Author: thelotusreaders

Hello, I am Hayley and I run Lotus Writing Therapy and The Lotus Readers blog. I am a counsellor, workshop facilitator and avid reader.
Posted in Netgalley, Publisher Proof

The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A shiver thrilled my spine at the thought of what might be contained in collections to be kept away from ordinary eyes…

London, 1873. Madeleine Brewster’s marriage to Dr Lucius Everley was meant to be the solution to her family’s sullied reputation. After all, Lucius is a well-respected collector of natural curiosities. His ‘Small Museum’ of bones and specimens in jars is his pride and joy, although firmly kept under lock and key. His sister Grace’s philanthropic work with fallen women is also highly laudable.

However, Maddie soon finds herself unwelcome in what is meant to be her new home. The more she learns about both Lucius and Grace, the more she suspects that unimaginable horrors lie behind their polished reputations.

Framed for a crime that would take her to the gallows and leave the Everleys free to continue their dark schemes, Maddie’s only hope is her friend Caroline. She will do anything to prove Maddie’s innocence before the trial reaches its fatal conclusion.

When choosing novels I have two favourite genres, historical and crime fiction. Author Jody Cooksley has combined the two in his compelling novel that was the winner of the Caledonia Novel Award. In Victorian London 1873, Madeleine Brewster, the daughter of a doctor, is courted by Dr. Lucius Everly a man seemingly intent on finding the missing link that will prove the evolutionary step between fish and mammals. He collects fossils and curiosities at his London home, hidden away in his ‘Small Museum’. His sister Grace undertakes work with fallen women at a house called The Evergreens which is held in high regard.

Madeleine accepts his proposal, imagining her life as a doctor’s wife will be similar to that of her mother and father. However, when she reaches her new home, life is very different to what she expected. She feels unwelcome in her new home, with housekeeper and gardener Mr and Mrs Barker seemingly in charge, keeping exactly the same routine from when Lucius’s father was alive. There is no space for her to organise or manage her own house and if it isn’t the Barkers, her sister-in-law Grace drops in unannounced and chooses the drapes or orders tea as if she is the mistress of the house, despite having her own. Having dreaded the wedding night, Lucius begs her forgiveness for his tiredness and departs to his own bedroom. Despite their reputations, Madeleine starts to suspect Lucius and Grace of unimaginable horrors. She hears a baby’s cry in the night, her husband arguing with his sister and items seem to appear and disappear from her room with alarming regularity. Despite trying to help her husband in his work and fitting in with the Barker’s schedule, Madeleine finds herself labelled as ‘nervous’ and then framed for the most terrible of crimes. A crime she did not commit. As she faces a trial Madeleine’s only hope is her friend Caroline, but can she prove her friend’s innocence before she is hanged?

This was an absolute cracker of a gothic mystery with a heroine who is in a terrible catch 22; either shut-up and be complicit in something horrific, or keep asking questions and be labelled mad by her in-laws. She is utterly powerless, but tries everything within her limited options to improve her situation. Madeleine is intelligent and no one could say she hasn’t tried in her marriage. When finally Lucius does come to her room it is a perfunctory act where she might as well have been an inanimate object. She tries to get used to these new couplings but there is certainly no love or even tenderness in it. The outcome is further tragedy for Madeleine and a means for Lucius to control her movements even further and an excuse for their nightly encounters to stop. Once physically recovered, she tries to use the only gift she has, her ability to draw in a style that would work for scientific illustrations. She is then let into Lucius’s small museum, a veritable treasure trove of nature’s oddities and anomalies, but also bleached bones of various different creatures that he hopes will prove his theory that fish developed into birds and mammals. He is gratified that Madeleine has a strong stomach, able to converse freely about the best ways of bleaching bone. He has lost many a servant girl who accidentally discovered the museum or his workshop where he prepares the animals whose bones he uses. They embark on a trip to Dorset together where he is showing his latest finds to his peers and Madeleine hopes they will enjoy combing the beach for fossils and she can do some more sketching. However, she has underestimated Lucius’s fanaticism about his theory and the terrible lengths he will go to in order to prove it.

The author brings all of these strands together beautifully, the glimpses into the past finally catching up with the present and Madeleine’s terrifying predicament. Will she be found guilty of infanticide? Caroline is desperately trying to uncover the truth and proves herself to be an incredibly loyal friend. I had so many questions as the book neared it’s end and the tension was riveting. Was Madeleine really seeing her sister Rebecca in the streets around Evergreens? Were items genuinely disappearing and appearing in her room? Was she sane or had she succumbed to mental illness? What were the noises in the house at night and can she really hear a baby crying? In fact the answers involved new maid Tizzy, a down to earth girl who’d had her baby at Evergreens and she provides an incredible light bulb moment! Everything around me disappeared (including the housework and cooking tea) as the first glimmer of truth came to light. I had to finish this book right now! I loved the elements of feminist thinking that were brought into the text including the use of Christina Rosetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’ which tells of men who will take away and ruin any young maiden who isn’t on her guard:

‘Dear you should not stay so late, Twilight is not good for maidens; Should not loiter in the glen In the haunts of goblin men.

‘Goblin Market’,Christina Rosetti, 1862

Rossetti worked as a volunteer in a religious house helping ‘fallen women’ for eleven years, women like Tizzy and Madeleine’s sister Rebecca. Although Rebecca is seen as the fallen woman by respectable people, Madeleine realises that her own marriage simply gives her a mask of respectability. It does not mean they are happy, in fact it disguises what is truly going on behind closed doors. She knows it would take irrefutable evidence to save her and this is why she is in utter despair during her trial. She can’t imagine anyone breaking through that polite veneer of respectability to help her, because they risk their own reputation. Yet she needs someone respectable to vouch for her because housemaids and fallen women hold no power. Caroline is a liminal person in this respect, she is accepted in society as the daughter and wife of doctors, but her father and Ambrose are psychiatrists, dismissed as ‘mind benders’ by Lucius and this sets them apart. They’re respectable enough to be believed, but not so restricted by their standing in society that they daren’t speak up. Caroline is well aware of how powerless women are and the fates that can befall them. When she first sees marks on Madeleine’s wrists she knows she’s seen them before, on Ambrose’s recovering patients; ‘they were women too’. I loved Madeleine’s relationship with Tizzy too, they clicked immediately and talked with a freedom Madeleine’s never had before. She is her one friend in a house where the wife’s place is to keep quiet and only appear when necessary. All in all, this is a really well written and researched novel with all the ingredients I love in an historical novel: a fantastic sense of time and place; strong female characters that break through the Victorian ‘Angel in the House’ stereotype; those Gothic elements to bring a sense of mystery. Then added to this are the addictive twists and turns of a crime novel. What an incredible debut this is!

Out now from Allison and Busby.

Meet the Author

Jody Cooksley is an author represented by literary agent Charlotte Seymour at Johnson & Alcock.

In 2023 she won the Caledonia Novel Award with The Small Museum, a chilling Victorian thriller that’s due for publication with Allison&Busby in May 2024. Sequel to follow in 2025.

Previous novels include award-nominated The Glass House, a fictional account of Victorian pioneer photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron (Cinnamon Press, 2020), and How to Keep Well in Wartime (Cinnamon Press, 2022)

She is currently working hard on her next novel, another Victorian gothic set by The Thames. She has previously published essays, short stories and flash fiction.

Jody works in communications and lives in Surrey with her husband, two sons, two forest cats and a dangerous mountain of books.

Posted in Netgalley, Personal Purchase

You Are Here by David Nicholls

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I have had the joy of reading two books, each by one of my favourite authors, back to back on my holidays and I have genuinely loved it. David Nicholls has been a household name thanks to the new production of One Day on Netflix. The beauty of Nicholls’s novel about friends Emma and Dex makes it one of my favourites of all time and I’m definitely not alone. There was a time back in the 2000s where if you were on a train journey most of the people in your carriage were reading One Day. It was a book that utterly broke my heart because I believed in those characters so much and the shock of what happened is still with me, to such an extent that I haven’t been able to watch the last two episodes of the series. I can’t bear what’s coming. Similarly, both the book and BBC adaptation of his novel Us was deeply moving but utterly real. With the wonderful Tom Hollander as his lead, we become so emotionally invested in this couple, then just as they’re ready set to out for a once in a lifetime trip his wife asks for a divorce. Their plan, to spend all summer travelling around Europe, would be their last trip as a family, before their son leaves home for university. Can they set aside this bombshell and continue with their holiday? The set up in both these earlier novels is so simple and You Are Here is no different. A group of friends travel from London to the Lake District to walk some of Wainwright’s routes through Cumbria towards the Pennines. Cleo has invited four single friends; Conrad is meant for copy editor Marnie and Tessa is intended to get on with geography teacher and dedicated walker Michael who is extending his trip to walk the entire coast to coast, ending in Robin Hood’s Bay. Michael is still getting over separating from his wife so finds these social occasions difficult, much preferring solitude. Marnie spends much of her time alone too, so this will be a step out of their comfort zone for both of them. When the others bail out after a day of endless rain, Marnie and Michael are left to walk together. Can they both strike up a friendship?

David Nicholls has this amazing ability to articulate the minutiae of conversation and communication between the opposite sexes. He’s also brilliant with those tiny moments of shared humour, stolen glimpses and the body language of love. It may seem strange that a whole book is about two people walking across the country, but everything happens within that time spent together. After a couple of days Michael can see that Marnie is an inexperienced walker but determined, intelligent and well-read. She has been in relationships that eroded her confidence, has a keen sense of humour but tends to lose it a little when tired and hungry. Marnie is surprised by Michael. Although she knows little about geography she can appreciate how passionate he is about his subject, he wears his beard as a mask so that people keep their distance, is perfectly comfortable in his own company and is hurt very badly by the break-down of his marriage. This isn’t two young people swept up in the blind passions of love at first sight. This is a slow burn. It’s a potential romance that grows slowly and unexpectedly for both of them. It’s lovely to read a ‘real’ love story about people who are older and have been kicked about a bit by love in the past. Nicholls has alternated each character’s chapters, so we’re also taken into Marnie and Michael’s inner worlds. Within these chapters we have flashbacks through their lives and their past relationships, slowly learning what has built these people who are in front of us, trying to bring their lives together. We are also privy to private thoughts that let us know this couple could be perfect for each other. When bullied into social activity by friends we can see that they’re both introverts. Michael agrees to a plan just to make Cleo shut up. She means well, it’s just that for her the answer to a empty weekend is the presence of others, while it’s their absence that floats his boat. Similarly Marnie knows that a bit of socialising is expected, however…

‘She had become addicted to the buzz of the cancelled plan […]for the moment no words were sweeter to Marnie than ‘I’m sorry, I can’t make it.’ It was like being let off an exam that she expected to fail.’

I understood Marnie. I was the kid at school who was so excited to have finished the reading scheme by age eight, because while everyone else was reading to the teacher I had free library time. I would pull up a beanbag and disappear into the world of the Little Women or Jane Eyre, loving that I was alone, out of the hustle and bustle of the classroom I was free to be anywhere just by opening a book and stepping through a wardrobe. Marnie gives a similar description of her early reading years to mine, the weekly library visits and the devouring of anything I could find and making no distinction between what was deemed literature and what wasn’t. My only criteria was that I enjoyed it. I learned to enjoy activities with friends – ice skating, horse riding, cinema – but nothing beat that thrill of knowing a delicious book was waiting in my room.

‘Private, intimate, a book was something she could pull around and over herself, like a quilt.’

Reading is a little like Michael’s walking in that it takes me on a journey, but also helps me unplug from the stress of daily life. If I’m reading a physical book it’s even more separate from the world because it’s not alerting me to things on social media, emails or messages from friends with cat videos. Marnie wonders if her reserve and need for alone time comes from her upbringing with parents she’d describe as cautious and timid:

‘At no point did her parents move house, gamble, use an overdraft, change jobs, have affairs, go abroad, shout in public, park illegally, eat on the street or get drunk, and while they must have had sex at some point, this was covered up as carefully as a past murder. Marnie was the only evidence.’

Michael is taking in the world around him, but at a totally different pace. He can stop and concentrate slowly on a beautiful bird song or the reflection of the hills in a still lake. He is a Romantic with a capital ‘R’, perhaps not a flowers and surprise trip to Paris sort of man, but he can see poetry in the everyday. As they stroll the hills he truly does understand the Romantic poets, engaging Marnie in conversation about routes that William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothea might have taken. He tries to feel the state of the sublime and thinks he often finds it in a spectacular view that couldn’t have been seen any other way than walking off the beaten track. He is still so caught up in the breakdown of his last relationship, still to some extent thinking as part of a couple although it’s clear to his friends that his wife has definitely moved on. He’s been so disconnected from his wife, for so long that he didn’t know anything was wrong and the shock of the split was seismic. This is why Cleo invites him on the weekend in the first place, to try and point him forwards, rather than backwards. This is a spiritual and mental journey for him, as well as a physical one. Michael has that symptom of depression where you feel like you’re looking at the world through a thick pane of glass, removed from reality. This is a protective barrier too, he keeps his pain so deep inside himself he thinks no one can see it. It stops him from being able to express himself and he finds Marnie so performative at first. She rails against her sore feet, the weather, the mud – all things that are so part and parcel of hiking it wouldn’t occur to him to do the same. Her humour does break through occasionally.

‘You’re funny, but I’m the one with the lighter rucksack so who’s laughing?’ ‘That is true. I’ve got twelve pairs of pants in here, for three nights.’ ‘Why?’‘I don’t know. Maybe I worried I might shit myself four times a day.’ ‘Has that ever happened?’ ‘Not since my honeymoon.’

By the end my heart was breaking for these fledglings. I so wanted them both to be happy, even if they simply ended as friends. David Nicholls throws in one last obstacle that takes us by surprise, even while my heart was racing I could see how much it was needed for that character to have a final epiphany. He’s brilliant at creating that bittersweet feeling that comes as we’re older and have romantic baggage. At first when we lose someone the shock and pain is everything, then after time and doing a little bit of work on ourselves a day hopefully comes where we can look back and it not hurt. We can acknowledge the pain but not let it overwhelm us. In fact, eventually, we can look back and smile about the good times, the love that was shared and how glad we are that we experienced it. That we’re able to move forward and enjoy new adventures. I really understand this from my own life and I genuinely closed the book with a smile on my face, knowing that both Marnie and Michael have so much life to look forward to whether together or apart on their journey.

Out now from Hodder & Stoughton (Sceptre)

Meet the Author

David Nicholls is the bestselling author of Starter for Ten, The Understudy, One Day, Us, Sweet Sorrow and now You Are Here. One Day was published in 2009 to extraordinary critical acclaim: translated into 40 languages, it became a global bestseller, selling millions of copies worldwide. His fourth novel, Us, was longlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

On screen, David has written adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, When Did You Last See Your Father? and Great Expectations, as well as of his own novels, Starter for Ten, One Day and Us. His adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was nominated for an Emmy and won him a BAFTA for best writer.

He is also the Executive Producer and a contributing screenwriter on a new Netflix adaptation of One Day. His latest novel, You Are Here, is out now in hardback.

Posted in Netgalley

The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr by June Woolerton.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What killed Katherine Parr? She was the ultimate Tudor survivor, the queen who managed to outwit and outlive Henry VIII. Yet just over eighteen months after his passing, Katherine Parr was dead. She had been one of the most powerful people in the country, even ruling England for her royal husband, yet she had died hundreds of miles from court and been quickly buried in a tiny chapel with few royal trappings. Her grave was lost for centuries only for her corpse to be mutilated after it was rediscovered during a tea party. The death of Katherine Parr is one of the strangest of any royals – and one of the most mysterious. The final days of Henry VIII’s last queen included a faithless husband and rumours of a royal affair while the weeks after her funeral swirled with whispers of poison and murder. The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr dives into the calamitous and tumultuous events leading up to the last hours of a once powerful queen and the bizarre happenings that followed her passing. From the elaborate embalming of her body, that left it in a state of perfect preservation for almost three centuries despite a burial just yards from her place of death, to the still unexplained disappearance, without trace, of her baby, the many questions surrounding the death of Queen Katherine are examined in a new light. This brand new book from royal author and historian June Woolerton brings together, for the first time, all the known accounts of the strange rediscovery of Katherine’s tomb and the even odder decision to leave it open to the elements and graverobbers for decades to ask – how did Katherine Parr really die?

I do have a fascination with the Tudors and the life of Katherine Parr is one of the more interesting out of all Henry VIII’s wives. Most people focus in on the King’s ‘Great Matter’, which is what advisors called his apparent mental and spiritual battle around his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. A cover-up for the fact he wanted to dispense with a wife who would no longer give him heirs, preferably as quickly as possible and move on to his proposed mistress Anne Boleyn. The ‘Great Matter’ was simply an excuse for divorce and if only Katherine had gone quietly. As it was it didn’t take long for Anne to be out of favour too, but sadly Katherine was too ill to enjoy her replacement’s fall from grace. A few years later, Anne of Cleves would go quietly and in doing so received great favour from Henry and Anne Boleyn’s childhood home of Hever Castle. She was the most shrewd of the wives. It is Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr that most see as escaping Henry’s barbarous habits of killing off his wives, but Katherine’s life after Henry was far from rosy. I always feel desperately sorry for this woman who loved a man from a very young age, but could never have him because of being married off to various old and infirm men who she nursed till their deaths. Katherine’s entire life is often reduced to these marriages, especially the last two; King Henry who she couldn’t refuse and finally, after Henry’s death, the love match she had always wanted with Thomas Seymour. There are various strange aspects to this last marriage, but the men she married are not really the sum of this intelligent and witty woman.

Courtiers saw Katherine’s marriage to Thomas Seymour as proof that the Queen had intelligence but absolutely no common sense, full of passion for a younger man who was certainly not worthy of her. In this book the author intends to uncover more about this interesting woman, by looking at the circumstances of her death and her burial place. The author clearly has a passion for her subject and has written the book like a true crime novel. This makes it compelling and meant I read it in a day when I was unwell in bed. The opening chapter was well written and placed perfectly to grab the reader and lead them into the mystery by looking at several odd events in the last twenty months of her life. I had always assumed that she’d married Seymour so quickly after Henry’s death, because she didn’t want to wait and be proposed to by someone else she couldn’t refuse. It is often mooted that she wanted to finally have some fun after dealing with an ailing Henry and the terrible ulcer that he received in a much earlier jousting match. The ulcer never healed fully and.was often weeping and painful. It is likely that sepsis from this infected leg eventually killed him. However, the author questions these long accepted facts as well as the assumption that her death was due to childbed fever. From my own reading I was aware of some of the information the author presents here. For example, before Henry’s death Katherine was the wife who managed to reunite him with his children. Most sources mention the close relationship she had with Elizabeth, possibly because Elizabeth left court to live with her stepmother in Gloucester after her father’s death. She also wrote regularly to Mary and Edward, convincing the King to invite his children to court and have them around him in his final years. Edward was of course the son of Henry and his third wife Jane Seymour, making Thomas Seymour the King’s uncle as soon as Edward took the throne. This made Thomas powerful, but it was also suggested he wouldn’t want a dowager Queen still of marriageable age interfering with his protectorship of Edward. What better way to take control than to become her husband?

Another rumour I’ve read in several history books and novels is that Thomas Seymour had his eyes on a much greater prize. Eventually, Edward’s reign would pass on to one of his sisters – an event that might come sooner than most expected since the young king was known to be frail. The Protestant Seymour’s would not want the Catholic Mary taking the throne, so if Thomas could get into the orbit of Elizabeth and start to influence her – no better than grooming – he could go from the King’s Uncle to the Queen’s Consort. I’ve read that Katherine Parr had a difficult pregnancy, with bed rest being recommended for many months. This left Thomas Seymour unoccupied and unsatisfied. He struck up a rapport with the Princess who was only a teenager. Elizabeth’s nurse Kat Ashley observed that he might pop into the princess’s bed chamber and was found ticking her when she was still in her night clothes. Kat made sure she didn’t leave Elizabeth alone for too long, but it is possible that the damage was done. Some sources suggest an absence for the princess not long after Katherine’s confinement. Could the teenage Elizabeth have been pregnant?

It’s only recently while watching a programme on Henry’s queens that I found out about that Katherine’s body had laid in a near perfect state for centuries. This was a fascinating part of the book that detailed the elaborate process of embalming and being interred in lead lined sheets before being placed in her coffin. All this was carried out with unseemly haste only 24 hours after her death from puerperal fever. She was buried only yards from her home of Sudeley Castle in the chapel. Over the years the chapel fell into disrepair and was removed, leaving no marker for her grave – a strange state of affairs for a woman who had been Queen. Her resting place forgotten, it was centuries later when Katherine was disinterred and so well preserved that her body was still perfect. At this point the grave was opened and keepsakes taken from her body, including a section of the lead sheet she was wrapped in. This was a terrible mistake and the natural process of decay followed very quickly. The grave was subject to further vandalism and investigation in a terribly undignified succession of events, including being left in the open on a rubbish heap! It took several decades and more indignities before a rector decided to disinter the Queen one last time and bury her where no one could get to the body again. Finally Katherine was at peace. However, for me the most pressing question about those final years of Katherine’s life is what happened to her daughter Mary, still a newborn baby when Katherine died. The author goes some way towards answering this mystery and shedding new light on Katherine’s final days. I thoroughly enjoyed the new light the author shed on why the Queen might have married Seymour, only months after Henry’s death. I found this new perspective speculative with little evidence to back it up, but it was still an interesting and valid theory.

I found some of the book a little disjointed as well as repetitive. The author jumped around from parts of Katherine’s life which was fine if you knew some of her story. However, if you didn’t the it might be harder to keep up. The author uses repetition and reminders about facts already established in other parts of the book, but for those who’ve read a lot of Tudor history or just have a good memory the reminders were a bit wearing and unnecessary. I do think that as a whole the book provides a thorough and well researched biographical introduction to Katherine. It’s also interesting enough to spark some thoughts for any lover of Tudor history. It also poses important questions about the final 20 months of her life and some I’d never considered, such as why she left court and moved to Gloucestershire far away from her allies and courtly circle? Was the description of her marriage to Seymour as a love match really justified? What was the full medical cause of death? Why was her burial so quick with a state funeral not even considered? I thought the author explored these questions well, as well as Katherine’s relationship with Edward and Mary, her other stepchildren who she wrote to regularly. It’s also interesting to read about her Protestant beliefs and how they led to her being the first woman and Queen to publish a book on her faith. I found this book mostly well researched and gave me new insights into her death, although the whereabouts of her daughter still remains a mystery. It is thought that Mary was entrusted to a noble woman and died in infancy, but that isn’t a proven fact. Also Katherine’s Protestant beliefs were more clearly explained, as was her power at the court before her royal marriage. It left me with a healthy respect for Katherine that I hadn’t had before and despite some repetition I learned some new facts about her life. Katherine Parr was certainly much more than the nursemaid Queen we are led to believe and deserves to be more than a footnote in Tudor history.

Published by Pen and Sword History 4th April

Meet the Author

June Woolerton is an author and journalist who’s spent twenty years reporting on and writing about royalty and royal history. She’s the editor of a major royal website and has written extensively for magazines and publications on history’s most famous monarchies and rulers as well as presenting podcasts and radio shows on royalty. In 2022, her book A History of Royal Jubilees was published. After graduating in history, she enjoyed a broadcasting career before moving into print and obtaining a degree in psychology. She lives near London with her husband and young son.

Posted in Netgalley

Bonjour Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Can she escape the darkness of her past in the City of Light?

It’s 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie’s real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands.

She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to discover more about her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong.

When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it’s both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected…

Most readers will know I have a fascination for the period directly after WWI, but recently I’ve been looking at books and films that have explored the aftermath of WW2. Originally I watched a film called The Aftermath starring the brilliant Jason Clarke and Alexander Skaarsgaard that followed a British colonel posted out to Nuremberg after the war ends. His job is to help rebuild and I remember being shocked that people were living in homes where their outer walls were missing, almost like looking into a doll’s house. Since then I’ve read novels set in the occupied countries like Poland and France and gaining other viewpoints makes you remember that the majority of people are caught up in a war they don’t want to fight, are tormented with memories of things they’ve done to survive and are still waiting for the return of those they love. I think we imagine that once the war was over, everything went back to normal, but that was far from the truth. Prisoners of war were kept, by us, for several years after the war ended, rationing only ended in 1954 and we were still rebuilding London till the mid 1970’s. It’s in this aftermath that we meet our heroine Sophie, just finishing boarding school in England with her friend Hettie. Sophie has a complicated past and her school years have been a temporary period of fun and friendship. Now she must return to the home and parish of clergyman Osbert Knox, an English village where her French mother ended up in dire straits during the war. Camille was pregnant and had fled Paris during the occupation, leaving behind Sophie’s father who was fighting in the Resistance. Lucky for the Knoxes, Camille had great housekeeping skills and she repaid their kindness in cooking, cleaning and implementing a household system that enabled them to concentrate on their parishioners. Sadly, Camille died and now the Knoxes are expecting Sophie to return from school and pick up where her mother left off, learning to keep house and support the couple. Sophie needs to earn back her keep and education, only then will Osbert return her mother’s precious savings book. This was money that Camille managed to save from her meagre allowance, knowing that Sophie would need something to restart her life with. Sophie dreams of returning to Paris, the home of her parents, but there’s only problem. She is sure that money is being taken from her mother’s savings. So she makes a decision to bring her escape forward, to find the savings book and flee with whatever is left to France and look for her father.

Sophie is a resilient girl, intelligent and able to read people. She doesn’t trust Osbert, but is still horrified to find that he expects her thanks to extend to much more than cooking and cleaning. Now she must escape and sooner rather than later. Sophie wants to build an independent life for herself, full of new experiences. She isn’t afraid about change, she’s quite matter of fact about those experiences she wants to try. She has a friendship with Johnny from the nearby farm and plans to lose her virginity with him, rationalising that it’s something she wants to get out of the way. This ability to single out what she wants and succeed in getting it will stand her in good stead once she gets to Paris. She has a deep yearning to connect with her history, even if her father hasn’t survived, she wants to know what he did during the war. Was he the hero that her mother painted him to be? Sophie knows that the scars of war run deep, that her father might have done terrible things to survive. The author writes about the moral compromises people make in war without judgement, allowing the reader to make their own decisions, but also reinforcing the point that no one knows what they’re capable of until they’re under duress. Finding her father isn’t easy though. She takes work in an art gallery and uses her wage to hire a private investigator. She finds out about the paintings looted from Jewish families during the occupation, removed by the Germans as the owners were transferred to concentration camps. However there were French collectors and gallery owners who collaborated in these deals, using a terrible atrocity as a business opportunity. She also finds that there are so many people looking for someone: husbands who never returned from the battlefield but are not amongst the dead; resistance fighters executed and thrown in a shallow grave; women killed for their collaboration with German soldiers during the war. There are vendettas and grudges still playing out and Sophie is warned that she might not like what she finds. Some secrets should remain buried. The buildings in Paris echo the the trauma still felt by the people, from a distance they look okay but close up it’s clear that there’s been no maintenance. The paintwork is peeling and the stone is damaged, but there is still beauty.

I really enjoyed the friendship between Sophie and Hettie, who has returned home to constraints of her own. She is trapped in within the expectations of her parents and her class. Hattie is expected to be a ‘deb’ and be presented for the London season. If she shines she might attract the right sort of husband. Her only route is marriage and children, no independence or career path. She has to be engaging but not appear too clever and put suitors off. Neither girl has any type of sex education, is not allowed her own bank account or make decisions about her own fertility. It’s scary to me that a lot of these restrictions lasted into my mother’s lifetime! Thankfully Hettie has a belated rebellion. I loved that the girl’s friendship lasts a lifetime and they give each other support and strength. This feel like a transitional period in time, where the world is trying to recover from war and it was a huge realisation to me that it took this long. I remembered reading that it was Ed Balls who, as chancellor, paid the final debts from WW2 and being so shocked. It takes people a lot longer to heal and return to themselves. My own father in law took many years after WW2 moving from the Siberian forest through the Middle East and North Africa and into Europe. He eventually settled in London, but his wartime experience still haunted him when he lived with us in the 2000s. I think Elizabeth Buchan has a way of writing about how we come to terms with generational trauma like this. Here she has mixed a thoughtful and complex historical period with a coming of age story. Just as Sophie is becoming a woman, the country she escapes to is also in the midst of a change. It is by finding out about WW2 and the terrible stories of living in Paris under occupation that she starts to understand her parent’s story and the courageous choices they made. Despite the pain and loss, Sophie’s experiences have a joy about them as she attempts to build herself a life with resilience and happiness. Buchan’s writing always has a melancholic, bittersweet feel. There’s a sense that life and the greater world are imperfect, even dangerous, but we can still live happily within it.

Out now from Corvus Books

Meet the Author

Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and Two Women in Rome. Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.

Posted in Netgalley

House of Mirrors by Erin Kelly

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Erin Kelly’s latest novel is a return to characters who started life in The Poison Tree. Rex and Karen are a bohemian couple, who like a quiet life and love their daughter Alice who has flown the nest to live in London with her boyfriend Gabe. Karen is still living with the secret of what she did years ago, constantly worrying that Rex or Alice will discover the truth. Rex came from the wealthy Capel family, but the couple are far from comfortable. Rex is estranged from his wealthy father Roger Capel who has new and much younger wife and family. There’s a reason the couple keep a low profile, as a young man Rex was convicted of double murder. What happened on ‘The Night Of’ has overshadowed them all. Rex and his sister Biba were alone at the family home, when Biba’s boyfriend turned up and an argument ensued. The disturbance alerted the neighbours and one came round to see if everything was okay. Within minutes both Biba’s boyfriend and the neighbour are dead. There are so many questions about what happened that night. What was the argument about? Where did the gun come from? Were Rex and his sister the only ones there that night? Rex took the blame for the murders and served his time, with Karen staying faithfully by his side throughout. Did Rex really commit the crime? However, the mystery that has haunted the family for years is what happened to Biba? After that night she has never been seen again.

Rex and Karen’s daughter Alice is starting a vintage dress shop called Dead Girls Dresses. Strange things have happened since the opening though. Alice has had dropped phone calls at the shop and an oddly dressed woman with her face covered visited the shop. Could it be her Aunt Biba? Then Alice’s grandfather Roger Capel dies and leaves his granddaughter all of the womens clothes from the family home and it’s a treasure trove! Trawling through these pieces and trying them on brings Alice even closer to Biba. I thoroughly enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland details in the book, from the mirrors and chequered floors of the ‘the night of..’ to an Alice themed event at the dress shop. There is a sense, as the story goes on, that we are falling further and further down a rabbit hole. I’m a sucker for fashion and vintage so Alice’s shop was a glorious pick ‘n’ mix of beautiful pieces. This was a shop I would visit and the aesthetic sounded like my study – taxidermy, a white rabbit, antique inkwells, Venetian masks and a candlestick that’s in the shape of a monkey wearing a dress are just some of my weird objects! I thought the general shabbiness of Alice’s apartment was very believable. It’s in a large house where the ground floor is uninhabitable, so they have to squeeze upstairs having no money for repairs. I thought that the author captured Alice’s naivety very well and I could easily believe she would end up in a relationship with Gabe who’s a militant climate change activist. I felt like his activism and relationship with best friend Stef came first in his life, despite professing to be madly in love with Alice. I know that once you start siding with parents in novels and films you’ve reached ‘old’, but I had the same misgivings as Karen. I thought Gabe was gaslighting Alice and making her doubt herself, I just didn’t know why. I kept wishing that Alice would have the strength to recognise and resist him.

Erin Kelly is an author I’ve read since her very first novel and she has a way of writing something utterly compelling and full of tension, but also full of unusual details. There’s the quirky references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice and funny little everyday instances, like trying to unmask the dog constantly using the opposite shop’s doorstep as a toilet. There were also those ideas about twinning, doppelgängers and mirrors that added an uncanny element to the story. Using Alice and Karen to narrate the story in alternate chapters means we can see the relationship between mother and daughter. Karen’s fears for Alice with regards to Gabe and his coercive control really amplified the tension. We see Alice’s frustration with her mum, but also her concern for her father who she believes was innocent of murder. She knows that Rex is loyal to those he loves and she starts to suspect he may have been covering for someone else. I also sensed that there was so much more to the double murder then either Rex or Karen were admitting to, especially to Alice. Possibly something to do with aunt Biba? As Biba started to overshadow Alice’s thinking and the strange calls continued I was on tenterhooks waiting for the truth to be revealed. It’s a massive shock when someone from the past does turn up, but it’s not anyone the family expected. For Karen and Rex this newcomer is an eerie reminder of his sister. They also upset the dynamic of Alice’s relationship and Gabe feels very put out when his attempts to control their role in the group fails and it looks like Alice might become influenced by someone else. I would have thought that Gabe being pushed out would be exactly what Karen wanted but strangely she seems concerned too. I kept remembering that someone in this family is a murderer and they could strike again. I also wondered what those involved might be driven to, in order to keep their secrets. As the final pages came I was still shocked by what actually happened! It’s amazing the lengths people might go to for someone they love.

Out now from Hodder & Stoughton

Meet the Author

Erin Kelly is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Poison Tree, The Sick Rose, The Burning Air, The Ties That Bind, He Said/She Said, Stone Mothers/We Know You Know, Watch Her Fall and Broadchurch: The Novel, inspired by the mega-hit TV series. In 2013, The Poison Tree became a major ITV drama and was a Richard & Judy Summer Read in 2011. He Said/She Said spent six weeks in the top ten in both hardback and paperback, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier crime novel of the year award, and selected for both the Simon Mayo Radio 2 and Richard & Judy Book Clubs. She has worked as a freelance journalist since 1998 and written for the Guardian, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, New Statesman, Red, Elle and Cosmopolitan. Born in London in 1976, she lives in north London with her husband and daughters. erinkelly.co.uk twitter.com/mserinkelly

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

My Best Reads April 2024

Posted on by thelotusreaders

House of Mirrors by Erin Kelly

Another unusual family and a great mystery from Erin Kelly, my full review is coming this week, but the book is out now. Karen and Rex Capel seem like any normal couple nearing middle age, but there are many secrete in their past, particularly the truth about what happened ‘the night of…’ when two men were left dead, Rex’s sister Biba disappeared and Rex ended up in prison. The Capel family are rich, but Rex’s father found a younger wife and started a new family, leaving Rex adrift. Several things happen that destabilise this usually, rather quiet family. Rex and Karen’s daughter Alicia seems to be getting serious about eco warrior Gabe who she is dating and she also opens a vintage dress shop. Honestly, Erin Kelly had me as soon as I read the name of the shop – ‘Dead Girl’s Dresses.’ Roger Capel dies leaving her an inheritance including her grandmother and her aunt Biba’s wardrobe of clothes. A strange woman keeps appearing, even turning up at the shop in disguise and leaving several cryptic notes. Could Aunt Biba still be alive and might there still be secrets about ‘the night of’? An interesting and engaging mystery with a touch of Alice in Wonderland inspiration.

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable.

I’m not going to say too much about this novel because it’s not out until the end of the summer. It is an incredible debut though and I was utterly spellbound by it. Set in 18th Century Venice, our heroine is Anna Maria an orphan handed over to the Ospedale Della Piéta as a baby. This community of nuns have a recess in a wall where a baby can be anonymously passed into their care. The girls are brought up to work within the hospital, scrubbing floors and doing laundry, but they also have the chance to learn a musical instrument. The best musicians have a chance to be taught by the music master and be part of his elite orchestra. Anna leaps off the page, she’s lively, talented and ambitious. She’s determined that her violin playing will bring her to the attention of the famous music master, because the alternatives don’t bear thinking about. This really is a book to look out for and I loved it.

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes

I loved this dive straight back into the Walsh family after Again, Rachel. Rachel has always been my favourite Walsh, but in this latest novel Anna really did steal my heart. Anna is nearing her fiftieth birthday and her high flying PR role in the beauty business is wearing a little thin. Although she’s always loved living in NYC, the pandemic left her feeling the distance from her family in Ireland. After losing her husband Aidan in a terrible car accident several years ago, her contact with his family in Boston has waned. Her subsequent relationship with Angelo – a ‘feathery stroker’ – has been conducted with respect, equality and a deep fondness, but never passionate, all consuming love. With a need to be near those she loves, she gives notice on her job, her apartment and her relationship. Back in Ireland she is offered an emergency PR role for family friend Bridie who is opening a resort on farmland she owns near the coast. Her daughter is seriously ill and their building works have been vandalised overnight. With disgruntled locals and no time for the delicate negotiations required Bridie is begging Anna to work her magic. There’s only one problem, the financial broker on the deal is Joey Armstrong. He and Anna have unfinished business, will they be able to work together without stirring up the past? This is a fantastic novel, full of Marian’s trademark wit and emotional intelligence. I absolutely devoured it.

The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher

“Florrie learned, long ago, that society forgets an old person was ever young.”

Florrie Butterfield has been in poor health lately and her mobility starts to suffer, so rather sensibly she decides to sell her house and look for a residential home. She wants assisted living, where she can keep her freedom and independence but have help on hand if needed. When she finds Babbington Hall in the Oxfordshire countryside she thinks she’s found just the place. As she settles into her self-contained flat in the grounds she starts to make friends, when unexpectedly one of them is found dead near the compost heap. Arthur’s death could have been natural causes, but Florrie’s suspicions are aroused. Then something terrible happens. The home’s manager Renata approaches Florrie as someone she’d like to talk to about matters of the heart. It’s lovely to still be seen as someone useful, someone to confide in. Florrie looks forward to their get together, but that night as she looks out of her window at the storm brewing outside, she hears a scream. Then she sees a body fall from an upstairs window, from Renata’s room. So, Florrie sets out to investigate these deaths. Is there a murderer at large and if so what have they gained from killing a defenceless old man and the lovely Renata? This was a lovely mix of mystery and a woman looking back over her life, it brought back so many memories of working in nursing homes and the rich lives many of my residents had lived.

Goodbye Birdie Greenwing by Ericka Waller

I loved this beautiful story that revolved around an elderly lady called Birdie, who receives a terrible diagnosis from her doctor. Birdie is lonely. She has lived alone ever since an event that took away her sister and husband. She hasn’t been participating in life and even now she chooses to walk away from the hospital without the help or support offered. Birdie’s doctor Ada is also isolated. Having come to Brighton from Poland she has few friends, just the elderly man and his son who run the Polish shop nearby. When a new intern comes to work with her, this isolation is challenged and she is worried about Birdie who lives in the same road. She finds herself walking past and checking the house and garden for signs Birdie isn’t coping. Birdie also has new neighbours. Jane has moved to the south coast with her daughter Frankie to escape the rather claustrophobic influence of her mother Min. However, Frankie and Min are thick as thieves and share a rather abrupt and forthright manner. It’s sure that where Frankie has gone, Min will definitely follow eventually. It is Birdie’s predicament that brings all these women together in unusual ways. Ericka writes beautifully about mothers and daughters, the subtle cultural differences that influence how we support and help each other, as well as the personal growth that occurs when we let someone in. I thought this was a beautiful story and everyone I have recommended it to has enjoyed it too.

You Are Here by David Nicholls.

It’s been such a gift to have two of my favourite romantic writers with books out this month. Marian Keyes is a writing goddess! Equally David Nicholls writes about the experience of falling in love like no one else. As anyone who’s read or watched the Netflix series One Day can attest, David writes about those misunderstandings, obstacles, miscommunications and the minutia of relationships with such truth and charm. Here we have Michael and Marnie, each invited on a walking weekend in Cumbria by a mutual friend, Cleo, but with the intention of meeting someone else. Michael is closed off, hurt in the past and not able to let anyone in. Marnie is a great character, she’s funny, patient, and willing to go with the flow. The man she’s supposed to meet has a high stress and high paid job in London. He would suit her, geographically at least, but to be blunt he’s a bit of a dick. Marnie is a reader though, a translator of fiction and full of romantic ideals. She goes into the walk as a novice, breaking in new boots and not enamoured by the unfortunate weather. However, a transformation occurs over a couple of days as Marnie starts to appreciate the head space, the incredible views and just being out in the open air. Michael’s potential date doesn’t turn up, but he is still wrapped up in thoughts of his estranged wife. He does find himself drawn by Marnie though, noting how she looks when dressed for dinner at the hotel. He finds her perhaps a little too outspoken, she doesn’t hold back when finding the going a bit tough, but does respond to her sense of humour. As the main group make preparations to leave for the working week, Michael plans to walk on to the opposite coast and Robin Hood’s Bay. Marnie has nothing immediate in London and could easily walk alongside him a bit longer. How will they get along, just the two of them? This is a beautiful novel that’s somehow heartwarming thanks to it’s lack of traditional romance. This is two older people, who’ve been hurt, negotiating a challenge together and I was transfixed by the ‘will they won’t they’ of the story.

Next month’s reading:

Posted in Squad Pod

The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux by MJ Robotham

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Everyone knows Ruby Devereaux’s books. But no one knows her story… until now.

From a teenager in wartime England to a veteran of modern-day London – via 1950’s New York, the Swinging Sixties, Cold War Berlin, Venice and Vietnam – Ruby Devereaux has lived one hell of a life: parties, scandals and conflict zones, meeting men and adventure along the way. In a writing career spanning seven decades and more than twenty books, she’s distilled everything into her work. Or has she?

There were times during this novel where I wished I was the transcriber in the room, just so I could be the first to hear this lifetime of stories. Ruby Devereaux’s editor is under pressure from above. Ruby is almost 90 years old and the publisher is determined to get the one last book she owes them. So her editor suggests that she closes her illustrious writing career with a memoir. Ruby was on the verge of packing up her typewriter, but she does perhaps have one story left in her, or maybe twelve…

The bulk of the book is Ruby’s memoir as told to her transcriptionist Jude, each chapter named after a man in her life and telling the story of their relationship. Although it’s not as simple as that, through these affairs she takes us through the latter half of the 20th Century and right across the world. It takes us through one woman’s history, but also the ever changing landscape of the world around her, taking in those unforgettable moments and some fascinating social history too. I used to be fascinated with my 90 year old grandmother and the changes she’d seen over a lifetime in the countryside: from horse drawn ploughs to huge tractors; from cycling everywhere to her children owning cars; from handwritten letters to online communication. This has similar vibes, but on a bigger scale as Ruby moves from peacetime to war and across three continents with the world constantly changing beneath her. The author weaves together the social history, world events and Ruby’s growing up with romance and scandal. Ruby has spent seventy years telling her character’s stories, but now it’s time for her own. It’s definitely a life well lived as it’s taken her to the 1950’s New York of the Mad Men, Berlin and Budapest during the Cold War, into Vietnam and into relationships with twelve different men. These are the men who’ve inspired her novels. Make no mistake though, this isn’t really about the men in her life, this is about Ruby. Each relationship captures where Ruby is at that point in her life; a chapter in her personal growth. Ruby easily outshines her male counterparts because she has such a zest for life and breaks society’s rules and expectations about women everywhere she goes. As a young girl in post-war England she’s very matter of fact about her first sexual experience, wanting it out of the way before she leaves home. She’s an incredibly resilient character, despite experiencing loss and heartbreak at a very young age. She makes a promise to herself and the person she’s lost to keep going, grabbing opportunities whenever they arise. Never realising that all along she’s writing the most exciting story she’ll ever tell.

It’s this resilience and insistence on saying yes to experiences that take her across the globe. Starting in London, she lives and falls in love in the romantic city of Venice, via a terrible experience in New York that spawns her second book. She then explores Saigon and Budapest, before finally ending up in Cornwall. She spends time in a commune, dabbles in the world of spying and has assignments in war zones. Just as in her love life, she’s tough and doesn’t dwell on failures or knock backs, she chalks it up to experience and moves on. There is a danger of some of the men in her life becoming a mere backdrop to Ruby and her escapades, it’s very hard to keep up with her energy. However the later sections in England felt a little more detailed and because they’re not as filled with adventures, the men have more room to develop. Their relationships with Ruby feel deeper and more real. Ruby is always at the centre though and I loved following her character development. We can see which experiences have given her strength and a sense of boundaries. I love a scandal so this was definitely a fun romp in parts, whilst also having a sense of reflection and self-awareness as Ruby becomes an older lady. There’s a bravery in her willingness to share her life, particularly her emotions and those difficult parts of her life – relationships that went wrong, the loss, motherhood and her mental health. However, despite this we’re caught up in Ruby’s humour and ability to heal. I think the author has created a brilliant character and blended actual history with her life very well. Ruby is such an incredibly memorable character and I enjoyed spending time in her company.

Published by Aria 11th April 2024

Meet the Author

M J Robotham had wanted to write from a very young age, inspired by the book ‘Harriet the Spy’. However life got in the way and it was journalism and having a family keeping her occupied. She was a midwife for several years, but started to write seriously after completing an MA in Creative Writing. her first novel was A Woman of War followed by The Secret Messenger set in occupied Venice.

Her next two books were set in pre and post war Berlin, then wartime Norway, both are places she loves to visit. In her spare time she visits the gym, to knit unusual things and enjoys the music of Jack Savoretti,

Posted in Netgalley, Publisher Proof

House of Shades by Lianne Dillsworth

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Hester is a doctoress, using her mother’s skills and recipes to treat the ladies of the night around her Kings Cross home. She’s offered a commission to work in the Fitzrovia home of Gervaise Cherville, a rich factory owner with declining health.

If Hester can diagnose and treat his illness he will pay her ten pounds, a life changing amount of money in 1833. Thinking that the fee will help them move to a better area of London, she leaves behind husband Jos and slightly wild sister, Willa, to work at Tall Trees the Cherville mansion. However there’s a dark energy in this old house, as if there’s a curse on Cherville and his mansion.He asks if Hester will track down two women who worked in the house – Aphrodite and Artemis. However, they weren’t servants but slaves and Cherville’s treatment of them torments him and keeps him awake at night. If Hester can find the women, allowing him to make reparation before he dies, he will raise her fee to twenty pounds. Hester is torn, twenty pounds would allow them to move to the country, removing Willa from the temptations that keep her out at night. Yet, will these women want to found, especially given Cherville’s abuses of power? Also, can Hester as a black woman, put another black women in danger without the consequences being on her conscience forever?

Inheritance is a huge theme in the novel and especially, the way in which characters receive their portion. Of course an inheritance isn’t always financial and the intentions of the giver play a large part in what it can do. Hester’s mother has given her an incredible inheritance, her doctoress’s bag of herbs and potions that can ease sicknesses of the mind and body. This of course helps her earn a living, tending to the prostitutes around their part of town at night. Kings Cross is known as a red light district and Hester tends to their venereal diseases, but also their bruises when men take what they want without paying. However, she also has the keeping of her younger sister Willa which isn’t easy. Willa is wild, easily led and naive when it comes to the intentions of men. Hester’s husband Jos finds it difficult living with Willa, especially when the sisters are at odds with each other. Willa works at the Cherville’s factory and has been noticed by Gervaise Cherville’s son, Rowland. It’s clear to Hester that his intentions aren’t honourable, but can she convince her headstrong sister that he isn’t as in love with her as he claims? When working at the Cherville’s house can she stop Rowland from recognising who she is, while also taking care that he doesn’t put undue influence on his father. Rowland isn’t happy with Gervaise giving away ‘his money’ in reparations, after all their plantation has hundreds of slaves and where will his charity end?

I loved the double meaning of the title House of Shades; the shades or ghosts of the past play their part here, especially in the mahogany furniture Cherville had made from the trees on the plantation. However, it also refers to shades of skin colour. I loved how the author explored the concept of ‘passing’ and colourism, especially in the light skinned character Lady Raine. Hester herself is very dark skinned, a colour that immediately places her in an unusual category. Her position as a doctoress situates her far higher in a house’s hierarchy than we might expect. There would be darker skinned slaves on Cherville’s plantation who are confined to working in the fields and bear the brunt of the ill treatment meted out, whereas those slaves considered lighter skinned might get to work in the household. Traditionally house slaves were thought to be higher in status than field workers, but whereas field workers get to leave the crops and spend time with their families in the village in he evenings, house slaves are at the beck and call of their master or mistress and even sleep in the house away from their families. They’re also closer to the male family members and therefore very vulnerable. There is a moment where Margaret is startled when she bumps into Hester on the landing, lurking in the darkness. She would only expect to meet servants of her own status on the master’s floor, not a black woman with her herbs and potions. I wondered how light skinned Willa was, to make her ‘palatable’ to Rowland Cherville, who appears to think slaves are expendable. He certainly doesn’t want them taking ‘his’ money.

Reparations are a huge theme in the novel and potentially the cause of Gervaise Cherville’s illness, as he admits the concerns and guilt around his treatment of slaves. Could his disturbing symptoms of insomnia, hallucinations and sleepwalking be put down to the end stage syphillis he’s suffering, or are the women he’s wronged in that house haunting him? When Hester first finds a dark, cold room off the kitchen she feels straight away that this isn’t a cold larder. There’s something about the space that she can feel and isn’t remotely surprised that slaves were sleeping in there, deemed unfit to be housed in the attic rooms with the servants. If all he wants to do is make reparations and apologise would it help the women to hear it? Or will the mention of their former master be so terrifying it disturbs their lives and leads to them fleeing once again? I suspected Gervaise hadn’t told Hester all that transpired between him and the women, in fact I doubted he even fully understood the extent of what he’d done. Yet it was Rowland Cherville who made my blood run cold, not only is he entering into exploitative relationships with young women who work in his factory but he doesn’t appear to have any empathy at all. His entire focus is on his own needs. He refers to his father’s money as his own, even though his father is still alive, and seems to have no feeling for his illness or imminent death. In fact he’d rather his father died, before he’s able to give all his money away. He also cares nothing for any of the slaves on whose backs the factory, Tall Trees and his inheritance have been built. They’re simply incidental to his own plans.

I really enjoyed the way this novel took me into the reality of Victorian England for black women. It gave me a new perspective, after Lianne’s first novel which looked at the rise of freak shows and the display of black women’s bodies. The private showings being another insidious and secret experience like rich men using women as domestic slaves and the objects of their desire behind closed doors, while seeming like a respectable businessman to society. Yet, the freak shows seemed to be freer and more in the control of the individual performer. One of the things I hated most when I visited the Slavery Museum in Liverpool, was the taking away of identity, so the way Cherville gave his slaves the names of goddesses made me shiver. It shows his desire for them on one hand, while keeping them in a cupboard, locked away all night like animals. While Hester is searching for them I was wondering whether they’d found their identity again, reclaimed their names and found a space to be relatively free. I feared that they’d had to adopt yet another identity, to disappear, constantly looking over their shoulder. Hester is a heroine that it’s easy to become involved with and I really sympathised with her feeling of being in-between: torn between being a wife and a sister; between her patient and her fellow women; not a servant, but not entirely free either. There’s even a revelation that draws her further into the history of Tall Trees. I wanted a happy ending for Hester, that she might be able to leave London and live that simpler life she and Jos have been craving. This is another triumph for Lianne Dillsworth and neatly places her on the list of authors whose books I would buy without question in future.

Published on 16th May 2024 from Random House

Meet the Author

Lianne Dillsworth lives and works in London. She has always loved anything and everything to do with books and her earliest memories involve reading and being read to. At school Lianne’s favourite subjects were English and History, so when she started writing, historical fiction was a natural choice. In Theatre of Marvels, her debut novel, Lianne indulges her love for the Victorian period evoking London in all its mid-nineteenth century glory. She is currently working on her second book under the watchful eye of her tiny terrier.

Posted in Squad Pod

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Sally Hepworth is a new author to me, so I was interested in reading this thriller based within the Australian child protection system, most notably one foster home called Wild Meadows. Three girls grew up there under the care of Miss Fairchild, described like an 1980’s Barbie doll, and thought to be one of the best foster parents in the system. The three girls are now grown women. Jessica was the first long term foster child and now runs a home organising business and is married to Phil. Lately, she’s been suffering panic attacks and is using benzodiazepines to control her anxiety. Norah is a ballsy and confrontational woman who doesn’t stand for any nonsense. She is currently being blackmailed by a taxi driver whose nose she broke in an altercation. She sent him a picture of her breasts so he didn’t go to the cops, but now he wants more. Alicia is a social worker in a child protection team, trying to save children who might otherwise end up with a childhood like hers. She has a tentative relationship with her housemate Meera who she has just kissed, but struggles to be vulnerable and accept that she’s worthy of love. They are called back to Wild Meadows when building work unearths the body of a baby. As they travel back to where they spent their childhood, memories start to emerge about their traumatic childhoods at the hands of Miss Fairchild. It becomes clear that their present problems are an echo of that terrible start in life. How will they cope with digging up everything that happened back then and what will happen when Miss Fairchild arrives?

I felt incredibly sorry for Jessie who was the first foster child, conditioned to love Miss Fairchild (who she calls Mum) and to do anything that pleases her including cleaning the house from top to bottom. She and Miss Fairchild are a team and even though the work is sometimes hard, she knows Miss Fairchild loves her. Jessie is the favourite and being the favourite is wonderful – until someone else comes along. When Norah arrives without warning, Jessie is put out. So she tries even harder to please her mother and doesn’t understand when she’s rejected. It’s hard to watch, because even Norah can see it’s like kicking a puppy. Jessie’s confusion and feelings of dejection have turned her into a people pleaser. She’s now married to Phil, who seems kind but still Jessie is compelled to please him and appear perfect at all times. If she’s not perfect, no one will love her. Before she leaves with her sisters Jessie reaches a new low by stealing benzodiazepines from a client’s bathroom cabinet. When she’s rumbled, Jessie switches off her phone and leaves with her sisters. I really enjoyed Norah, who comes to Wild Meadows second and ousts Jessica from the favourite position. It’s not that Norah dislikes Jessie, it’s just that she’s been in other homes and knows that it’s best to be the popular kid. Despite this the girls start a tentative friendship and soon Norah is sleeping next to Jessie and sticking up for her at school. They are sisters and sisters stick together. Norah is now single and lives with her three rescue dogs, named after the first thing they destroyed after they arrived; Converse, Thong and Couch. liked her sense of humour and her ability to look after herself, although the taxi driver issue is out of hand and Norah knows that if he goes to the police she’s breached her good behaviour

order and may go to prison. Alicia, made the least impression on me as a child but perhaps the greatest impression as an adult. She soon bonds with the other two girls and they give each other some semblance of a normal home, playing music together, staying up late talking and devising ways to deal with their foster mother. Now Alicia is battles everyday for kids in the system. It’s as if in saving them, she saves herself. Her friendship with Meera is strong but when it starts to become something more she panics. Never used to the full package when it comes to relationships, she can’t believe that she can keep everything she and Meera already have plus have a romantic relationship too. Sex and love don’t go together in Alicia’s world. She’s avoiding the issue by travelling with her sisters, but when Meera turns up out of the blue she has to bring her past and present together.

Between these timelines there are small chapters that I found really interesting because although we don’t know who is speaking, we know it’s with a psychiatrist or therapist. This unnamed woman is talking about her childhood, which is truly horrific to read and a heads up for anyone who is triggered by reading about child abuse, this is a really tough. To be honest the abuse depicted across the book is physical, sexual, mental, financial and spiritual. I think this narrative really got to me because I grew up in an evangelical church and even though my experience there wasn’t abusive, it was as if women were second class citizens only there to be good, supportive wives and defer to men. What this woman goes through is much worse and as she relates it to the psychologist he seems to have weird ‘tells’ that the also speaker notices. As her story progresses he leans forward, perhaps more interested then neutral. She can see emotions in his eyes as she talks. He’s sympathetic. He’s distraught about what she’s been through. Is she telling the truth or is her story embroidered, gathering momentum as she sees him react. Playing his emotions, but to what end? I was hooked by this narrative, horrified but fascinated in equal measure because there was definitely something going on.

As news reports start to bring in a stream of younger women the authorities refer to them as ‘the babies’. The three sisters hadn’t remembered them except for Amy, a cute two year old who fell in love with her older sisters, infuriating Miss Fairchild who wanted the babies to love only her. What if Amy is the baby under the house? Surely now Miss Fairchild will be taken in for questioning? Sally Hepworth has written three women here that you will really be rooting for, in fact you might even identify with one of them. Miss Fairchild is the perfect villain, with her angelic looks and ability to manipulate any story to place her in a better light. Does this make her a murderer though? It isn’t just the central mystery that keeps you hooked though. Will Norah’s altercation with the taxi man catch up with her? The tension slowly builds around Jessie whose latest client noticed some diazepam missing and isn’t letting it go. When Meera arrives unannounced Alicia has to face her friend, but also explain their close relationship to her sisters. Can she accept Meera’s love and her own sexuality? The author keeps this tension up to the very end, with a couple of revelations and a twist that was really clever and I didn’t expect. I read this so quickly, desperate to see some characters get their comeuppance and others to see justice done. I especially enjoyed the resolution of the therapy sessions. This book will definitely keep you reading, but be prepared. You might not be able to put it down.

Out now from MacMillan

Meet the Author

Sally Hepworth is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including The Good Sister and The Soulmate. Her latest novel, Darling Girls, was released in Australia in September 2023, and will be released in North America in April 2024.

Drawing on the good, the bad and the downright odd of human behaviour, Sally writes incisively about family, relationships and identity. Her domestic thriller novels are laced with quirky humour, sass and a darkly charming tone. They are available worldwide in English and have been translated into twenty languages.

Sally lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her three children and one adorable dog. She has recently taken up ocean swimming (or to put it more accurately, ocean dipping)

Posted in Personal Purchase

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’m going to say it.

I am a Marian Keyes superfan.

I love her tweets or whatever the hell we call them now. I love her honesty. I love her Strictly fandom. I especially love her sense of humour. I love that her books have drawn my stepdaughter into daily reading, because of course more than anything I love her writing. She puts all her quirk, wit and self-awareness into the characters she writes. She is a writing goddess! She gets better year on year and I loved this dive straight back into the Walsh family after Again, Rachel. Rachel has always been my favourite Walsh, but in this latest novel Anna really did steal my heart. Anna is nearing her fiftieth birthday and her high flying PR role in the beauty business is wearing a little thin. Although she’s always loved living in NYC, the pandemic left her feeling the distance from her family in Ireland. After losing her husband Aidan in a terrible car accident several years ago, her contact with his family in Boston has waned. Her subsequent relationship with Angelo – a ‘feathery stroker’ – has been conducted with respect, equality and a deep fondness, but never passionate, all consuming love. With a need to be near those she loves, she gives notice on her job, her apartment and her relationship.

Her family think she’s gone mad and she almost starts to think she’s made a huge mistake when a sudden job opportunity comes her way. Her sister’s friend Bridie has been building a luxury hotel and spa on farmland near the coast, but the project has hit the buffers. Locals have vandalised the site leaving machinery sabotaged and the luxury bungalows daubed with paint. Bridie and her husband have had the worst news, their daughter has been diagnosed with cancer and needs their total focus. What they need is an experienced but down to earth PR who will be able to converse with the locals in town, find out what their grievances are and hopefully, get the project moving forward again. Anna is booked into the local hotel and can be ready to hit the ground running, but there’s just one snag. The finance broker who has put together the deal for Bridie’s project is Joey Armstrong. Joey was part of the Irish ex-pat community in New York when Anna and Rachel first moved out there. He was also one of the ‘Real Men’, a group of long haired, tight jeaned, rock gods who included Rachel’s husband Luke. Joey was hot. All tawny haired, with the most kissable mouth Anna had ever seen, not to mention his jeans which were just on the wrong side of decent. The first night they met Anna felt an immediate vibe and was full of anticipation until her sister Helen walked in. She saw Joey’s eyes immediately slide over her and become laser focused on her beautiful sister. Anna was immediately slighted and when Helen and Joey left together she decided to dispel this particular lean hipped rock god to the back of her mind. However, this wasn’t the last time their paths crossed. Joey has always been a mix of old flame and thorn in Anna’s side. Can she put aside their past and work together on this project?

Anna has that wonderful characteristic that can’t be taught, she has an easy charm and an ability to talk to anyone from building contractors to the lady of the manor. She takes to M’town straight away, working out who are the cornerstones of the community and who has something to lose from the development at Bridie’s farm. Knowing that her NYC clothes won’t work in rural Ireland, she dresses in jeans and a waterproof coat and pulls her hair back in a ponytail. Minimal make-up leaves her looking fresh-faced and the facial scar from her accident with Aidan is exposed. She’s shrewd enough to realise that it gives her an advantage, no matter whether they people feel sorry for her, are curious or think it shows honesty and openness. She’s smart and has similar skills to her sister Rachel when it comes to communication. The openness, lack of judgement and appreciation that Rachel shows her clients in the counselling room, is equally fruitful when trying to get to the bottom of why certain people in town are against the development. Anna genuinely cares and within days can see where mistakes were made, where a concern was overlooked or an individual was inconvenienced. She can make the most insignificant person feel like the centre of her world and is soon making friends. We follow her investigation and watch her become more and more embedded in this quirky but beautiful little place. In between we see glimpses into Anna’s past, from the before and after devastation of Aidan’s death to her relationship with best friend Jackie and her daughter Trea. Jackie has been her best friend, a relationship that even survived Jackie’s fraught relationship with Joey. When Jackie becomes pregnant, Anna puts aside her own feelings for Joey and becomes her birthing partner and almost a co-parent to Trea. However, something happens to jeopardise their friendship and the women have barely spoken since.

A Marian Keyes romance is never just heart and flowers. It’s always about the heroine’s personal baggage and need for self-growth too. Often I prefer the inner growth to the potential relationship, but not in this case. I absolutely loved this couple and their story. We all have that someone who got away. For me it was a lanky and eccentric music lover called Glynn who would turn up at the door unannounced – often sporting flowers from the graveyard or my dad’s own flowerbeds. There was rarely any warning with Glynn, he might be waiting for me at school having invited himself for tea or have walked five miles from town with some song lyrics scribbled on a postcard that I just had to have. We would lie on my bed and listen to the Cocteau Twins, Ride and The Smiths. My dad would despair at his Joe Bloggs wide leg jeans with frayed hems that dragged mud and grass into the house. He had hair like Clint Boon from the Inspiral Carpets and a huge billowing parka that I stole and wore for two years straight. He also had a complicated home life and often reminded me of Snufkin from The Moomins, who loved the solidity and dependability of Moomin House but also needed time to wander alone whenever it suited him. I was hopelessly in love with him, but it took him three years to finally ask me out and I was scared that it was finally happening that I panicked and refused. Even now, every few months or so he sends me a Spotify track by House of Love or Northside and I love that little reminder of teenage love. Similarly, Joey and Anna have a very long history with several near misses and a deep friendship when he let her close. Although they’ve never had a romantic relationship it is Anna and not one of his many lovers who knows the truth about his upbringing and how damaging those years were. He has trusted her with his deepest secrets, but he has also hurt her, possibly more than anyone else in her life. He has also caused her to lose her closest friend. Yet Anna knows that once she also wounded Joey deeply, the details of which we only find out late in the story.

I loved the pace of the romance, with Marian Keyes knowing exactly when to drop in a flashback that explains everything and keeping that ‘will they/ won’t they’ tension without it seeming artificial. Often with rom coms I feel like obstacles are there just for the sake of it, but the flow is natural and I never felt like the outcome was a done deal. There were so many obstacles and items of baggage it felt like they were on the luggage conveyor belt at Gatwick. There’s everything from the past – him choosing Helen, then Jackie and then most of NYC if Mrs Walsh is to be believed, before Anna. Joey has so much work to do, not just about his childhood but about the here and now. Blending families isn’t easy and he has three adorable boys as well as Trea to think about. They’re both temporarily working on this project and in M’town so what happens when the hotel is built or if Birdie has enough and changes her plans? Anna might be healed physically, but her scar does bother her and has changed her life in ways she didn’t imagine. It does work as a filter, anyone it clearly bothers has no place in her bed. However, at times it does play on her confidence and when she sets up an online suggestion inbox for the locals there are enough hurtful comments to remind her of a time when she wasn’t okay. Joey is fit to murder the culprits but Anna rises above it and keeps moving forward, despite the hurt and the reminder that Joey didn’t even choose her before the accident. So, why would he choose her now? Is it possible to remain friends when they’re so close? Finally, there’s the beautiful setting, nobody does small town Ireland like Keyes and these people are imperfect, but hilarious. Some of their concerns are petty, but others are grounded in years and years of tradition. Work is hard to find in a small town so local tradesmen not being asked to contract was a huge mistake, but easily smoothed over once Anna explains the artistry and level of finish expected. Could Anna thrive somewhere like this, or is she just passing through? I loved, loved, loved this book and being on holiday I had the luxury of sitting in the garden in Glastonbury and reading right through to the end. This is peak Marian Keyes and if you don’t fall in love with Anna or her love story with Joey there’s clearly something a little bit wrong with you.

Meet the Author

Marian Keyes is the international bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel’s Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for Beginners, Angels, The Other Side of the Story, Anybody Out There, This Charming Man, The Brightest Star in the Sky , The Mystery of Mercy Close, The Woman Who Stole My Life, The Break and her latest Number One bestseller, Grown Ups. Her two collections of journalism, Making it up as I Go Along and Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition are also available from Penguin.