Category: Netgalley

Posted in Netgalley

The Shadows of Kensington Gore by Ross Montgomery 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

London, 1911. Coronation fever. Suffragette unrest. A city crackling with tension.

When a policeman is found brutally murdered on the streets of Kensington, blame falls on the three women seen fleeing the scene.

Their sole witness? Stephen Pike: ex-borstal boy, under-butler extraordinaire and assistant to the most unconventional detective in London, Miss Decima Stockingham. Sharp-tongued, fearless and bored of behaving herself, she’s the only one able to see that this case is not what it seems.

Aided by an invisible network of maids – their eyes and ears in every house in London – this unlikely duo must catch the killer before time runs out. But in a city dazzled by ceremony and divided by change, you never know what might be lurking in the shadows…

 

It’s impossible for me to start this review without declaring my undying devotion to Miss Decima Stockingham who intelligent, entitled, sweary and short-tempered. On meeting her long-suffering servant Stephen Pike, other servants from the apartments that line Kensington Gore commiserate that at least he isn’t indentured to the mad old cow in 89C. He doesn’t correct them because largely their only impression of this woman is her morning bellow for her egg and her propensity to fling books out of the window until it arrives: 

“I was under the impression that boiling an egg was a quick job, but apparently you’re rearing the chicken by hand and fetching the water from fucking Spain.” 

Underneath this exterior is a sharp-witted woman who doesn’t mind appearing contrary and rude if it gets her the results she needs or the information she’s seeking. This character is begging for a TV series and Olivia Coleman. Her foil is Stephen Pike, driven to distraction by her demands and her willingness to place him in dangerous situations. He’s equally comic, mainly physically, in one scene he’s lured to a union meeting at the pub which soon descends into an evening of rounds, a drunken football match, injury and a hefty hangover. He may seem ordinary to the untrained eye but Miss Decima can see a sharp intelligence, observational skill and an ability to put a pattern together that makes them a formidable team. 

We meet them ten years after the Victorian era ended and the coronation of George V and Queen Mary is just around the corner. The suffragettes are ramping up their civil disobedience and taking direct action to gain the vote. The author uses this backdrop for a labyrinthine murder mystery and our mismatched pair are investigating. Historically, we can see all the signs of change that will come to England after WW1, the changes in class structure with working men wanting to form unions and enforce their employment rights. Women didn’t just want to vote but also to work, run their own finances and have rights to divorce. The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 made divorce a civil matter but it didn’t treat men and women equally, seeing women as property. The suffragettes had very different factions within the wider movement, although Miss Decima claims to have no time for any of them, particularly those who take direct and destructive action. She believes that their antics play into the hands of men who say women are too emotional to vote. However, despite some snobbery about which class of woman should get the vote, she is a feminist. She explains women’s frustration with the status quo by pointing out the memorial statue for the Great Exhibition of 1851 to Stephen. It depicts Prince Albert held aloft by four female figures showing that women are relegated to the background. 

“The world is stacked upon the unseen labours of women’. 

The murder case is sensationally linked to the suffragette movement with three young campaigners, seen to leave the main march and head towards the south of Kensington Gore, situated near the Royal Albert Hall. Their intent seems to have been defacing a statue but all that’s left behind is a dead policeman and the women seem to have vanished. The police officer has had his throat cut from ear to ear and the gory details causes a sensation, as Miss Decima shrewdly observes female murder suspects are regarded more harshly than men. If they apply the theory of Occam’s Razor it’s an open and shut case but Miss Decima senses this plot is more Byzantine than first thought. Stephen is befuddled when she takes the case on, especially when she states her reasoning – ‘they’re clearly innocent.’ If found guilty the women’s actions could upset the suffrage cause for some time and have repercussions of international significance, maybe that’s worth killing for? On a more basic level she believes there is no way the woman could have physically managed to overpower and kill him. This is the case they have to prove and with her razor sharp logic, a small battalion of female investigators all called Ivy and Stephen’s ability to pick out obscure clues and patterns they will surely succeed. 

There was nothing about this historical crime caper that I didn’t like. It is full of action, humour and incredible period detail. Miss Decima is a formidable woman and I could hear a definite Miriam Margoyles tone as she barks out her orders and insults: ‘put down the poker and stop being a twat’ being a favourite. The author perfectly captures the struggles and atrocities committed against women in the suffrage movement, especially by the police and prison service. Then in the next chapter we’re knee deep in the funniest union meeting I’ve encountered. Stephen is so endearing and the perfect foil for his employer. He can go where a more upper class woman can’t, although I’m sure she’d give it a good try. She knows that other servants and those lower down the class order are going to be more candid with someone of their own station. This mystery does have some links to the previous book but I didn’t have to read it to enjoy this one in its own right. The action sequence at the end, as all those old jigsaw pieces come together in Stephen’s mind is so well done I could see it all – Guy Ritchie’s directing style would be perfect for a film adaptation. Miss Decima is the closest thing to a female Sherlock Holmes I’ve read in a long time. With her three sets of teeth -“one for speaking, one for eating, one for shouting” – she’s a wonderful grotesque and an absolute joy to read. More please.. 

Out October 2026 from Penguin Books

Meet the Author

Ross Montgomery has worked as a pig farmer, a postman and a primary school teacher, so writing books was the next logical step. He spent his childhood reading everything he could get his hands on, from Jacqueline Wilson to Beano annuals, and it taught him pretty much everything that’s worth knowing. He has now written over twenty books for children, including THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIANS, which was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award 2021 and selected as one of The Guardian’s Children’s Books of the Year. He lives in London with his wife, a cat called Fun Bobby, and a cactus on every available surface.

Posted in Netgalley

Love Unlocked by Cecilia Ahern 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Melody has vowed never to fall in love again. Al is a hopeless romantic. So, when they quite literally bump into each other, there’s no reason sparks should fly. But the world seems a little upside down lately.

A few weeks ago, Al ordered the removal of all the lovers’ padlocks from one of Dublin’s beautiful bridges. Ever since then, couples across the world have started splitting up. And as Melody begins investigating this mysterious wave of breakups for her podcast, it seems there might be a bigger story to tell.

Together, they decide to uncover what’s unravelling so many love stories. And, in the middle of solving everyone else’s heartbreak, can they unlock their own?

For her latest novel, Cecilia has brought us to Dublin and the marriage of Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford, a famous love story that ended with a candlelight marriage in Kilmainham Jail the night before his execution. This tragic story is immortalised in the 1985 song Grace and the Grace Plunkett bridge is a site of pilgrimage where people represent their love with initialled padlocks secured to the bridge railings. However, this proclamation of love is having its effect on the city’s bridges, that were never engineered for the extra weight of thousands of steel padlocks. For Al this is a problem, he works for the bridge authorities and he has been tasked with checking not only how much strain this adds to their bridges but how best to manage the problem. When the advice comes it’s not great for those of a romantic disposition, the locks will need to be removed in order to keep the bridge safe. So Al orders their removal as soon as possible, not in the best frame of mind romantically he isn’t fully prepared for the response. It’s not long before podcaster and DJ Melody is in touch with him regarding the love locks, she’s been inundated with stories of people who had a lock on the Grace Plunkett Bridge and since their removal have split with their other half. Some of them very close to home. She decides she must interview the man behind this phenomenon, but this isn’t the best time for Al since his own relationship has spectacularly imploded. Melody isn’t someone who takes no for an answer and soon the pair are investigating the stories and getting to know each other. Could the unlucky lovers clamouring for answers turn into something like luck for these two heartbroken people? 

This is a story I’ve come across before with a lesser known author and found the whole subject fascinating. Could removing a love lock genuinely remove the love between two people, or was it a matter of psychological suggestion? They know they can’t rule out some opportunists using it as a reason to break up without taking the blame, but the sheer amount of coincidences is spooky. Neither Al or Melody are lucky in love. Melody split up with long term partner Sam after a very public proposal she wasn’t ready for. They still run a jacket potato van together and spend lots of time in each other’s company, despite Sam’s marriage and new baby. Melody knew that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry Sam but more that she knew she didn’t want to marry anyone, ever. Al’s relationship with Tara ended when he discovered a long term affair with their flatmate and Al’s best friend, Walter. Now Al has been forced to move out of a house he owns and Tara and Walter are living together. Not that he’s taking this lying down. There are some downright sneaky but hilarious ways of getting your own back. One of which backfires spectacularly leading to an office confrontation that had me in the same position as Al’s assistant Natasha – almost pissing myself. In fact Natasha was one of my favourite characters throughout. Both Al and Melody need to let go of the past and grow; could the misfortune of hundreds of couples actually bring them together? 

I really loved Melody. She’s quirky, edgy, funny and a bit neurotic – but all the best people are… right? She’s beautiful in an offbeat way and knows exactly what she wants, her pizza ordering at Al’s flat is a great example: 

“We are ordering two separate pizzas because we are two unique individuals who have different tastes, desires and goals and who know our own minds”. 

Perhaps keeping their connection loose and undefined gives them both the space to properly get to know each other. Melody has relied on Sam (and still does if she’s honest) but that can’t continue. Even her mum isn’t available this time and needs space of her own. This means she gets to know Al with no expectations or barriers and actually opens up. She can’t sleep well at night without someone there but Al supports her to try. He’s there listening on the end of the phone while she does her bedtime routine and it’s strangely intimate despite the distance between them. He’s encouraging her to stand on her own two feet and she’s allowing herself to be vulnerable with someone she’s attracted to. She recognises that important ritual of going to bed with someone, not in the sexual sense, but seeing each other without a mask. It’s when we’re our most authentic self, trusting someone enough to fall asleep in their presence when we’re so vulnerable and sharing each other’s day, our worries and fears. My husband always says it’s the absolute favourite part of his day. Al on the other hand could do with learning to lean on someone, especially in this situation where he works with the man who’s betrayed him. I loved the scene with his fellow rowers, literally being part of something bigger than himself again and working as a team. It breaks the dam he’s built to hold his feelings and he finds himself both relieved and surprised by their reactions. 

I found myself rooting for this couple and aside from their romantic potential I hoped for Melody’s podcast with unlikely friend Prunella to take off. Their shared visit to Joseph Plunkett’s jail cell was moving and gave a depth to the story they were telling. I could see them thinking about what Grace’s story could teach them. I could also see how Melody’s fear of being alone was linked to her absent father, something that can have a devastating impact on women’s later relationships. The space she gets from Sam and from her Mum allows her to make a connection between how she feels when alone and an incident from the past. Her chat with her mum’s partner Dave during their split really cements their own relationship. He leaves her his record player and the memories it evokes bring real revelations about how she thinks in a negative way and misses the positives in her life. This book left me feeling like no love is perfect, but it isn’t meant to be. It left me happy, hopeful and so privileged to have a man like my husband even if he does drive me up the wall at times. 

Out now from Harper Collins

Posted in Netgalley

Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I reach up and unravel my braid. When my hair is loose and whipping around my face, I take the red ribbon I’ve woven through it and press it just beneath my mother’s etched name, underlining. She was here. She was mine.

When Molly Fitzgerald was two months old, her mother went to a morning appointment in downtown New York.

Like so many who left their homes on September 11th, 2001, Molly’s mother never came home.
Now Molly saves lives for a living, running a department for when disasters strike.

Molly and her husband Jesse―a police polygraph expert with his own fractured family―have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world.

But then Molly’s whole world is turned on its head. She’s spent her life preparing for catastrophe. But nothing could prepare her when a disaster strikes too close to home.

In this powerful novel, Jodi Picoult tells an epic story of the lies we tell ourselves, the plans we design to protect ourselves at the worst moments, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.

A new Jodi Picoult novel is always cause for celebration in my house and this was devoured in just two days. She has a knack of drawing in the reader immediately with a casual conversational style. I went in with no blurb so I didn’t know which way the story was going and was surprised by the different direction. This is the story of a family caught up in events beyond their control as the world processed one of those events that splits history into a before and after. The shock of 9/11 was felt the world over and everyone has a story of where they were when the planes hit the World Trade Centre. I was in Milton Keynes and I’d been married to my late husband Jez for six weeks. A few days previously he’d flown out to Cape Cod to attend a family wedding, planned long before we met. I stayed home and started university, but I also had my mum staying with me. I’d dropped her in the town centre, came home for a brew and switched on the television to see the second plane hit the south tower and I was transfixed. Then it hit me. When was Jez’s internal flight from Boston to Washington? I didn’t know. I remember scrabbling through paperwork and even ringing his secretary to see if she had it, but nothing. By the time a jet hit the Pentagon I was sure I’d lost him. Between my mum and my sister-in-law Jenny in New Zealand we tried to keep calm, but no calls were going through to his hotel or their mobiles. I’d been so happy in our honeymoon period that I hadn’t thought to ask where he was and when. Finally at around 9 o’clock that night, his cousin Joanna rang me from her honeymoon to tell me they were ok. They left Dullas Airport in Boston twelve hours before the hijackers and had been eating breakfast at IHOP when the pentagon was hit close to their hotel. I was lucky.

The author has also written a flashback section that goes back and takes us through Eloise’s story. We meet her twin sister Adie who wears the white ribbon – a link to The Scarlet Letter perhaps? Eloise’s story isn’t an easy read but I identified with her upbringing in an evangelical church and the spiritual and emotional harm such environments can have on developing teenagers. Eloise had plenty of reasons to run away and she kept running. She’s an artist and uses her art to express her emotion. The significance of her chosen medium – mosaics- is clearly recovery, painstakingly placing broken pieces together to create a bigger, beautiful picture. At art college she creates a large heart with an anatomical heart placed within it using white grout to define its shape. Called ‘Love Thyself’ the piece seemed to signify romantic love but with the reality of love deep inside, a recognition that love isn’t easy but needs action not just pretty words. Despite having empathy for Eloise I did also feel for Evie, Eloise’s best friend at college who falls in love with Adam before she introduces him to Eloise, only to see them fit together as if meant for one another. Evie isn’t perfect, but she stepped in and held Adam and Molly in the aftermath of 9/11 and has been an incredible stepmum. Eloise might have been Adam’s great love but there’s no doubt that Evie’s great loves are Adam and Molly. There’s a huge twist within the book that I hadn’t expected at all, taking it in a completely different direction to what I was expecting. It was so unexpected I had to go back and read a few pages for it to make sense, but from that point on I was gripped. As always this is one of those books that made me think, about chance and destiny and whether there’s ever a right time for something. It made me think about the lives we don’t live – what if Jez had been on that earlier plane? What if I’d gone to the US with them?

Lastly I want to say how brave Jodi Picoult is. At a time when she is the most banned author in school libraries she continues to write about those hot topics that stir up interest and even anger. Here I felt she used her reputation to throw the reader a couple of curveballs – when I realised Molly was pregnant I wondered if she was going to revisit the controversial subject of abortion or babies with special needs, but she surprised me by going in a completely different direction. Taking on 9/11, a seismic event in everyone’s memory, is going to bring criticism her way but she doesn’t let it stop her. Taking on Evangelical Christianity is something that needs to be done a lot more because it should be treated as a cult. We can see the current effect it’s having on politics in the curbing of women’s rights and policies to end an equality people in minority groups have had for most of the 21st Century. Finally she uses Molly’s job in disaster preparation to criticise the current US administration! When I met Jodi Picoult over ten years ago now she told me that it’s the issues in her books that come first. If it stays in her mind a few days she knows it might be worth researching and then finally she hears the characters voices. Here she’s taken different criticisms of the Trump presidency and directly attacked his choices for important roles within government and cuts in spending. I love that she’s still speaking truth to power in her work. This is a timely novel about the world we live in since 9/11 but also how a family face personal loss inside such an international tragedy. It’s also a beautiful look at motherhood and how mums sacrifice themselves for their children in small everyday ways, but also in big life-changing ways too.

“I reach up and unravel my braid. When my hair is loose and whipping around my face, I take the red ribbon I’ve woven through it and press it just beneath my mother’s etched name, underlining. She was here. She was mine.”

Meet the Author

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, including Mad Honey, Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire.

Follow Jodi Picoult on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter: @jodipicoult

Hollow Bones is out in the UK on 5th November from Penguin

Posted in Netgalley

The Wine Dark Sea by Victoria Hislop 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Greece, 1946. In the power vacuum remaining after the Second World War, a brutal civil war erupts between rival left- and right-wing factions. The conflict spirals as the country pays a bitter price in human lives and fighting soon erupts in the mountains, turning villages into battlefields and pulling ordinary women and children into the fray.

When the government soldiers come to Kalopetra, Fotini is nursing her newborn second child. She urges her daughter, Iliana, to hide with the older children as she and the other women are herded into trucks. Weeks later, soldiers return for the children . . . but they are not to be reunited with their mothers, a wholly different fate awaits them.

Fotini finds herself transported to a prison on the island of Chios, where she befriends Markella, whose little son, Nikos, is wise beyond his years. After months of imprisonment, when Fotini and Markella find themselves separated from one another – and from Nikos – Fotini vows to hunt not only for her own child but for Markella’s too. 

The Wine-Dark Sea tells of families flung apart across continents and of a strong, determined mother who resolves not to let war destroy hers.

This epic story from Victoria Hislop really taught me a lot about a period of history I know little about. She has taken an incredible amount of research for this novel and I imagine some of it was harrowing. She has taken the stories from women living through this time and shown some of them through one family, magnifying their power. The events happen after the end of WW2, a turbulent time that has already seen the punishment of Nazi collaborators and now many would like to see the end of their right wing government. The setting is one little village called Kalopetra where Fotini’s husband has gone to fight for government forces against the communists. This immediately causes a schism in the family because Fotini’s sister Stella has a husband who fights for the communists. The sudden divide is causing friction across the village, but the women left behind must work together if they’re to survive. When government forces come to the village they capture all the women and Fotini is allowed to bring her baby son with her. However, her older daughter Iliana is left behind along with a group of older children. How will they survive? That moment of Iliana chasing the truck with her mother unable to do anything to reassure her is burned into my memory. Although soon enough communist forces will round up the children and move them into camps where they are fed, clothed and then sent on to other countries like Yugoslavia. After having the entire burden of the other village children on her shoulders, Iliana is relieved to be fed and clothed by such kind people and so the process of brainwashing begins. All Fotini can think about is returning to her peaceful village and living the rustic existence that has survived for centuries, she doesn’t know that her way of life is already dead and nothing will be the same again. 

The author uses Fotini as her main narrator, but we also have chapters from Iliana’s perspective as she grows into adulthood and some through Nikos, the clever son of Fotini’s friend in their camp. These two narratives show how far and wide one family could be spread as Iliana thrives in the communist way of life and Nikos is chosen for a programme directly backed by the Queen of Greece. Iliana sums it up perfectly when she asks:

“Was there a single family on earth that had remained intact, or in the place they belonged or wanted to be.” 

One of the benefits of a communist system is that women are seen as equal to men and this intrigues Iliana who knows that if they’d remained in Kalopetra her fate would have been the same as her mother and grandmother. She’d be married to someone in the village and bring up babies. Here she could learn to drive or even fly a plane. She longs to be an engineer and hopes if she studies hard she will have the opportunity to go to university. It’s easy to see how a young woman like her would see communism as an improvement on what she expected from life, scratching out a living from the land and being second to a man. In the government camp Fotini is holding out against signing a confession that she was a communist. Those who do sign the waiver are set free but forever marked as traitors to the government, especially in the eyes of their fellow villagers. Fotini doesn’t want that hanging over their family when they return home. She doesn’t know whether her husband is alive or dead, but isn’t longing for his return. She makes friends within the camp, particularly with Markella who comes from an island with a leper colony where she used to work. It’s where she plans to return. As her baby Mitsos grows he plays with Markella’s interesting boy Nikos, something of a child prodigy when it comes to numbers. His fascination is with ships and he will build them out of any material he can find to hand. It’s not long before he’s noticed and singled out for a different institution backed by the Queen. From there he seems to disappear and Fotini is determined to find both her daughter and Nikos when she is released. When she is released it’s clear one thing hasn’t changed – the generosity of Greek people. As Fotini and Mitsos travel to search for the lost children people take them in, share their own dwindling food supplies and clothe them too. It restores her faith in humanity that there is still such generosity left in a people who have been tearing each other apart. There is a glimmer of hope for the future. 

I really enjoyed the later parts of the novel where we see Fotini piecing life back together in the city of Piraeus. It’s a massive change for this country girl but she can see the benefits of more job opportunities, entertainments like the cinema and eating good Greek food again at a lovely restaurant run by Demetrios. He’s such a kind man and gently reminds Fotini that she can’t spend the rest of her life wandering and looking for the children. The best thing she and Mitsos can do is stay in one place and hope the children find her, the place she was trying to get back to is gone. There was so much material to choose from in this book that it could have filled a trilogy. I had questions about all sorts of characters, such as Fotini’s relationship with her sister Stella. I also had questions about Nikos’s journey and his adoptive mother, there just seemed to be more about her that could have been explored. However, I loved Iliana’s growth and her life as an adult living under communism. The differences between Greece and Hungary were fascinating and imagine some very heavy editing of this material had to be done to get it into one novel. As always the author captures the beauty of the Greek islands, their isolation and wildness and how this conflict disrupts a way of life that existed for centuries. The book symbolically ends with a circular dance that’s life affirming and perhaps a way of capturing, just for a few moments, that lost way of being. 

Out from Headline Books September 24th 2026

Meet the Author

Victoria Hislop is the international bestselling author of The Island and The Return. In the United Kingdom, she writes travel features for The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday, House & Garden, and Woman & Home. The Island sold over a million copies in the UK and has been translated into 24 languages. Victoria’s second novel, The Return, has been published in more than a dozen languages. She lives in Kent, with her husband Ian and their two children.

Posted in Netgalley

The Dog Sitter by Eva Leska Natiello

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When a woman whose life has gone sideways takes a 30-day dog-sitting job in New York City, despite not being a dog person, she’s pulled into Manhattan’s chaotic social orbit. This delightfully offbeat story is a heartfelt journey of messy midlife reinvention, filled with sharp humor, quirky characters, and one very judgmental dog.

Recently divorced, newly evicted, and suddenly strapped, Colleen Fitzroy is out of options. She reluctantly agrees to work for former boss, Massimo Locatelli—editor of Savor Magazine—dog sitting his precious Aldo while he’s out of town. At least no one will bother her.

That’s until an endless parade of New Yorkers arrives unannounced, pulling Colleen into their knotty orbit. As she juggles strangers, a high maintenance dog, and her unraveling plans, Massimo takes note of her grit. He offers her a role in an ambitious new venture inside Manhattan’s rarefied restaurant scene—which triggers a shameful secret.

Colleen must confront the life she’s been living—and decide if she has the courage to seize the life that’s long overdue.

My counselling work is all about hope and recovery so as soon as I saw this book on NetGalley I knew it would be for me. We follow Colleen who’s something of a character as she has a total break from her disastrous life to think about what to do next. All she must do is spend one month in her previous boss’s incredible apartment to dog sit his canine companion Aldo. This is complicated by the fact that Massimo once fired her from the magazine he edits. There’s no one else and he must fly to Italy in a hurry to help his cousin and Colleen is the only option. However, Colleen has never had a dog before so this is going to be a steep learning curve. She’s also not that keen on being woken in the middle of the night, having unexpected visitors who let themselves into the apartment with no warning, or spending long FaceTime calls with Massimo so he can spend time with Aldo. She also doesn’t have a lot of time for privileged rich people. She honestly made me laugh and struck me as someone who has been through a lot in her life and has zero fucks left to give. If this were a film I could imagine either Meg Ryan or Renee Zellwegger playing this part to perfection. She has all of her belongings, meagre as they are, with and nowhere to go when Massimo returns. She’s insightful about the position she’s in. She was married to a firefighter who survived 9/11 but contracted terminal lung cancer from the dust at Ground Zero. Having lost the man she loves and struggling with the sense of loss she throws herself into a relationship with a man she describes as a ‘party partner’ – great fun for one night but disastrous in the long term. She thought she’d left grief behind but it came back and hit her twice has hard. This is a definite crossroads, but does she know how to move forward both physically and emotionally?

The change is gradual as she learns to look after the beautiful Aldo and cope with the various visitors to Massimo’s flat. She’s woken in the middle of the night by someone entering the flat and a lot of shouting from the street below. It’s Massimo’s daughter and a boyfriend who won’t take no for an answer. Without missing a beat Colleen opens the window and lets fly with some well chosen warnings. In no uncertain terms he knows to give the apartment a wide berth. Other visitors include a woman called Gloria who appears to be a cleaner, but a very stylish and well-dressed one. There’s also the caretaker of the building, a group of gourmets who hold a supper club despite Massi not being there and various others. At times these interruptions are a little jarring, especially when we’re first trying to get to know Colleen. However, all play their part and slowly Colleen starts to see that Massi’s life might not be as picture perfect as it seems. The gourmets let slip that he may have lost his job at Savor magazine, gossiping about their absent host in a horrible way. Slowly we can see Colleen opening up to people again as she enjoys chatting with Massi’s daughter and when she sees a photo of the supper club she barely recognises herself because she looks engaged and as if she’s truly in the moment. Aldo slowly begins to bond with Colleen as only dogs can, showing he’s now depending on her for comfort. Even Massi starts to make longer phone calls where he’s actually confiding in this women he’d pretty much written off. We can see their similarities in upbringing, with poverty and scarcity of food being the source of their pleasure in food now. In fact food is very sentimental to Colleen who remembers her garden with her husband very fondly, in fact her prize possession is a carrot plan grown directly from the seeds he collected on their vegetable patch. She also does a regular stint at the food bank, making sure children don’t grow up in food poverty and hates what she calls ‘food peacocking’ something that Massi and Savor Magazine do daily. Even though Massi grew up in a poor environment he certainly doesn’t now. When he asks if Colleen has found Aldo’s dog food in the fridge she realises she’s been heating it in the microwave and eating it herself it is so delicious. 

The settings are interesting and contrast beautifully. Massi’s apartment is both aspirational and sentimental with his kitchen table covered with the carved names of people who’ve eaten there. He keeps back copies of his magazine in pristine condition, clearly very proud of his position. By contrast the home that Colleen has just left is in a New Jersey suburb, ‘neat and smells like ocean mist and sea salt in the way cheap candles do.’ This is typical of the self-deprecating way Colleen talks about her life, she’s never had the luxury that Massi and his friends take for granted. Manhattan is frenetically busy when compared to the serenity and elegance of Massi’s hotel in Italy. We can even see the difference in the pace of life with city people like little ants, busily scurrying around. Colleen’s back in that pace but struggles to cope with the busy in and out of the apartment and it does interrupt the flow a little. The plot then wanders into different territory as Massi decides to start a business importing truffles for Manhattan restaurants and asks Colleen to be his courier and saleswoman, visiting contacts in their kitchens and selling directly. This was a plot development I really didn’t expect and I suspected there was more to this venture than met the eye. 

This book could have been a simply madcap makeover story, but it does tap into deeper themes such as childhood, loss and how we process trauma. I wasn’t sure where the truffle business was going to go but it felt like a great metaphor for humans – even the most dirty and unpromising truffles are treated like gold and Colleen could be seen like that, a treasure underneath those layers of defensiveness and snarky wit. She also learns that people are not what they seem and even those who live very different lives can teach each other something. Rather than do all the cliched things such as yoga and celebrating her ‘me’ period, Colleen actually learns things she didn’t expect like not taking people at face value and of course she learns the joy that a dog like Aldo can bring into your life. The absolute gem of the story though is Colleen herself, a rather chaotic, irritable and closed off person who slowly blossoms. 

Posted in Netgalley

The Glass Key by Amanda Geard

Posted on by thelotusreaders

“They do say secrets are revealed one funeral at a time.”

I absolutely adored Amanda’s previous novel The Moon Gate, set at the outbreak of WW2 and straddling Australia, Ireland and the UK. This time she starts her story in Ireland, where Maggie has grown up hearing her mother tell her the bedtime story of The Glass Key. It’s a Nordic fairytale passed down by Maggie’s grandmother Anna Swan, who mysteriously left her home one stormy night years ago, never to return. Now Maggie’s grandfather has died and going through his things, Maggie is shocked to discover a faded wartime letter, asking him to take in a baby. In that moment she realises that Anna Swan was a woman of many secrets.

Only by travelling to Norway and discovering the story of four brave young women whose lives were forever changed by the occupation of their tiny islands, can Maggie uncover the shocking truth about her family – and finally unlock the mystery of the glass key…

There are many historical fiction novels looking at women’s lives during WW2, but I hadn’t read any set on Norway’s many islands, so it brought a different perspective and an atmospheric setting to the story. People becoming displaced and lost during WW2 is close to my heart as my late husband was Polish and both of his parents were displaced during the war: Hannah escaped Warsaw as a small child in the sewers and ended up alone at a Scottish school for refugee children. Whereas Alek was taken to Siberia by the Russians, but somehow escaped and ended up living in the Siberian forests before making his way to England through the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. These individual family stories have huge impact through the generations. Hannah’s dad believed his family to be dead and made his way to America where he remarried. Hannah then had a half-sister in Washington who she only discovered decades later. Amanda shows the chaos of war, not just on the battlefield but in ordinary everyday lives and it brings home how impossible it was to escape the war’s grasp. Through Maggie’s family and four extraordinary women in the Norwegian islands we can see how far the war reached, in fact it’s only for one afternoon on an uninhabited island that the women could let go and clear their minds. Around these archipelagoe there are tiny bays and secret places that are impossible to police, especially when up against local knowledge. It’s no surprise that the allies would use it as the perfect spot for secret assignations. Small boats can be missed in fog and poor weather conditions and although Germany annexed Norway, they haven’t reached these remote places yet. But there’s no doubt they’re coming. 

The narrative is a dual timeline split between wartime Norway and modern day Ireland. In Ireland Maggie has had to come home after her grandfather’s death because his home at Hellebore House may have to be sold. Her grandfather Atticus lived there with his Norwegian wife Anna. Anna spent many years in the garden, cultivating Norwegian plants and flowers. She left when Maggie’s mother Freja was young, with no explanation. Maggie’s first instinct, now Atticus is gone, is to try and save the house but as she goes through his things letters from Freja’s mother are hidden away, sketches of Norwegian flowers and a painting of the island of Einevar that she’s never noticed before. The key is a photograph of three young women and a man lying in the grass surrounded by wild flowers. On the back are four names: Liv, Nina, Astrid and Lief and the place, Lyosa. How might these people be connected to her great-grandmother Anna? As Maggie becomes more curious about her family’s past, she also has to face her own past in the shape of first love Jack who has moved back to the area. She doesn’t need to complication as she’s still healing from her divorce and the knowledge that she’s infertile. The Norway narrative is told chronologically as we meet sisters Nina and Liv, their friend Gudrun and a new teacher called Astrid who’s been sent from the mainland to work alongside the formidable school mistress Froken Henrikson. Nina and Liv soon make friends with Astrid after they’re introduced by Gudrun. All the women know the Germans are getting closer and when they find a British man injured in a small boat they assume he is carrying out some secret mission. His appearance sets up a love triangle between him and the fisherman Lief who absolutely adores Liv, but are those feelings reciprocated? Meanwhile, Astrid and Nina are becoming much closer too. When the Germans do arrive, it’s two brothers called Grimm and a man called Bruno Schmitte who is an artist. The tiny population of Einevar can’t predict how the islanders will respond to a German presence. There are those who will resist and place themselves in danger and others who will fall in line, causing a fracture between young people who’ve known each other all their lives. Their last uncomplicated day was spent on Lyosa when, for one afternoon, the friends lie in the sun and don’t think about the war. 

There are brilliantly layered and complex characters here, particularly the women. Astrid is brave, very sure of who she is and her feelings. She’s loyal to those she loves and to her country, becoming very close to the sisters, especially Nina. Liv is young and headstrong, placing herself and others in dangerous situations. Lief has adored her for his whole life and will do anything for her, but will that loyalty place him in harm’s way? Liv shelters and nurses an allied agent who drifts onto Einevar having been attacked by German fighters, until he’s fit for the voyage back, knowing that if found out she and Nina would likely end up in prison. I loved how independent the Norwegian women seemed to be, able to sail, weather the elements and forage for themselves. It’s not an easy life, even before the war starts and they are determined to resist the Germans in any way they can. Not everybody on the island thinks this way though, with some becoming close to the German brothers despite it being an affront to family and friends. I did wonder if I could be so brave as to fend for myself without basic utilities and forced to fish or forage for food. These women are so in touch with the land, with its incredible night sky with endless stars and curious Northern Lights. Maggie gets a taste of their lives when she arrives at the cabin in Lyosa to do her family research. It’s like walking back in history with no electricity or running water and gives her an experience of what previous generations had to face just to survive. I also admired the bravery of those who continued to resist despite knowing their capture would mean death or imprisonment and torture. 

Motherhood is also a huge theme in the novel, starting with the shock of great-grandmother Anna leaving Freja behind with her father when she was just a child. What caused her to flee and why did Atticus never try to find her? There are many different representations of motherhood, from women who leave their babies, to infertility and being a mother to someone else’s child. If Maggie and Jack were to become close again she has the prospect of being a stepmother while not being able to have her own children, something that echoes through the generations.  These women are linked by those experiences but also their talents, such as Freja’s Nordic fairy tales for children once told to her by her mother Anna. Maggie’s creativity also links back to a previous generation, with Liv’s drawings and a book of botanical sketches uncovered to Hellebore House. I loved how the author showed the war’s reach and how one tiny uninhabited island gave the young women a chance to let go of it for just one afternoon. Maggie is the conduit for all the drama of WW2 and these sections of the book are nail-biting in parts. Maggie’s present is more gentle and flows beautifully, resolving the secrets kept for three generations and in a way I didn’t expect. Amanda’s novels are real favourites of mine and this had everything – family secrets, hidden letters, forbidden relationships, espionage and some incredibly brave women who sacrifice everything for the people they love. This is a fascinating read should be on every historical fiction fan’s summer list. 

Out now from Headline Review

Meet the Author

Hi, I’m Amanda, and I absolutely cannot WAIT to share my latest novel with you.

THE GLASS KEY is a tale very close to my heart and inspired by the Norwegian Arctic island my husband and I bought when we were 29. Evie Woods said it’s ‘a captivating story that unlocks an emotional doorway to the past’, and well, I love that.

If you’re new to my work, you might like to start with THE MIDNIGHT HOUSE, inspired by a message I found scratched into the rafters of our Irish home, a two-hundred-year-old stone building perched on the edge of the Atlantic. The book was a Richard & Judy book club pick and translated into 8 languages. 

THE MOON GATE uncovers the secret behind a mysterious legacy – Towerhurst, an old house crumbling in a rainforest. It takes place across three locations: Tasmania (my home state), London (where we rented a houseboat for many years) and County Kerry, Ireland (where I now live). THE MOON GATE is my most sweeping and beloved book.

I’m also a geologist who explores the world’s remote places. I’ve worked on five continents, and spend months at a time out in the wilds. Writing novels provides a similar sense of discovery, though the conditions rather more comfortable!

You’ll find me on my website, Instagram (@amandageard) and Facebook (@amandageardauthor). I love chatting with readers, so please come on by.

Posted in Netgalley

The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I don’t usually like romance novels, but I do love Rosie Walsh’s novels. That might seem strange when often her novels are categorised as romance, but for me there’s much more to them than the more formulaic romances I see. Rosie Walsh creates such complex characters, facing heart-wrenching situations. This is definitely the case for our narrator Carrie Cole who’s a surgeon by profession, but since the premature birth of her twins has been more focused on home life. She and her husband Robin live in a draughty cottage on the moors, with a small ‘Roof’ (AirB&B) holiday let next door in the old piggery. Robin works in the world of medical philanthropy, matching investors to areas they can support medical causes and this is how the couple met. Nearby, her Dad lives with his wife Nicola, but he’s recently been struggling with dementia and may need to move into a home. Both Carrie and her sister Maya have a complex relationship with their mum, who is an international activist and charity worker. Carrie has been feeling the urge to return to work and has put out feelers with her old mentor Yanika about what steps she would have to take in order to level up to the required standard. There’s an event coming up for Roof hosts in Sweden, where Yanika works and they discuss meeting up for a conversation. She could do both in one trip. Carrie has never left the children overnight, although she knows they’re perfectly safe with Robin, in fact he gives her his blessing in the form of a generous booking of a lovely hotel near to the venue. Carrie had been looking at cheaper Roof accommodation, when a familiar name and face appeared on the screen. All of a sudden Carrie’s mind sweeps back to her twenties, where she’s dancing barefoot on a Thai beach with her new husband, Johan, mere moments before Thai police swarmed the beach with guns and arrested him. Carrie knows that Johan was sentenced to twenty years in a Bangkok prison, so how can he be in Sweden hosting a beautiful lakeside retreat? 

There were so many questions I wanted to ask during this novel, as Carrie’s narrative follows her present and a deeply traumatic past that she thought was buried, This is a love story but it’s also a mystery, as we see how the couple met when he came into the hospital with a trauma patient he’d helped. He travelled with them into the hospital. Carrie’s connection to him is immediate, but it’s incredibly deep and even though she knows she can’t pursue anything with him, she can’t stop thinking about him. Slowly, through flashbacks we piece together their story and I was devastated for both of them. Carrie pieced herself together after Johan’s court case with the help of her family, particularly her mother who had flown out to Thailand to use her influence and local contacts. Over time Carrie has hardened her heart towards Johan, feeling both betrayed and abandoned by him. Abandonment is a big deal for Carrie and her sister, after they were removed from their mother’s care as children when her advocacy and activism were so absorbing she’d overlooked their safety. Since then Carrie and Maya lived with their father who had a more stable home life. Both girls show signs of abandonment issues and a tendency to self-medicate their feelings. Carrie doesn’t eat when stressed and Maya has issues with alcohol, both of them display displacement activity like cleaning madly when they’re in distress. Robin has proved himself to be a safe harbour for Carrie and she calls him her rock. However, she can’t deny that she wants to know what happened to Johan and the urge to see him is stronger than she expected. I could understand why she needed this, to have someone ripped from your life in this way is devastating, but even worse would be the questions: was Johan really trafficking drugs? If not why did he plead guilty? How did he end up back in Sweden and when? Lost love is painful enough but when you’re left unsure of what was real there’s no sense of closure, Can Carrie meet with Johan and get her answers without her carefully balanced life back in the UK imploding? 

I really understood Carrie and I believed in her love story with Johan. Their connection leaps off the page like a flame and never goes out. I also had so much time for Robin, who is an incredibly supportive husband and dad. I was willing Carrie to be honest with him and explain why she still needed the answers. Carrie’s inner voice is so powerful that I believed in her utterly. She has the problems of every working mum who has gone through a traumatic pregnancy with incredibly premature twins and all the ailments that come alongside that. Her little boy still struggles with asthma and her instinct to be with them is a definite response to her mother’s inability to put her and Maya first. Carrie doesn’t want her children to ever doubt her love and commitment to them, but that has come at a high price for her own goals. Perhaps she’s even denied a strong part of who she is – that drive and ambition to the best doesn’t just disappear. She berates herself for thinking about Johan, telling herself she’s very lucky and has everything she needs, but does she? I loved how the author gave Carrie room to ask questions of herself and her closest relationships. Is there a part of her that chose to hide away after the birth of the children? Although she loves the feeling of being cared for and supported, where does caring end and control begin? In some ways her pursuit of Johan and the answers isn’t about her feelings for him, but her feelings for herself and the person she was when they met, I loved how Johan called her Carrie Cole, as if only her full name could encompass all the things she is. Part of me wanted their love to still be there, but the more rational part of me knows that long term relationships and parenthood are tough. Often what we long for in past relationships is a fantasy, one that doesn’t include vomit on the rug, temper tantrums and a Dad that’s slowly losing his sense of reality. Can Johan really be all that Carrie sees through her younger, love filled eyes? 

Once the questions start there’s no stopping this complex tale from unravelling and the tension builds as we realise there’s so much that Carrie doesn’t know. As Johan realises that Carrie truly knew nothing from their final moments in front of the courthouse in Bangkok he’s he’s confused. Has she really only just found out a week ago when she looked for accommodation in Sweden? He asks why nobody told her. But who should have told her? Who in her protective and much loved inner circle has been keeping secrets? Can she cope with another betrayal? The answers, when they came, were totally unexpected.. Nothing here is exactly as it seems, for both us and Carrie. What happened on her wedding day in Thailand created a huge scar across her timeline, with her life divided into before and after as if severed from each other, Now she knows there were tiny unseen strands of connection and the cut was never as clean as she thought. Despite telling herself, ever since that day, to make decisions with her head could her heart and her gut have been right along? This really was a heart-breaking love story, with so much depth and emotion for the reader to relate too. I was rooting for Carrie, both with her ambitions to return to work and her personal life. I felt an affinity with her discovery that she had allowed herself to become small and knew that only time alone, recovering and accepting the truth would help her make the right choices. Yet there was still an impulsive and romantic part of me hoping that love would find a way.

Out in June 2026 from MacMillan

Meet the Author

Rosie Walsh is the internationally bestselling author of two novels, the global smash hit THE MAN WHO DIDN’T CALL, and – new for 2022 – THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, a heart-wrenching, keep-you-up-all-night emotional thriller, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and stayed in the German top ten for several weeks.

Rosie Walsh lives on a medieval farm in Devon, UK, with her partner and two young children, after years living and travelling all over the world as a documentary producer and writer.

The Man Who Didn’t Call (UK) / Ghosted (US) was her first book under her own name, and was published around the world in 2018, going on to be a multimillion bestseller.

Prior to writing under her own name she wrote four romantic comedies under the pseudonym Lucy Robinson. When she isn’t parenting or writing, Rosie can be found walking on Dartmoor, growing vegetables and throwing raves for adults and children in leaking barns.

Posted in Netgalley

Love Lane by Patrick Gale

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A reunion. A journey. A longing for a place called home… When veteran Canadian wheat farmer, Harry Cane is obliged to sell up and sail home to an England transformed by two world wars, his arrival triggers unwelcome self-examination for the family he abandoned, and for whom he has never been more than a distant myth. His daughter feels duty bound to take him in but is riven with doubt and ambushed by a long buried anger she has never before expressed. Harry’s effect on the next generation is less predictable, and enables his granddaughter to deal with an unspeakable trauma, while her gentle husband feels seen for who he truly is. Can Harry stay and make a new life before it’s too late, or will he find himself cast out again, punished for having witnessed and understood too much? LOVE LANE is a searing portrayal of escape and entrapment, and a powerful exploration of what home and family can really be.

I was thrilled when I found out that Patrick Gale had written a sequel to one of my favourite books of all time, A Place Called Winter. This first book followed Harry as a secret is discovered and he’s advised to leave the country by his wife’s family. Leaving both wife and daughter behind Harry embarks on a new life in Canada as a pioneer. This book finds a much older Harry living on his homestead with his dog and secret nightly visits from his neighbour Paul who he loves. When a woman and her young son come to Harry’s place looking for work, Harry says he has nothing, but that Paul might need help. He takes her to Paul’s and they settle her and her son into Paul’s cabin, separate from the main house. It only takes a few days for his whole world to change, with Paul’s houseguests now living in the main house. Harry isn’t all that surprised when Paul tells him they’re to be married, but assumes their arrangement will continue exactly as it did when Harry married Paul’s sister, who died a few years before. However, for Paul this signals the end of their relationship leaving Harry heartbroken. At the same time Harry has been receiving letters from his estranged daughter Betty who is now married. Her cabal of aunts have kept her away from her father but now she wants to get to know him and they start a tentative correspondence. So, years later when Harry is forced to sell the homestead he suggests a visit to England and with no set plan he sets sail for Betty’s city of Liverpool. 

Gale splits the novel into five narrators: Harry, Betty, her husband Terry, their daughter Pip and her husband Mike, with Harry closing the story. I know this character’s inner world so well but have never really seen him through someone else’s eyes. Liverpool couldn’t be more different to the wheat fields of Canada and it’s interesting to hear it described as it would have been when my mother was born there. I was experiencing my favourite city as my grandma and grandad would have done. It’s also a big change for Betty, from the moneyed world of the aunts and their large family home at Strawberry Hill. This is post WW2 and the city is rather grey and dismal, more dirty and industrial than it is now. Knowing the docks as I do it was strange to see it actually being used where now it’s all museums, hotels and galleries. If Harry finds Liverpool a little imposing and grey, Betty is shocked at his appearance, thinking he looks like ‘a man who has been through a series of shattering ordeals or a war.” This is a man who has worked very hard and never had spare money to spend on himself and Betty can see he is in need of clothes and a dentist at least. She expected more warmth, but can see that he’s a man of restraint who values his privacy. Will they even get on and what will her daughter Whistle make of him? 

Terry’s section focuses on his work as prison governor, with Harry arriving just as two executions are to be carried out, something that Whistle finds particularly difficult to cope with as their street becomes overrun with protestors and journalists. I found it interesting how women are kept sheltered from the details of prison life, perhaps a hangover from the reality of WW2. For Pip’s section we travel to Wakefield and Harry stays with their family for a couple of weeks. Pip’s husband is also in the prison service and they have children, making Harry a great grandfather. What she finds in Harry’s silence is someone who will listen and she can confide in, knowing it will be guarded as a secret. I was astonished about what she almost discloses. Mike is a very controlled individual who worries about money, Harry is perceptive and on walks with the dog realises things about Mike that no one else has. The effect Harry has on several generations of this family is fascinating for a man who is so taciturn and unable to reveal his true self. Gale paints a picture of a closeted England, with homosexual men furtively making secret connections in fear of the law. Terry has met many men who are imprisoned not for what they’ve done but for who they are something he seems to find unjust. He has known men who prefer men during the war, but hasn’t noticed that his own tailor is living with a man. Harry notices their matching rings straight away. There’s also a secret bar on the voyage across the Atlantic where Harry is invited by one of the stewards. It’s probably the only openly gay space Harry has ever been in and my heart broke for him as he glimpses a little of the freedom to come.

Another person who responds to Harry is his granddaughter Whistle, she doesn’t have her own narrative but we can see she’s very different to her sister Pip. Betty describes her as beautiful but sensitive, born ‘without Pip’s protective layers’. One evening close to the execution she has a panic attack in her bedroom and Betty is shocked when she finds Harry has come into the room, talking to her quietly and calmly, encouraging her to breath slowly and bringing her anxiety down much quicker than Betty can. We can see this side of him in his chats with Mike also, proving that he’s an emotionally intelligent observer who never lets on the depths of his own heartbreak. We can see so much about the mid-Twentieth Century in these generations, from the Great Aunts of Harry’s generation to Pip we can see the collapse of the social order. There’s a drop from upper middle class to lower middle class in two generations. Betty bemoans the fact that a girl as beautiful as Whistle would have had a ‘mantle-piece crowded with invitations but rationing and bereavements and shortages had made everyone so cautious and life rather drab.” There are devastating moments delivered with such matter of factness – Harry’s only proof that Paul loved him destroyed by blackmail, Mike’s handling of the family dog, Pip’s secret about her hospital appointments and more than anything the chillingly robotic way Pierrepoint and his executioner apprentices measure out the correct drop to break a young man’s neck in the name of justice. Behind it all I felt a huge anxiety about where Harry was going to go? Would Betty ask him to stay or will he have to make his home back across the Atlantic with strangers. I cried in those final pages with Harry. Patrick Gale has created a character I’ve grown unexpectedly fond of and I didn’t want him to live out his final years alone. This is a beautiful companion to A Place Called Winter full of compassion and unspoken yearning, not just for a lost lover but for a place to call home in the twilight of life. 

Out Now from Tinder Press

Meet the Author

Patrick Gale is a cellist, gardener and patron of North Cornwall Book Festival, Penzance LitFest and the Charles Causley Trust. He lives with his husband, the farmer and sculptor, Aidan Hicks (aidanhicks dot com), on their farm at Land’s End. In addition to his latest, Love Lane, published on March 26, 2026, his eighteen novels include Mother’s Boy (2022), Take Nothing With You (2018), which was his fourth Sunday Times bestseller, Rough Music (2000), Notes From an Exhibition (2007), A Perfectly Good Man (2012) and A Place Called Winter (2015). In 2017 his two part drama Man in an Orange Shirt was screened by BBC2 as part of the Gay Britannia season. Continuing to be broadcast regularly around the world, this won the International Emmy for best miniseries and is now in development as a musical. He is working on a television adaptation of A Place Called Winter and a stage version of Take Nothing With You. Extracts from the BBC documentary All Families Have Secrets – the Narrative Art of Patrick Gale can be seen on his website galewarning dot org. The garden at Trevilley was featured on Gardener’s World and is opened under the National Garden Scheme every June.

Posted in Netgalley

A Twist in the River by Stig Abell 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A beautiful summer day

When young nurse Claire Davidson goes missing on the riverbank, the only clues left behind are her phone and shoes.

A mystery that sweeps the nation

People disappear all the time, but this case sparks an online frenzy. Amateur investigators descend on the rural idyll. Is Claire Davidson just the story of a swim that went wrong, or could there be truth to the conspiracies?

A killer growing bolder

Then another woman is discovered dead in the river. Jake Jackson, a former detective who came to the countryside searching for peace, must investigate before more lives are lost.

It’s lovely to be back at Jake’s home Little Sky, even if it does have a worrying proximity to serial killers. Jake is drawn into the search for a woman who was last seen going for a run by the river. When a body is eventually found it turns out to be a different woman. Jake is asked to consult with DI McAllister because even though it could still be a case of nature becoming dangerous, anxiety is raised in the community who have been working in groups to find the first missing woman. The possibility of a killer brings out the true crime influencers who start to stalk the river and the village’s inhabitants, including Jake who has gained a reputation as an investigator. The author brings in aspects of the manosphere and militant feminism to the case, highlighting new residents and groups we’ve not met before. Alongside his usual team of Martha, Aletheia and partner Livia, Jake is very keen to find the answers to this case before the birth of his first child. Little Sky is a quirky place to live, with no road and total peace from the outside world, a world that did encroach on Jake and Livia a little bit this time. I felt like he was at Little Sky less than before and this distance from his peaceful haven had an effect emotionally. Has the role he’s been pulled into opened him up to more danger than before when he was a police officer? Is what he does making Livia a target? 

At heart Jake is a book fiend, something all readers relish in a character and we find him perusing the shelves of his nearest second hand bookshop for additions to the crime fiction library at Little Sky. I felt like there was a build up in the tension of this novel. Jake has hardly had a break since his last case and since he originally came to this corner of the world as a sanctuary I feel like he needs some down time. He’s also becoming more well known which is problematic and does cause some tension between him and Livia. The online world encroaches more and more into our worlds and this crime is no exception. The village becomes besieged by true crime enthusiasts, filming content and in one case trying to find their way into Jake’s investigation. The fact that this is a woman doesn’t help, because Dani is clearly flirting to get the information she wants and even uses the couple’s secret signal to get Jake to meet her. This is an intrusion too far and Livia is furious. As always, the ethical questions of using someone’s violent death as entertainment come to mind, not missing the irony that the book hinges on the very same prurient interest. However, there’s also danger for these online sleuths. They don’t have the police back up that Jake does, or the experience of his years as a detective and they’re working entirely alone. Another theme is the manosphere and misogyny, embodied by a group of men who come and join the search in its first twenty four hours. These are men who spend many hours together in the gym, with all the banter and macho competition common in men who exercise together. I didn’t like the vibe of this group, particularly when they invite Jake to join them at the gym. Jake is no stranger to exercise and is very strong, but it’s always solo and involves long walks and runs, swimming in the lake and working in the garden. I felt he was being manipulated and coerced into competition, but the conversation is eye opening and worth every pull up. They bemoan the fact that women don’t act like they used to: 

“I think women should be pretty like they used to be. Delicate you know. They should look the right way to please a man.” 

They’re angry at being seen as toxic males and their views collide strongly with a couple who run a pottery studio by the river. Livia would like to take one of their classes so she and Jake go to meet the women and take the opportunity to ask if they’ve seen anything. Both women are feminists but it’s Emma who is clearly very angry at the way men treat women and at this killer who she believes has an issue with modern women. One of the stranger aspects of this killer’s modus operandi is the time they take to paint the victim’s nails. Jake wonders if Emma is angry enough to kill to make her point. In the background Aletheia and Martha do their usual sterling work, with Aletheia liaising with her police contacts and Martha managing to gain access to a worrying amount of information online from official sources that should be unhackable. Martha is by far my favourite and I loved that the author included Jake’s preparations to have her stay at Little Sky. As a wheelchair user I get irate when books and TV series have people with disabilities seemingly able to live in houses with stairs or work independently in a way that would be impossible. Martha is brilliant because the author includes the physical barriers that leave her at a disadvantage, such as Jake’s ramps all over Little Sky showing how much he wants to include her in this space. It’s great that she’s included and the author lets us know what it takes to include her. Someone knows their social model of disability. Martha is forthright, driven and has creative ways of treating her chronic pain. Despite some limitations she’s super intelligent and often ahead of the rest of the team.

This series is always a slow burn, but the action packed final chapters are nail-bitingly tense and violent. This killer knows exactly where to hurt Jake. As usual Jake finds a way to catch them off guard – a wet hairy naked man leaping out of the darkness is always terrifying and this definitely raised a smile. I felt there was more tension between him and Livia, probably down to hormones and the very real prospect that they are bringing a child into this rather uncertain existence. Livia is usually so relaxed and brings calm to the chaos but here she seemed unsettled and insecure. However, Jake is aware and his decision about their lives moving forward will go a long way towards reassuring her and Diana. On Livia’s behalf I’d like to ask the author if this couple can have the holiday they desperately need before more adventures and a new baby comes their way. 

Meet the Author

Stig Abell believes that discovering a crime fiction series to enjoy is one of the great pleasures in life. His first novel, Death Under A Little Sky, introduced Jake Jackson and his attempt to get away from his former life in the beautiful area around Little Sky, followed by Death in a Lonely Place and The Burial Place. Stig is absolutely delighted that there are more on the way. Away from books, he presents the breakfast show on Times Radio, a station he helped to launch in 2020. Before that he was a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Front Row and was the editor and publisher of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in London with his wife, three children and two independent-minded cats called Boo and Ninja (his children named them, obviously).

Out Now from Hemlock Press

Posted in Netgalley

The Jewel Keepers by Sara Sheridan

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Men would kill for this treasure.

The McKenzie women will guard it with their lives.

London, 1837. When 25-year-old Araminta McKenzie-Moore is summoned from Richmond to her great aunt’s deathbed in Edinburgh, it’s the first time she’s met her extended family. The McKenzie women, however, have been keeping a close eye on her. For they have a long, secret and dangerous history as Jewel Keepers to the Scottish Crown and they need Araminta to play her part to solve a puzzle which stretches back generations.

But the McKenzies are not alone in this high-stakes treasure hunt though history. They’re being pursued. The last of her line, if Araminta succeeds, she will uncover something more valuable than mere jewels – a secret that will change the lives of all women living on this, the cusp of the Queen Victoria’s rule.

The plot of this novel is extraordinary, taking historical facts and weaving in the story of a long line of McKenzie women who have fought for the Crown Jewels of the Scottish Royal family, most specifically the Stuart queens. The last Stuart queen was Queen Anne, who died without a direct heir in 1714, to be followed by the Hanoverians. If found, the jewels are meant to be kept safe until a ‘worthy Queen’ sits on the throne and they can be returned to her. The book is set just before the reign of Queen Victoria so this is an important time for their quest. Could she possibly be the worthy Queen they’ve been hoping for? Araminta has had no knowledge of the family history or her role in history until she’s summoned to Edinburgh by her aunt Eilidh McKenzie who lives in a beautiful Georgian house. In the course of one evening, Eilidh hints at the quest ahead, explaining Araminta’s ancestors were Jacobites and clearly also early feminists. A family tree shows that McKenzie women kept their own surname even when married, with a diamond marking out those chosen to safeguard the Queen’s Crown, down the maternal line. Unfortunately Aunt Eilidh dies before she can give Araminta any more clues meaning she faces a complicated task, solving the final clues in a strange city. Added to this quest are a shady male organisation called The Hermits, treacherous servants, dangerous missions and a very feisty nun. 

There are great female characters in this story, especially Araminta who blooms as the story progresses, achieving so much more than she thought possible. She grasps this challenge and runs with it, despite not knowing Scotland and meeting with violence, kidnap and false imprisonment – not to mention a very precarious church roof! It’s great to see that transition where she starts to think for herself: 

‘For years she’s been restrained by teachers, by her position, by other people’s expectations. Now, here, perhaps for the first time in her life she’s free to follow her own judgement.” 

It’s not surprising that she finds this freedom in Edinburgh where she’s informed that even the Bishop was a supporter of women becoming more than wives and mothers. Araminta finds that her powers of deduction are sound and starts to trust herself. She recognises this mission as her chance to grow and test out her capabilities, free from the burden of society’s rules. It’s not a surprise when we learn about her ancestors and especially when she meets with a feisty nun called Sister Winifred, a very intelligent woman who carries a ‘muff gun’ and is quite willing to fight. Even when imprisoned, Araminta finds an ingenious way of escaping her cell that even has a police officer surprised! Apparently no one else has ever thought to try it.

Brodie the butler (and so much more) captured my heart as well. He’s so noble and I loved how even with these smaller characters the author gives so much attention to detail. Brodie doesn’t just have a romantic back story, his night visits to a make shift boxing gym also give his character dimension. Our villain of the piece, Harry Thom, is a vile character. Today he’d be a fully paid up member of the manosphere for sure. He’s got issues with women, but particularly Catholics and the McKenzie women specifically. He’s violent, crafty and will stop at nothing to make sure he beats them in their quest. I loathed him and I was turning the pages desperate for him to have some sort of comeuppance. This is a pacy and tense novel with lots of action scenes and some moments of real danger where you’ll be biting your nails. It has great historical detail too and is bolstered by a fascinating afterword. The quest made me think of Queen Victoria in a different light, she may have been a powerful Queen but was she ever a feminist? Would she be the worthy Queen or was she too wrapped up in portraying the Victorian ‘Angel in the House’ ideal? It seems quite a tame way of ruling when we think back to the Tudor Queens or Mary Queen of Scots and possibly still influences the image cultivated by the Royal Family we have today. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this story and as Araminta raced towards the treasure with Thom in pursuit, I wondered whether it would be what either of them were expecting? 

Out on 14th May from Hodder and Stoughton

Meet the Author

“History is a treasure chest of stories. I love them.”

Sara Sheridan works in a wide range of media and genres but mostly historical and especially the stories of women. She loves exploring where our culture comes from. In 2018 she remapped Scotland according to women’s history. Tipped in Company and GQ magazines, she was nominated for a Young Achiever Award. She has received a Scottish Library Award and has been shortlisted for the Saltire Book Prize and the Wilbur Smith Prize. Her work was included in the David Hume Institute’s Summer Reading list 2019. She has sat on the committee for the Society of Authors in Scotland (where she lives) and on the board of ’26’ the campaign for the importance of words. She took part in 3 ’26 Treasures’ exhibitions at the V&A, London, The National Museum of Scotland and the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. She occasionally blogs for the Guardian about her writing life, the Huffington Post about her activism as a writer and a feminist and puts her hand up to being a ‘twitter evangelist’. From time to time she appears on radio, and has reported for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent from both Tallin and Sharjah. Sara is a member of the Society of Authors and the Historical Writers Association. A self-confessed ‘word nerd’ her favourite book is ‘Water Music’ by TC Boyle. In 2016 she cofounded feminist perfume brand, REEK: artefacts from the project are now held at the National Museums of Scotland and the Glasgow Women’s Library.