz is going to know her new Icelandic guides and all her power to defeat it. There’s the usual eccentric characters, including an Amazon woman dressed ‘like a Valkyrie’ who is also researching local history of witches and a ghostly lady called Mags who is full of mischief when it comes to putting men in their place. This is genuinely scary in parts and is based on historical research of the area. It was great to see Tanz back home again and with a case to solve, a love story to wrap up and a surprise that might determine her future, it’s a great finale to this funny and fierce series.
I’ve been able to catch up on some reading this month and I’ve been dying to get to the latest Kate Sawyer. She is now one of my ‘must buy’ authors and this novel just confirms her status on my shelves. Using the structure of family holidays, this book follows four generations of one family and the secrets they carry. Starting post-war with Betty who is at the seaside with her little girl Margaret and husband Jim, but Margaret doesn’t know the secret romance her mother had with the son of a local factory owner. Jim was a pragmatic choice and he’s a good husband despite the facial injuries and terrible memories he carries. Jim is doing well in his job and a few years later they visit the beach with his American colleagues and a teenage Margaret. There something happens that changes the course of this family. The author takes us through the 20th Century, showing how the changing world shapes the experiences of this family. From a beach on the east coast of England, we see holidays in Cornwall, then abroad as Maggie embraces the opportunities of a her husband’s job as a travelling buyer, and when her brother Tommy invests in and up and coming area of Europe. We see howchangesinlaw and culture make some relationships and break others. The womenin this novel are exceptionally well-written and the issues they face from infidelity, domestic violence, infertility and the consequences of a more permissive society opening the door for a more open generation than the one before. Throughout, this is a family that tries its hardest to stay together, even when some members are on the other side of the world. I love complex relationship dynamics so this was an absolute joy to read.
This incredible debut by Rachel Canwell deserves all the praise it’s receiving online. In fact she had a books signing at my local bookshop in Lincoln and had sold out within an hour! Her book is set in the south of Lincolnshire, in the fens and a family who live on the banks of the River Nene at Sutton Bridge. The new swing bridge allows them to visit the village and on the opposite bank a port is being built. Next to their home is a small hospital, readied by their father to serve port workers when everything is finished. One dark and disorienting night the family are woken by a rumbling sound and the splash of things hitting the water, but it’s only in the morning that the full devastation can be seen. The bank has collapsed underneath the new port, the family has lost their occupation and one of its sons, who drowned trying to rescue workers. We meet the three women who tell our story in the 1910s, Eleanor and her sister Lily are the last family members living in the house adjacent to the hospital – still empty and unused. Eleanor has fallen in love with John, the local blacksmith but can’t make plans because of her sister Lily. Lily will not leave the family house, in fact she rarely leaves her bedroom. The loss of her twin brother in the port disaster still affects her daily and she will not allow Eleanor to leave her alone in the house. Eleanor’s best friend Clara is married to their older brother Frank and they live in the village with their children. Clara is married to a bully and she sees one in Lily, who passive aggressively controls her sister. War is looming and as a prisoner of war camp is suggested for the old port site tensions within the community rise. With grief joining domestic violence, manipulation and alcohol issues this family is set for an explosive reckoning. I became so attached to these women and their family’s tragic history that I read it so quickly. I will go back and read it again though. Every element – character, setting, plot – is beautifully done and the historical background took me back to a time when my own grandparents would have been working the land and living next to the River Trent further North in the county. This is an excellent debut that had me absorbed completely.
This was an unexpectedly great crime novel set around an auction rooms in Glasgow, a venue where criminal elements mix with rich collectors and eccentric dealers. Rilke is pulled into a difficult situation after his friend Les finishes his prison sentence. When one of the Bowery Auctions regulars, the creepy and questionable Manderson, is killed on the premises it’s only 24 hours till their next auction. In fact Manderson has been stabbed in the eye with one of the antique hat pins they had out for the viewing afternoon. An Edwardian amethyst pin would have had to make its way through a huge hat and into a woman’s long, piled up hair, to keep it secure. Now it’s made its way through Manderson’s eye into his brain and it’s going to take a lot of strength to remove it. Knowing the police will be involved and that Bowery’s will be implicated, perhaps it would be better if it wasn’t obvious that he’s been killed with one of their auction lots. Things get worse when a gangster turns up at Bowery Auctions with Rilke’s mate Les in tow. Ray has a way with a razor and he focuses Rilke with a swipe to Les’s face. Rilke must now investigate who killed Manderson in just ten days or Les will pay the consequences. His investigations will take him to an old school where many ex-pupils have reported sexual abuse, to a brothel named after a questionable film and a girl called Chloe who may or may not be controlled by her boyfriend, Dickie Bird. Will he find the answers that will save Les? More to the point, are the answers to be found outside Glasgow or a lot closer to home? Glasgow is a city that doesn’t hide its darker quarters or episodes in its history and we see them here from pubs to brothels and a particularly creepy old school. The author brings in modern concerns around women using Only Fans and other internet sex work to make ends meet. Can it ever be a feminist thing? There are also issues around coercive control and manipulation, but as Rilke learns it’s easy to get the wrong end of the stick. There’s a familiar jaded feeling around these issues and a knowledge that no matter what’s brought to light, some people will always get away with it. This is a gritty thriller with a streak of humour and some fantastic characters. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
Finally this month I’m recommending this brilliant thriller from Tana French, the third in a series featuring ex- Chicago cop Cal and his new life in the small Irish village of Ardnakelty. This is such an atmospheric read that manages to feel isolated, but suffocating at the same time. Cal and his fiancée Lena, who was born here, try to keep out of any local gossip or feuding. However, when young teenager Rachel goes missing one night in a storm both Cal and his woodworking protoge Trey go looking for her. She’s found in the river, after setting out to meet her boyfriend Eugene Moynihan at the bridge. She appears to have drowned but Eugene claims not to have made the arrangement to meet in such terrible weather and when the autopsy comes back it reports that Rachel had swallowed anti-freeze. Is this an accident or suicide. Cal and Lena suspect foul play and with Lena being the last person to see Rachel, staying out of this might not be possible. When Cal appears to side with his neighbour Mart against the Moynihan family tensions rise and Tommy Moynihan, family patriarch, starts to show just how much of Ardnakelty he holds in his power. This is a complex mystery, with risky allegiances and terrible consequences. The Irish dialogue is so beautifully written and there are moments of laugh out loud humour to dispel the tension. This was an incredibly good thriller with plenty of twists and a fascinating central character too.
Charlotte Lucas has never been a romantic. Practical to a fault, she accepted Mr Collins’s proposal with clear eyes and a steady heart, trading passion for security. Life at Hunsford Parsonage may be quiet and predictable, but it is hers to manage – and she’s determined to make the best of it, whatever Elizabeth Bennet may think.
That is, until an unexpected guest at Rosings Park turns Charlotte’s careful world on its head. He sees her, challenges her – and a spark is lit. But true contentment is not only about who you choose to love, but who you choose to be. For the first time, she wonders: has playing by the rules kept her on the sidelines of her own life?
It is a truth, universally acknowledged that a sick woman in bad humour will be revived in the company of a witty novel…
This is the Pride and Prejudice inspired novel I’ve been waiting for and it came at the perfect time, when I’ve been feeling very unwell and was stuck in bed. I read for two days between sleeping and I swear it kept me sane. I always felt that Lizzie Bennett underestimated her friend Charlotte and I wondered what happened to her and Mr Collins in the future. It’s a great reminder that we only see a novel’s events through the gaze of our narrator and central character. The same events, viewed from a different perspective, bring a more balanced and multi-faceted view of what happened in the novel and its characters. The events of Parris’s novel take place during and after Pride and Prejudice, from the point that Lizzie rejects Mr Collins proposal. A decision that pleases her father but sends her mother into conniptions! Lizzie’s choice means that once Mr Bennett dies, Mrs Bennett and all of her daughters are at the mercy of Mr Collins, the male heir. Whoever he chooses to marry will become mistress of the Bennett’s home Longbourne. Charlotte Lucas is our focus, Lizzie’s best friend and now the recipient of Mr Collins’s attentions. The author has added inserts from the past, adding depth and insight to both Charlotte and Mr Collins’s characters as adults. We see events that we have only imagined, like the Darcy’s wedding at Pemberley and its ensuing drama. However we also see Charlotte settle into the everyday of married life, with all its strangeness and frustrations. I left Pride and Prejudice a little worried about Charlotte, even though the way she does talk about life at the parsonage with humour and optimism when Lizzie visits. So this story of her growing relationships, her new home and her dissatisfactions with her new life is so welcome. What she misses most is passion, but if it arose would she be able to resist it?
Charlotte is viewed with pity by the Bennetts, apart from Mrs Bennett who is wailing that she will be the mistress of their beloved home. I felt like Charlotte knows her prospects are few. She’s witty and fun, but she knows she doesn’t have the charm and looks of Lizzie. She is someone who people get to know slowly and hasn’t reached her full potential yet. Mr Collins was always a pragmatic choice, but here I could also see it as a mature and confident choice. The Bennetts may see Mr Collins as ridiculous and in some ways he is, but Charlotte doesn’t see her worth as solely defined by the man she chooses to marry. He may be thought of as silly, but that doesn’t mean she is. Also, as Mrs Collins she has a beautiful home and garden, a steady income and a benefactor in Lady Catherine de Bourgh. As a married woman she has status and purpose, going out to visit sick parishioners and keeping the home running smoothly. While Mr Collins is busy Charlotte spends her hours in her library continuing to educate herself, she tends her garden and she practises her piano at Rosings. Charlotte is able to be happy and content in her own company, separate from Mr Collins’s anxieties and emotions. In this light we also see Lizzie differently, perhaps even as a little spoiled. As we see in this book, Mr and Mrs Bennett are the architects of their daughter’s misfortunes and their attitudes are clear in two crucial letters they send to the parsonage. Darcy’s assessment of the family, unwisely passed on to Lizzie during his first proposal, is absolutely correct. Mr and Mrs Bennett’s leniency with their younger daughter’s behaviour allows a window for Mr Wickham to connect with the foolish Lydia. It’s their behaviour that prompts both Darcy and Caroline Bingley to warn Mr Bingley away from his attachment to Jane. In letters to both Charlotte and Mrs Collins, the Bennett parents show they are both fierce in the defence of their daughters but spiteful towards the recipients. Mr Bennett calls Lydia unwise, but at least not judgmental – a criticism that Mr Collins perhaps deserves. However, in a letter to Charlotte Mrs Bennett shows awful spite in an unnecessary postscript:
“I saw your Maria this week at church and she is become such a beauty! What a pleasant girl – always with a smile and a manner that puts one at ease. You would not think you were sisters.”
However, I did come away with some forgiveness for Mrs Bennett’s view that Lizzie might have thought of her mother and sisters when she refused Mr Collins, because now they would surely lose their home. It’s clear that Mr Bennett has little respect for his wife and for good reason on some occasions. However, he does favour Lizzie and perhaps his treatment of her has led to Lizzie thinking she has better prospects than she does. Luckily fate brings her Darcy but I did understand Charlotte for thinking that luck just seems to fall into her friend’s lap.
I felt like Charlotte blossomed in her new environment and that sometimes it is because of Mr Collins not despite him. If nothing else he shows kindness and understanding. The vignettes of his childhood show a sad history that goes some way to understanding his character better. However, it is a connection that she never expected that seems to bring out a new side to Charlotte. An unexpected visitor to Rosings Park brings her friendship and an affinity she never expected, not to mention a passionate spark. I loved the point in the novel when Mr Collins has both a revelation about his wife and is genuinely awe inspired by her. As she plays a piece on the piano for a gathering at Rosings, Mr Collins sees his wife anew:
“This poised assertive woman was a vision, undaunted by entertaining a room of high-born people in a house such as this with the talent he had no idea she possessed […] she was splendid and her splendour shook the foundation of his peace of mind. Whereas another man might have felt only pride in his wife, for Collins, this feeling was mixed with something much more disquieting. She is beyond me: what he felt was I will not be able to keep her.”
This is a worry born of never being enough for his father, who tried to change him by whatever means necessary. I felt the author didn’t excuse all of his failings, but explained what was behind them. The narrative voice is so incredibly good that this didn’t feel like a stranger telling me about these characters I knew very well. It felt like a continuation; a meeting with old friends. Of course the author does bring some of our modern thinking to the story, otherwise we wouldn’t be hearing about Mr Collins’s childhood – a psychological aspect to character we wouldn’t perhaps expect in a book pre-Freud. I won’t touch on Charlotte’s eventual fate but I will say that Mr Collins definitely has a part in it. Maybe not in the most romantic sense, but sometimes there’s a kind of love in duty and honour. I love Rachel Parris’s humour and there’s plenty of that here, with the tone and the wit feeling positively Austen-esque. I could tell by how well each character was drawn that the author loved her books and wanted to do them justice. I think she has.
Meet the Author
Rachel Parris is a BAFTA-nominated comedian, musician, actor and improvisor, best known for her viral segments on The Mash Report and Late Night Mash, which have garnered over 100 million views. Her TV appearances include Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie to You?, QI and Mock the Week, and she is a regular guest on Radio 4’s The Now Show and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. She co-hosts the popular podcast How Was It for You? with her husband Marcus Brigstocke. Rachel also wrote and presented a Jane Austen comedy programme, Austensibly Feminist, about how to view Jane Austen as modern feminists. Rachel is a founding member of the critically acclaimed improv comedy group Austentatious, in which the all-star cast invent a play based on a title suggestion from the audience. As a touring comedian she has performed her award-winning musical comedy to sell-out audiences across the UK.
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into – Spyglass, an enchanting old house in the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls – nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that this stranger is his wife.
One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.
Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner named Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person’s date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel and, as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
My Husband’s Wife weaves a tangled web of deception, obsession and mystery that will keep you guessing until the last page. Prepare yourself for the ultimate mind-bending marriage thriller and step inside Spyglass – if you dare – to experience a story where nothing is as it seems.
My goodness this thriller messed with my head! From the very first time Eden Fox returns from her run, puts her key in the door and finds it doesn’t fit, I was utterly hooked. I couldn’t imagine how this had happened and what the hell was going on. Even her own art exhibition has been hijacked by a woman who looks exactly like her and as the village’s police officer Sergeant Carter is brought into the mystery, he’s also at a loss. He goes to meet Harrison Wolf at his home, a beautiful house called Spyglass set on the cliffs with a panoramic view of the sea. Harrison is Eden Fox’s husband and he insists that the woman at home with him is his wife. So who is the woman left at the police station? We’re then taken six months earlier and introduced to Birdy, a young woman living in an apartment above a bookshop in London. She receives a strange letter addressed to her recently deceased grandmother, it’s so strange Birdy is fascinated and wants to investigate further. It’s from a company called Thanatos who claim to be able to predict your death day. Birdy decides to become a client of the company, run by Harrison Wolf. Birdy is interested to see if they are as accurate as they suggest. She wants to know what the company told her grandmother, before she died. Her grandmother lived in a house looking out to sea, in a small village in Cornwall and Birdy has inherited it. How are all these people connected? I had so many questions I didn’t know where to begin, but the short chapters and their drip feed of information kept me reading. I just had to find out what was going on!
I loved Birdy as a character and was surprised by the part she played in the investigation around Eden Fox. Her dynamic with Sergeant Carter is comical and brings light relief to the complications of the plot. She is so very sure of who she is and has a specific look from her plaited hair to her brogues. She also loves reading with always endears a character to me and enjoyed her dog companion too. She’s very ballsy and soon has the measure of Carter who really doesn’t stand a chance against this intelligent and forthright older woman. Carter is our representative of this sleepy village in Cornwall and through his family we see the difficulties facing villagers as more and more housing is being turned into holiday accommodation. They have lost their home and livelihood at the Smuggler’s Inn. Young people have very little chance of settling where they’ve grown up which affects the passing down of traditions and social history. Our book is set around the time of All Soul’s Day and the village tradition is like a Day of the Dead parade with everyone dressed up as skeletons, or dead pirates and mermaids. This touch of folklore lets us know we’re somewhere unique, with a long history and old loyalties. Could this be an explanation for what’s going on here? Something magical or something more sinister and human?
I’m in awe of people who can write like this and keep track of all the threads. I imagine a room with one of those see through boards covered with pictures, lists and cross-referencing. Spyglass is a brilliant backdrop for all these odd goings on and reminded me a little of the home in the first Knives Out film that one detective refers to as a life size game of Cluedo. There’s something mesmeric about its view that inspires both Eden Fox and her stepdaughter Gabrielle who still paints nothing but the house and it’s surrounding despite living elsewhere, in a home for dependent young adults. Ever since an accident when she was a child Gabrielle hasn’t spoken and only communicates through her art, which sounds very eerie. Spyglass’s library sounds incredible and it’s no surprise to know that Birdy’s grandmother had a love of classic crime fiction. Like me, I’m sure other thriller readers will devour this addictive thriller that delivers great characters, a seemingly unsolvable mystery and twist after twist.
Out now from Pan MacMillan
Meet the Author
Alice Feeney is the New York Times and Sunday Times multi-million-copy bestselling author of novels including HIS & HERS, SOMETIMES I LIE, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, DAISY DARKER, BEAUTIFUL UGLY and MY HUSBAND’S WIFE. Her books have been translated into forty languages, and have been optioned for major screen adaptations. HIS & HERS was an instant Global #1 Netflix show in 2026, starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal.
Alice was a BBC journalist for fifteen years before becoming an author. MY HUSBAND’S WIFE is her eighth novel.
You can follow Alice on Instagram or Facebook. To be the first to know about her tours, TV shows, and books, visit her website: alicefeeney dot com.
This is the fifth and final installment in the hilarious Accidental Medium series featuring Tanz, who with the help of the dead, has become an unwilling crime-solver.
When Tanz returns to her hometown in Newcastle, she comes face-to-face with dark, ancestral secrets lurking in its shadows. Haunted by chilling visions of the witch-trials, a voice from the past warns her, You’re the one. Burn it, chosen one. As a sinister figure threatens to ruin everything she’s built for herself, Tanz must embrace her connection to the dead to uncover her destiny.
With everything on the line, Tanz finds herself entangled in a web of folklore, mystery and imminent danger. Elements collide as the echoes of history demand intervention and new relationships entwine in her mystical journey. Tanz must wield courage against paranormal forces and listen to old and new allies in order to prevent ominous threats from consuming her world.
Will Tanz unravel the mysteries surrounding the witch pricker and her own lineage in time, or will she fall prey to the darkness that stalks her?
I love a good witch story and the Accidental Medium books have been a brilliant series from Tracy Whitwell. So much so that I’m really sad this is the last set of adventures for our titular accidental medium Tanzy. I love the combination of magical and ghostly goings on with our down to earth and sweary Geordie witch. This time the atmosphere is slightly different as we’re delving into the history of witches in Tanz’s home town of Newcastle. After returning from her exciting and romantic exploits in Iceland, she takes a worried call from her ‘little mam’ who has had strange and unsettling dreams about hangings. As usual Tanz tries not to alarm her mam because she isn’t comfortable with the family gift, but Tanz has also had similar dreams of feeling a bag over her head and a noose around her neck. She gets straight into the car and drives home and not a moment too soon since someone has thrown a dead hare over her parent’s garden wall warning them away, but from what? Newcastle is a lovely city and I enjoyed seeing Tanz in her own environment. She soon calls her friend Sheila to join her and tries to find out as much as she can about the city’s history with witches. As a contrast to the friendliness of people and the buzz of a lively city, Tanz starts to notice an atmosphere change heralding one of her visions. She notices storm clouds suddenly gathering and rain lashing down, especially when she’s confronted with the figure of the witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins. More disturbingly, he seems to be able to see Tanzy too and tries to attack her with his ‘pricker’ – the implement he uses to test whether marks on a witch’s skin bleed or not. In one terrifying scene he makes a swipe for the window of a tearoom leaving a scratch down the glass and down Tanzy’s cheek. As they research Hopkins in the library, Tanzy finds out that he identified several witches who were all hanged together on the common. She can hear Hopkins’s hatred of women and there were definite parallels with the current political situation around the Epstein files and Andrew Tate.
“All of them are witches, these sly cows with their lies and their ‘ways’. Once they’ve bred we should hang ‘em all. More peace for us”.
Tanzy feels more powerful than ever after her trip and her meeting with the Icelandic magical folk, there’s also the matter of Thor who it’s quite clear she’s fallen in love with. Her visions are so incredibly vivid and they seem to tire her more easily. In fact she collapses on the common at one point and ends up covered in mud. Tanz feels the emotions of the witches who’ve been imprisoned for a long time, broken down by lack of food and unsanitary conditions, not to mention the way they’ve been treated by the male guards. Hopkins was being paid ‘by the witch’ so it’s in his interest to find as many as possible. Tanz and Sheila soon realise that his pricker is false, with a needle that disappears inside the shaft when he uses it, leaving no marks on the woman and branded her a witch. In her usual frank language Tanz brands him ‘ a cunt and a shithouse’ which made me laugh out loud. When she’s not incensed, Tanzy is delightfully warm and open, making friends with a couple who own a small bar near the hotel and an Amazon woman called Lydia who definitely dresses like she enjoys taking up space! She is also connected to the mass hangings and has been researching her family tree and local witches at the library for years. There is also a new ghostly friend, a hooded lady called Mags who is an absolute mischief and brings some comic relief between the most serious scenes. In the bar, Mags terrorises a cocky young man who is manipulating his shy girlfriend by moving his drink and pulling his chair away. She proves very useful and doesn’t leave Tanz’s side until the spiritual warfare is over.
I did really worry for Tanz this time, especially when Sheila is laid low by a cold and can’t accompany her. Tanz knows she needs to be on her guard, but the plight of these women have left her feeling furious constantly. There will be a final showdown and with this being our last adventure I was on tenterhooks wondering whether Tanzy would come through okay. While I love all the characters in the book she is the magic spell of this series. Her earthiness and Northern wit balance out the more ‘woowoo’ aspects of her life and I wondered if it was time for her to return home? Somehow, despite nothing being resolved between them, Tanz also seems quite settled in her feelings for Thor and the more settled she is the more powerful she seems. As she’s offered a completely unexpected opportunity I really hoped she would take it. I recommend this whole series to anyone who enjoys a touch of the supernatural with a side order of history and realism. I’m going to miss Tanzy hugely but I’m excited for what this author might do next too.
Out now from Pan MacMillan
Meet the Author
Tracy Whitwell was born, brought up and educated in the north-east of England. She wrote plays and short stories
from an early age, then moved to London where she became a busy actress on stage and screen. After having her son, she wound down the acting to concentrate on writing full time. Many projects followed until she finally found the courage to write the first in her Accidental Medium series, a work of fiction based on a whole heap of crazy truth. Apart from the series, Tracy has written novels in several other genres and also writes mini self-help books as the Sweary Witch.
Tracy is nothing like her lead character Tanz in The Accidental Medium. (This is a lie.)
The Lotus Readers 