Tag: Family

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 Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads July 2026

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been a very busy month with a reduced time for reading and reviewing. First my mum and I went to Liverpool to see Moulin Rouge which was brilliant. Then I was back less than a week later to see my stepdaughter graduate with a first class degree in Early Childhood Education. We stayed in the philanthropic village of Port Sunlight and I soaked up the arts and craft architecture for a few days. We also visited the Redbrick Market, a labyrinth of tiny craft and antique stalls in an old brewery complex in the Baltic Quarter too. Then I needed to rest up for a few days to give my body chance to recover I did some reading and lots of sleeping. As always but I’m very behind with reviewing. My favourites have mainly been thrillers, with a beautiful Irish fiction debut too. August is quieter with just one tour, so I’m setting aside a stack of novels I’ve been dying to get to for months. I try and have a mood read month twice a year, otherwise I think I’d burn out. So here’s what I enjoyed last month ❤️📚

Sugartown was one of the Squad Pod Collective’s featured books last month. I loved it and was really surprised to learn it had so many rejections before publication so it really does pay to keep plugging away. Now it’s up for a major Irish fiction prize. Our story follows Saoirse as she returns to her Irish town after trying out living and working in London. She’s come back to lick her wounds and hoped for a little grace from mum Màire, but she’s on her almost immediately, making sure she’s up at a reasonable hour and pointedly hoovering outside her room if she doesn’t. Màire is what Saoirse has always called her mum at her instruction. She absolutely refused to be called Mammy, but now that she has three younger daughters she’s a model mum. Saoirse sees how organised she is, getting all three ready for school in the morning with identical plaits and immaculate uniforms. All she can do is wonder why she didn’t do that for her? Saoirse only hears her mother’s criticism and there is plenty of it.

She insists that Saoirse takes a job and then finds one for her, even bullying her out of bed for the interview and driving her there. She’s very insistent that her stepdad shouldn’t have to keep her. To cope with the boredom of small town life and the job at a hardware store she goes out with her best friend Doireann, drinking to excess and trying whatever drug is going. Her dreams have shattered and she can’t see the point. It’s then she meets Charlie and there’s an immediate attraction, will this prove to be the love Saoirse needs or will her excesses prove to be her undoing? I remember being this age and I felt equally uncomfortable, having missed my uni place at Liverpool by one point I had to stay in my small town and grabbed a job in a nursing home and a local pub. I felt a little lost but luckily I had god friends and family around me. I could feel Saoirse’s pain about her relationship with Mum and the on and off again relationship with Charlie doesn’t help. It’s not long before Saoirse hits rock bottom. This is a fascinating look at motherhood and how our maternal relationship is so important for self-esteem and identity. I was relieved when she starts counselling because it’s the only way to improve her life and it’s revelatory to hear she doesnt have to have a relationship wiith Mum. The author captures young adulthood perfectly and how, if we don’t know who we are, we can’t choose healthy relationships or build a life for ourselves. This is beautifully written, devastating but also hopeful.

I think I’m the last person to read this brilliant court room thriller with a killer of a twist. Leila is a barrister, working at a chambers in the north east of England. Leila has worked hard from a poor background to university and into the law, often difficult for those without family money. She is married to Julian who used to her mentor when she was just a pupil, but now a case has come in where they’ll be pitted against each other. This isn’t necessarily unusual, but she would have recused herself if the client hadn’t insisted on her especially. However, the solicitor on the case doesn’t know why he wants Leila, especially since the last time she represented him she lost. Jack has been accused of the murder of Anthony Smythe, a well respected high court judge. He informs Leila he’ll be pleading not guilty, but won’t be disclosing his defence before he takes the stand to give evidence. This makes Leila twitchy and nervous. As the trial draws near Leila finds a distance growing between her and Julian, as well as a condescension and arrogance that she’s never seen before. She also feels voices from the past might be closer, people she thought she’d outrun. This felt like one of my favourite drama series, Silk, starring Maxine Peake. I love the drama and the way everything started to shift and change around our central character. This is a belter of a thriller, fiendishly clever and although I did guess the twist it didn’t ruin my enjoyment at all.

Vikas Swarup’s heroine Devi grabs hold of you the minute she starts to tell her own story in this episodic novel set in Delhi. The opening brings Devi to the lair of an unknown assailant who tells her he has seven people on the phone line who want to bid for her destiny. This auction will take one night and seven stories, stories she thought were secrets. As Devi tells each tale her kidnapper will take a bid on her life and he hopes to reach seven figures. However, Devi’s circumstances have not been easy and the fact she is alive is down to her cunning and experience. Has the kidnapper underestimated his prisoner or are Devi’s lives finally running out?

I was hooked from the first story as Devi explains how she started in a family home in the slum area known as Rail Basti, because the train tracks ran straight through the centre of the huts. This was Devi’s early childhood and despite the poverty she has happy times. She tells us about her annoying brothers, the eldest a maths prodigy and the youngest a terrible bedwetter, the daily sequence of trains that seem to rattle the ground under their hut and depth of water that rises indoors in monsoon season. Change comes when her parents choose an unorthodox plan to make an almost life-changing sum of money and fortune seems to turn almost immediately. Devi is an intelligent, funny and excitable nine year old and sometimes it’s hard to read about her daily life, never mind the more perilous and painful circumstances she finds herself in. She learns through necessity, takes chances where she sees them, soon inured to the fact that the only constant in her life is change. There’s so much energy in this novel. It leaps off the page and its biggest achievement is its mix of addictive suspense and emotional insight. I came away from it feeling a little bit battered by the force of the story and it might take a few days to fully sink in. I liked Devi as a child, but as time and experience move her forward she becomes more morally questionable, complex and deeply conflicting. Although even if I didn’t always like her I could understand why she makes the choices she does and how she’s come to each terrible conclusion, every time wondering if this present adventure will be her last. It’s easy to forget when you’re deeply embedded in one of her stories that this is where it’s brought her, tied to a chair and listening as each person bids on her life. If you like to kept in suspense and to experience an extraordinary life lived in destitute and dangerous circumstances this is definitely for you.

Ben is living in Penzance, taking a break from his home island of Bryhir in the Scilly Isles after the events of the previous novel. He’s taking a break from police work and instead has found a job at a joiner and cabinetmakers, using the skills he learned building boats with his Uncle. It’s settled and therapeutic work as Ben slowly creates beautiful pieces of furniture and starts to deal with his grief and loss. Noah is a little confused to be away from everything he knows, but he’s enrolled at a kindergarten near Ben’s work so life has some routine and peace. He is starting to be brought into the community too, with an arts festival on the horizon he’s bound to be pulled into the planning, even just as a steward he’s happy to do his bit. Then life takes a sinister turn as he’s on the beach and sees a young mother with a baby in a pram. One moment of distraction and a black figure jumps out of the shadows and racing towards the pram it grabs the baby and throws it into the sea. Ben and Shadow are running before they’ve even thought and he dives into the sea to rescue the baby. He’s now a local hero, but the disturbing and traumatic event plays on his mind. How could someone do such a thing and will they do it again? 

The author weaves her story around the local myth of the Zennor Mermaid, a figured carved into one of the pews in Zennor church. By the time the festival arrives everyone has done all they can to keep families safe, with a security perimeter at the park that can’t be broken, of course that assumes the attacker isn’t one of the stewards. I was still suspecting the nursery nurse, the festival organiser, a police officer, a young man who is abused by his older brother and even the DCI’s nanny. The author has created short, urgent chapters here. They ramp up the tension as we flip between Ben’s inner world and the attacker’s, following them and their newest victim to the dark, wildness of the festival’s other site at Zennor. We can sense the mystical feeling of Cornwall and how it’s become warped in this person’s mind. It’s pitch black and rough terrain, plus with miles and miles of coastline can they be sure to find the right place in time. I defy anyone to put the book down at this point and I devoured it in one sitting. Ben still knows he’s missing a part of the puzzle and we have to trust that his intuition will click in before it’s too late. This is a great thriller and taking Ben out of his natural habitat does bring a different feel to the series, though I hope he does eventually return to island because he belongs there. We can see in the aftermath that he needs his found family and just like Zoe he will always return to the island and each other. 

I love it when a new Mark Edwards novel appears and this one really did grab me from the off. It’s a familiar set up. Holly seems like the perfect girlfriend. Clever, funny, beautiful – Patrick feels like he’s hit the jackpot. Until he meets her family.

Her dad has a mysterious new girlfriend. Her sister is unwelcoming. Her brother is clearly lying about something. And Patrick gets the sense all of them share a dark secret – even Holly. When he finds out about the body that was found nearby on their last family holiday, Patrick sets out to find the truth. But as skeletons tumble out of the family’s closet, Patrick realises he needs to be careful. Because in this family, loyalty is everything – and at least one of them is willing to kill to keep their secrets…

The best bit about reading this was that I didn’t really like any of Holly’s family. In fact her sister and brother-in-law are horrific human beings. Anyway, I loved the setting, a remote part of Scotland where not many people visit and the family have a holiday home. However it hasn’t always been a happy place. This is where Holly’s mother died many years before and also where something happened to a teenager from the village – the brother of their cleaner. Then there’s the added stress of Dad’s new American girlfriend. The family dynamic is toxic before she arrives and when she does it causes a meltdown! Meanwhile Patrick is trying to find out what happened at the caves when Holly was a teenager and why a young man was found dead nearby in the dead of winter in summer clothing. As snow starts to fall and the village becomes cut off the family’s behaviour becomes more extreme and Patrick makes discoveries that leave him fearing for his life. I loved the look at tech companies and their ethics, or lack of them and the tension between the locals and the family. Another great thriller from this prolific author.

Lisa Jewell really is a must buy author as I can’t remember a time when I was disappointed by one of her novels and as she mentions in the acknowledgements, this is her twenty fourth! I gelled with the main character Jane very quickly, perhaps because I related to her a little bit. I don’t have a mansion house, but I do have rescue animals, step-children and a similar turn of phrase – a couple of her lines genuinely made me laugh out loud. I never expected to hear the line “with all due respect, Stuart, I’m not sure what could actually be worse than Daisy being abused by a pervert dressed as a clown.” It’s also a good point to mention that I actually hate clowns. Hate them all. They scare me. I don’t like masks, mime artists or anything else where someone is trying to change their face. This might have led to me finding this novel incredibly creepy. Jane comes across as forthright and opinionated but I love those qualities. Basically she’s the perfect investigator because she’s quite happy to ask uncomfortable questions and to suspect the worst of people, although I don’t think she imagined returning a lost west highland terrier would lead her into the darkness of the Black family. Under her exterior she has a big heart and whether it’s her rescue dogs or her step-children she’s always there, especially for Dexter who she spends a lot of time with. When she comes across the strange disappearance of a young girl called Daisy from a local AirBnB she never imagined taking a step back into her past and a house she fled from many years ago. Told through Jane and Daisy’s stepfather Stuart this is a masterclass in generational trauma and the different traits that can run in families. When Jane glimpses an open drawer that contains white gloves, handcuffs and a clown mask I was creeped out and then Stuart finds shackles in the outhouse! This is a very dark thriller with moments of humour that made me laugh out loud. Another belter from this talented author.

August’s reading looks like this:

Posted in Personal Purchase

It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It was the night she almost died.

Newly divorced and feeling a little lost, Jane Trevally agrees to accompany a man she doesn’t know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath.

She’s offered a drink. She steps inside.

And then she hears a scream.

Jane runs.

Twenty five years later, Jane finds herself outside the same house, this time to return a dog who’s been found near her home. A dog whose owner has just been reported missing.

A fleeting glimpse of a haunted looking woman through the window sends Jane on a mission to uncover the house’s secrets – secrets more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.

And she can’t stop thinking:

It could have been her . . 

Lisa Jewell really is a must buy author. I can’t remember a time when I was disappointed by one of her novels and as she mentions in the acknowledgements, this is her twenty fourth! I gelled with the main character Jane very quickly, perhaps because I related to her a little bit. I don’t have a mansion house, but I do have rescue animals, step-children and a similar turn of phrase – a couple of her lines genuinely made me laugh out loud. I never expected to hear the line “with all due respect, Stuart, I’m not sure what could actually be worse than Daisy being abused by a pervert dressed as a clown.” It’s also a good point to mention that I actually hate clowns. Hate them all. They scare me. I don’t like masks, mime artists or anything else where someone is trying to change their face. This might have been the reason I found this novel particularly creepy. Jane comes across as an independent, forthright and opinionated woman of middling age and I loved those qualities in her. Basically she’s the perfect investigator because she’s quite happy to ask uncomfortable questions and to suspect the worst of people, although I don’t think she imagined returning a lost west highland terrier would lead her into the darkness of the Black family. Under her exterior she has a big heart and whether it’s her rescue dogs or her step-children she’s always there, especially for Dexter who she spends a lot of time with. When she comes across the strange disappearance of a young girl called Daisy from a local AirBnB she didn’t imagine taking a step back into her past and the house she fled from many years ago. 

This particular house is a brilliant setting, residing in a quirky little part of London called the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath. I had to look it up because it sounded so odd and fell in love, because it’s almost like a village within a city. The house Jane is looking for is at the far end of a lane and quite isolated, but Jane knows it as soon as she arrives and meets a man called Stuart who lives there with a woman called Jessamine Black, Daisy’s mother. She’s worried that Daisy hasn’t returned home or to the house she rented to revise for her exams. There’s Déjà vu for Jane as she sits on the same sofa she sat on years before, because nothing much has changed here. Of course our houses do tend to represent us and they often stand in for our bodies when we dream about them – the attic in particular standing in for our psychological state. This doesn’t bode well for this family because the house is untidy and unloved. Being nosey, Jane sees that Stuart has left a drawer slightly open she peers inside. There are the secateurs he was looking for, but also some handcuffs, white leather gloves and a plastic clown mask. Needless to say I’d be back on a train before that drawer was closed. From there Jane is hooked and gets the chance to house sit for a friend in London so she can follow up on Daisy and her hunch that something very dark has happened in that house and the family that live there. 

Though Jane is our main protagonist we have flashback chapters from Stuart’s perspective and we see how he meets Daisy’s mother Jessamine at his local pub. Stuart has been homeless for many years, but has been living in a coveted spot in a squat with several other people. He’s noticed Jessamine a couple of times and there’s something winsome about her big eyes and waif-like frame, but he realises very quickly that she has a drink problem. Always arriving immaculate at opening time and then slowly becoming more messy as it gets towards the end of the school day as she seems to scurry off to be at the school gates. When she becomes very unsteady on her feet one day Stuart turns Good Samaritan and helps her to get home. This is how he ends up meeting her daughter Daisy and takes Jessamine up on her offer to stay, which he does for a few days. As these flashbacks continue we see that Jessamine is not the victim Stuart originally thought she was. She has the ability to be neglectful of her daughter, prioritising alcohol and is surprisingly manipulative. Stuart is surprised that Jessamine’s mother doesn’t say anything to her daughter and he wonders if he’s imagining that something is off about her too. There’s a total lack of accountability, particularly from Jessamine who at one point tries to cut off his ear, then saying “I know I’m a handful” like she’s bought another pair of shoes or had one too many at a hen night. When Stuart comes under pressure to return to the squat or lose his space he decides to return, but will Jessamine agree to that and what might she do to ensure he stays? Jane realises he has largely been there for Daisy and while he has been a great stepfather, he has enabled Jessamine. It’s as if everyone in the house turns a blind eye to the issue and he worries she will drink herself to death. He’s also found some things disturbing. He doesn’t know who Daisy’s father is, but no one else seems to know either. In the outhouse there are metal rings attached to the walls and a chair, as if someone has been chained up there. There’s a room upstairs referred to as the au pair’s room, but there hasn’t been an au pair for some time and no one talks about Jessamine’s father or brother either. The family story is that the brother ran away to join the circus and Jane is wondering if he is the clown? Like Stuart she’s starting to wonder about this family and their generational trauma.  

This is a great plot, revealed deliciously slowly as Jane begins to realise that other women have gone missing in that part of Hampstead Heath. She and Dexter put their heads together and start to investigate in earnest, unearthing photos of the missing women and several incidents across the country involving a clown. Dealing with those allegations send to her to drink, asking Dexter to fix her anything that “will take the edge off the thought of that tiny masked clown pulling a scarf out of a woman’s ear in a car park with a hard-on.” Another laugh out loud moment. Jane relates to Daisy struggling to survive in this dysfunctional family, because she did too. Her parents neglected her and her brother until they were malnourished and practically feral. This is probably why she takes her role as a stepmother so seriously, she knows what it’s like to have no one from a very young age. I thought the twists and turns were done so well here, paced beautifully and not rushed as they sometimes are in thrillers. I read the end and felt satisfied, like every question had been answered and I wasn’t having to turn back through the pages and read it again to be sure I’d understood who’d done what.  Nevertheless I still managed to devour it in a couple of days and I’m sure you will too. This is as thriller that comes highly recommended for it’s grasp of family dynamics and psychology of trauma, but I fear I will always be on alert for tiny little clowns from now on.                                                          

Meet the Author

LISA JEWELL was born in London in 1968.

Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, was the best- selling debut novel of 1999. Since then she has written another twenty novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs, The Family Remains and The Night She Disappeared, all of which were Richard & Judy Book Club picks.

Lisa is a New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author who has been published worldwide in over thirty languages. She lives in north London with her husband and two daughters.

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Sugartown by Caragh Maxwell 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What do you do when you’ve ruined your life? You go home to your mother, if you’re lucky enough still to have one. Saoirse Maher wouldn’t recommend it. 

Leaving home wasn’t supposed to be temporary. When she moved to London, Saoirse was leaving Ireland behind for good, and with it her messy, broken family. But it turns out that starting again isn’t as easy as she imagined, and when her five-year relationship goes south, Saoirse finds herself out of options. And so here she is, trudging back to her mother Máire’s house up a side road on the outskirts of Irish civilisation. 

Except the world she comes back to is nothing like the one she left behind. Her mother has a new family, and everyone else seems to be moving on. But between the drinking, drugs, and an entirely healthy, not-problematic-at-all-thanks relationship with Charlie, there’s plenty to distract her.

Don’t look too closely, and everything’s fine. Saoirse is just fine. 

This was one of those books where the narrative voice captures you straight away and you know you’ll follow wherever she takes you. Saoirse is in her early twenties, newly returned to a small town in the Irish midlands when her big life in London doesn’t go as planned. Now back under the roof of her mother, her second husband JJ and their three perfect daughters, all Saoirse can see is the difference between the mother her little sisters have and the mother she had at the same age. Back then Máire was young and struggling, with a husband who’d rather drink his wages than bring them home to his wife and child. In fact Saoirse can remember being in her mother’s car, driving from pub to pub to look for him. There was so much drama between her parents she might as well have been invisible. When she contrasts this with Lily, Grace and Emilia’s life she can see the difference but she can’t understand it; are they just more lovable than her? She notices the way her mother Máire dotes on them, puts their hair into identical plaits but stops short of identical clothes, reads to them at night and makes sure they’re cared for and these small expressions of love hit Saoirse like poison darts. Her sisters even get to call her Mammy, something that Máire was very clear about:

“I was christened Máire Lynch. Not Mammy. That is not my name. I won’t speak to you if you don’t use my name.”

Sometimes she wonders if the impression she has of their relationship is distorted but then she remembers Granny Lynch, the person who cared for her most asking her aunt to give her some leeway; ‘leave her be, you’ve met her mother.’ Granny’s is the only place she had stability and felt loved for herself, just for existing. Even now, at the age of 24, Saoirse feels her mum’s bite as she bullies her out of bed in the morning, insists she does an interview for the local hardware store and is insistent that JJ shouldn’t have to keep her. Saoirse just wanted a few days grace to gather her thoughts and adjust, but now she’s everything she didn’t want to be, living back with her mother in a small Irish town and doing a job that has no meaning and pays enough money to get by week to week. Then, with her friend Doireann she spends it on alcohol and drugs to forget the tedium and disappointment of life for a few hours. She isn’t even allowed to express her disappointments because Máire is right there, ready to tell her what it was like to be her age with a baby and an alcoholic husband. The author uses wit and humour, even within the darker themes and here Saoirse talks about the ‘overarching theme of the Annual Irish Suffering Olympics’. If you complained about a broken toe, someone else had lost their foot in a mowing accident, so you should ‘get over yourself’. This was such a familiar moment of Irish family humour that it made me smile. 

It’s easy to forget Máire’s struggles because Saoirse’s voice is so compelling. It’s no wonder her mother enjoys the routine and stability of her relationship with JJ after the turbulence of marriage to Saoirse’s father. When Saoirse hits rock bottom her dad is briefly there for her, but it’s the first time. Although we concentrate on the mother/ daughter relationship, he has been completely absent in her life. He’s one of those Irishmen who are great at stories and for the craic down at the pub, but they don’t see the state he’s in at home and the way he chooses drink over his family again and again. He seems stable enough at the moment, living with his second wife and making bodhrains in his garden workshop, but he will always let her down. I was concerned that Saoirse would end up living her mum’s life, young, pregnant and with a partner who can’t be trusted. I felt so maternal towards Saoirse throughout and I could see that her lack of parental support left her craving love and acceptance. It’s like a huge hole that can never be filled. Unfortunately it also leaves her open to damaging relationships and when she meets Charlie, through Doireann and her on again off again boyfriend Connor, she falls headlong into tumultuous and possessive feelings.

I was holding on to hope that she could get her life back on track, even when it hits rock bottom and she wakes up in hospital. In the end she turns to counselling and one of the first things they talk about is that emptiness Saoirse feels where the love and support of a parent should be. One line of dialogue in the book broke my heart more than anything and it’s when Máire is throwing all her anger and resentment at her daughter. Their fight turns physical when Saoirse reminds her that she forgot she had a fourth child. When she asks her mother what she’ll tell her little sisters Máire says ‘I’ll tell them to be anyone but you.’ It’s so harsh it stopped me short. Of course in order to heal we look for closure and Saoirse has tried drugs, alcohol, relationships and acting out to fill that hole at her centre. The counsellor asks her some searching questions. What if that closure never comes? What if she doesn’t have a relationship with her mother? Somehow she has to learn to feel that uncomfortable absence without trying to fill it with other things. I felt there was hope that she would build self esteem, because even in the throes of first love she finds Doireann’s relationship with Connor uncomfortable. When she tries to clarify whether they are together or not, Doireann says they’re not ‘together, together’ but it’s great because they both get their space and they’re not making claims on each other. Saoirse is confused and asks Doireann who else she’s seeing, but she’s only seeing Connor while he’s seeing other girls. 

“So you do all the things a couple does without the security of knowing you’re not going to get cheated on.”

Of course she could be cheated on whether in an official relationship or not, but the need to point out that only Connor benefits from their arrangement shows that Saoirse does have some expectations and standards. She knows she doesn’t want that kind of relationship. She wants boundaries, exclusivity and respect it’s just that her desperate need for love and acceptance means she settles for less. She also knows that her own capacity for love is immense, saying she would tear herself down to make sure Charlie grew because ‘it was just my way.’ Luckily at this point she moves in with Doireann and her family and sees a totally different way of parenting, a seemingly natural maternity in her mum Karen who struggled to become a parent and sees her daughter as something of a miracle. Saoirse notices that they have saved mementoes of every milestone in their daughter’s life and yet are still able to listen and support her plans to move away from home. When Karen’s had a hard shift at the hospital, Saoirse listens and makes her a cup of tea and Karen tells her she’s a ‘good girleen’ but the compliment is so alien to her she doesn’t know what to do with it. Being mothered makes her realise how complicated it is and opens up the guilt, anger, resentment and thoughts that she could ‘fuck up’ her own daughter. Yet she’s already thinking about how to stop repeating the pattern. 

This is a remarkable debut. Every single character felt completely real and the author has captured the awkward vulnerability of youth and a girl who has never had that parental safety net that allows her to experiment and work out who she is. The language is beautiful too from the viciousness of a resentful parent, to the delirium of drug addled parties and the tedium of the hardware store. She describes a silence between her and her mother as weighing on her like ‘wet wool’ and I could feel its heaviness. It all rings true and struck a chord with me about my own teenage years and not always being understood. Some of the descriptive passages are so layered they create tiny moments of stillness within the turbulence becoming passages to breathe in. I found myself responding to the book bodily, so immersed that when the author described a panic attack I realised I was holding my own breath. I felt sad, angry and deeply maternal towards Saoirse and with my counsellor head on I wanted to help. I wanted her to see that she wasn’t the sum of her parents and all the bad things that had happened, that even in the darkest moments there is a tiny spark of light. Any writer that can make a reader feel so much for her characters and their journey is special and I can’t wait to read what Caragh does next, but for now I know Saoirse will be staying with me for a while. 

Out now from OneWorld Publications

Caragh Maxwell is a writer living in Sligo town. She graduated from the Trinity College MPhil in Creative Writing in 2023, and her essays, poems and stories have been published in The Irish Times, The Cormorant and other publications. Her writing focuses on the self, memory, and womanhood. Sugartown is her debut novel, and was shortlisted for the 2025 A Post Irish Book Awards.

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 Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads June 2026

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’m writing this from a puddle of my own sweat and with a fan roaring in the background. Every animal has spread their body as far as possible across the wooden floor trying to keep cool. It’s been a stay at home month for sure as my neurological symptoms worsen when it’s hot, within a couple of days I had the texture of a wet noodle. So it’s been a month with lots of reading. I’m organised though, fans in both rooms I use a lot, ice cold water, lollies and ice chips, a neck fan and a handheld motorised fan that’s a god send. Nothing tells you that you’re middle aged more than a neck fan for Christmas. Especially when you’re pleased with it. I’ve been reading for the Squad POD Collective this month, then mainly NetGalley reads in between. There’s a huge range in these favourites as we go to Ireland, Liverpool, Norway, Italy and the US, from the aftermath of WW1 to the present day. There are family sagas, an incredible forbidden love story, a great start to a new crime series, the most talked about book on social media and finally a slice of whimsical joy from Matson Taylor. See you next month 📚

Look at that fantastic gothic cover! This is the dark and dangerous side to my favourite city as disgraced detective Mark Fletcher wakes up disoriented in the Castle Street Hotel. He’s horrified to find he’s in bed with a corpse, a man with a bullet hole in his head. How can he explain this when he has no memory of what happened last night? His finger prints and DNA will be everywhere, so will his disillusioned colleagues believe him if he calls it in? He can take his chances with his old team or he can run. This is the man who caught the Butcher of Bootle, only to watch his life rapidly fall apart nine months ago. Luca Veste takes us on a breathless chase through Liverpool while the crime team are playing catch up. We follow his old colleagues Kirkham and Abs as they investigate a body discovered in a garden in Kirby, making Brookside jokes along the way. Could these two deaths be linked? We’re also introduced to the Bonucci family, patriarch Salvatore and his second in command Gino and Frankie. Everyone knows the Bonucci family, they have legitimate business interests but underlying that is a criminal enterprise that’s seeped into every area of the city. They also blame Mark for the death of Salvatore’s youngest daughter Sofia, a huge lapse of judgement that went terribly wrong. Now Mark is trying to investigate who killed his bedfellow, Kirkham and Abs are 24 hours behind him, but could the Bonucci’s be closer? This is a nail-biting and action packed crime thriller that had me rooting for Mark from the moment he woke up. I loved the Scouse humour and the settings the author used as Mark jumps out of windows and even into the Mersey. The ending is such a shock and very clever indeed. I’m already waiting for the next book.

I’ve not written my full review on this but I can’t stop thinking about it and I’m dying to talk to other people for their opinion. We are introduced to Natalie, a trad wife influencer in the US with a hugely successful social media business and merchandising from their ranch Yesteryear. Natalie espouses the traditional life where the man is the head of the household and the woman looks after the home and their ever growing family. Her husband Caleb works the farm, while she runs the business with the help of two nannies and a producer. The monetisation paradox is clear to see, she’s making a living by preaching values that she doesn’t live by. Natalie wants her followers to embrace her trad view on family life, but has turned her ideology into a successful business run by a woman. Followers can watch her baking bread or collecting eggs from the chickens, but they don’t see her childcare or the producer who live on the isolated ranch with the family. Thanks to some clever remodelling of the house they also have all mod cons, but hidden from view with clever screening. Natalie tells women they should submit to their husbands, while agreeing privately that her own is an idiot. Without her this family would be lost. At university Natalie kept herself to herself, noting her roommate’s promiscuity and feminist viewpoint knowing she would become one of the ‘angry women’. Women who think they can have it all – the career, the marriage, the home, the children – end up doing it all and no wonder they’re angry. She still criticises the angry woman; seemingly never realising that’s exactly who she is and that her life is unsustainable. One morning she wakes up when it’s still dark, she can hear children having breakfast in the kitchen. Why hasn’t anyone put a light on? As she makes her way into the kitchen she realises that it’s very basic and her children are eating by candlelight. Except they’re not her children. The oldest girl is looking after them, but she doesn’t know her. Then she sees Caleb, but there’s nothing behind his eyes. They seem to living a real pioneer life, with everything done by hand, no hidden gadgets or shortcuts, no staff, no filming. Is this a nightmare? Has she been imprisoned here? Has she time travelled? You will ask all these questions alongside Natalie as the author takes you back and forth from the internet friendly lifestyle she created and the real thing. The author has managed to make an unlikeable character incredibly compelling, asks questions of this strange world where everyone has a real life and an Instagram ready life, and challenges ideals that current US politicians are advocating for women. The minute you finish this book you will want to find someone else who’s finished it so you can talk.

It was lovely to spend some time this month in one of Faith Hogan’s warm and welcoming worlds, this time on an isolated Irish island called Pin Hill. In this small community, sisters Blythe and Rae grew up with their grandparents at the family hotel in Hope Square after the death of their parents. Blythe’s ambition in life was to train in hospitality at university and follow her grandad into the family’s hotel business. Rae on the other hand was more of ‘go with the flow’ girl, spending her time with friends rather than learning the family trade. Yet, when we meet the grown up sisters, life hasn’t turned out as planned. Blythe lives in her own guest house at Still Water House with handyman husband Kip and daughter Siggy. Rae’s husband Marcus has died and she’s living alone in the Hope Street Hotel, where she’s run the family business with her husband for many years. What happened to place these sisters at odds with their expectations, especially Blythe who lived and breathed the hotel. As always Faith has created some great characters here in the rather strident and opinionated Blythe and her quieter, less confident sister. Blythe’s actually a bit much in parts and I found her very hard to like. We’re taken back and forth to the women’s teenage years where the explanations lie and uncover the secrets and events that set them on the wrong paths. While in the present day, Rae is struggling to maintain the hotel alone and has discovered financial problems her husband covered up. Unfortunately they aren’t the only secrets about her marriage. She has the help and support of niece Siggy and refugee Danial who’s just moved to the island with his grandmother. Blythe is suspicious of both of them and becomes obsessed with Rae’s potential plans for the hotel, setting herself on a path to disaster. This was a lovely, warm novel with great moments of humour in between the sister’s broken relationship. This is the perfect summer holiday read.

First of all I have to mention that gorgeous Art Nouveau cover on this novel, matching perfectly with the time period which is post WW1. This is one of my favourite periods for historical novels because I’m fascinated with the pace of societal change that ranged across class, gender and sexuality. It’s also a period where mental health issues and disability became much more prominent. Many men came home from the war with amputations and facial disfigurements, changing their lives forever. Of course many men didn’t return and every family was touched by loss either on the battlefield or in the waves of Spanish Flu that broke out after Armistice Day. Into this period of seismic change, Rue Baldry has written a beautiful story of forbidden love that touches the heart. Our two narrators are Albert and Edgar, who are both at a boarding school but for different reasons, despite being close in age. Albert was demobbed and needed a job, so is working at the school as a gardener. He has been through so much, yet is only 19 years old. Edgar is 18, a schoolboy from the middle classes who has just missed active service and longs to train as a doctor despite his dad’s wishes. When they meet there’s an instant affinity between them and we’re drawn into their fledgling love. This is a book that’s so evocative of the era whether it’s the old-fashioned British private school or in hell of the trenches. I thought the exploration of a class divide between the two men was very well done too and represented the societal changes in post-WW1 England. It’s impossible not to be drawn in by this love story, especially poignant considering these men were paved the way for the more permissive society we have today. There is no better representation of love is love,

In Ireland, 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…

I’ve still to write my review for this one, but I enjoyed it immensely particularly the WW2 timeline in the Norwegian islands that I knew nothing about. People 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. I loved how the author showed how far the war reached and how it was only on one tiny uninhabited island that the young women could let go of it for just one afternoon. Amanda’s novels are real favourites of mine and this had everything – family secrets, hidden letters, forbidden relationships, espionage and some incredibly brave women. This should be on every historical fiction fan’s summer list.

Last, but definitely not least we come to Matson Taylor, not only a great writer but an all round good egg. His knowledge of art. architecture, and ancient Rome gives us a fabulous summer setting for this standalone novel about found family in the eternal city. A wobble on a new Vespa has Clemmie and Monty literally bumping into each other on a bridge flanked with angels as the novel opens. Monty’s injuries aren’t too severe but mean he can’t work on the renovation job he has in Rome. Now without a roof over his head and needing to recover from concussion (at least he hopes that’s why he can hear Octavian the cat talking to him) Clemmie and her friend Floss offer their palazzo. In their very unique home he finds the rest, relaxation and the care he has needed for a long time. You’ll fall in love with Monty who really is one of life’s innocents or what me and my mum call ‘new people’ who are on their first incarnation in the world. What he does have are secrets and a private grief that he’s never shared. Matson brings him together with the caring aspiring writer Clemmie and her friend, the flamboyant retired actress Floss. Add to these eccentrics a pair of food smuggling nuns, a man who lives in a converted ice cream van and a little twinkle of magic too. I never want Matson to stop writing because where else would I find scenes of nuns going to a gay disco? Set in the 1970s where the height of fashion is Floss’s new avocado en-suite, dazzling Rome is brought beautifully to life and as always there are deep emotions at its core. This is a wonderful comfort read for the summer, especially for those of us who are staycationing.

Here’s next months tbr, if I don’t get distracted of course!

Posted in Personal Purchase

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’d seen so many extremely varied viewpoints on this book that I couldn’t resist dipping in and it was definitely worth the hype it’s received. I read it voraciously over two days, so excited and so confused towards the end I realised I’d read it too fast. I had to go back and force myself to read it slowly. Read either way, this really is a delicious story that has hit at exactly the right time in history. With the US administration rolling back women’s rights and rumours about the implementation of Project 25 it feels like we’re watching Gilead formed in real life. One of the most controversial online figures in this huge political move to the far right is that of the ‘trad wife’, a woman who lives her life focused solely on the home, children and obeying her husband who is always head of the household. This might come from a religious conviction or a political one, but social media is awash with trad wife influencers like Hannah Neelham who shows life at the family farm and cooking from scratch or Estee Williams who proudly declares a return to 1950s values where motherhood and domesticity are the priority. To me this feels like the logical extension of the late 1990s dating book ‘The Rules’, much lauded by Charlotte in Sex and the City. Single women were advised to keep their distance and mystery on the dating scene – with men naturally being pursuers they are more responsive to women who play hard to get. It also advocated withholding sexual contact and focusing on the man’s wants and needs. It stands to reason that any eventual marriage would also involve the man’s needs coming first and feminists are concerned that the current trad wife trend appears like a pop culture phenomenon, but is born of patriarchal policies that will set back women’s autonomy and authority by decades. Of course the obvious paradox here is the influencer’s monetisation of the trad wife lifestyle, promoting the concept of the man as sole breadwinner while simultaneously operating successful and lucrative online content creation businesses, often with merchandising and multiple staff. These women are highly driven and ambitious and this is where our main character Natalie is situated; right at the centre of the monetisation paradox. 

The story is told through Natalie in a compelling inner monologue that had me absolutely gripped, despite disliking her quite intensely. The author takes us back to her college days, where she keeps herself separate from her roommate and other students often with a condescending and superior attitude. She firmly believes she has the answer to why feminism isn’t working, labelling her roommate the archetypal ‘angry woman’ who thinks they can have it all but will only end up exhausted and dissatisfied. She marries Caleb and is pregnant before graduation, not finishing her degree. She’s married into a political dynasty, with Cal’s father hoping to start a presidential campaign soon. Obviously they are republicans and Natalie’s father in law does point out that Caleb could be perfect for politics, being an ‘idiot’ who has no direction and is easily controlled. It’s Natalie who gets the idea to run a ranch, scouting for suitable properties and approaching her father-in-law for funding. He agrees to give them the five million they need, but Nat must keep her end of the bargain and keep producing beautiful grandbabies. She sets out to sell the great American Dream on social media, giving her ranch the tongue in cheek name ‘Yesteryear’. Despite having no farming experience, the plans for are to keep livestock, grow vegetables and become self-sufficient. She sets out to represent their lifestyle as pioneers, deliberately choosing her decor accordingly and instructing builders to hide all their modern appliances behind doors and false walls. She starts out posting nostalgic pictures, but then expands to videos where she and the children cook from scratch or make items for the house. Before long she has a business on her hands and now she isn’t just hiding the appliances, but two nannies and a producer, not to mention the merchandising. What could possibly go wrong?

This is a book with some huge reveals, you won’t always know what’s going on and you won’t be able to put it down – I was even reading while cooking the tea. I was so involved that when Natalie wakes up one morning to find her home isn’t as she knows it I was completely discombobulated – we ended up with gluey spaghetti that night! There’s no electricity and she finds children in her kitchen eating breakfast by candlelight, but they’re not her children. Caleb looks like her husband but there’s nothing behind his eyes. She’s now living pioneer life for real and when she opens the cupboards to look for her appliances, there aren’t any. There’s no help either. Her eldest daughter Mary cares for her with something close to a resigned exasperation, making sure that even if Natalie is only sitting, she can still do laundry and churn butter. Imagine a more realistic version of Little House on the Prairie where you can never escape to a power shower or flushing toilet. Natalie asks herself what’s going on: is this a punishment for something she’s done, has she lost her mind or is this some sort of sick reality TV situation? Is God punishing her. She’s now a trad wife for real, but she definitely isn’t happy, nor is she making any money.

This book is so well written, incredibly ambitious and captures the zeitgeist. I didn’t like Natalie but found her inner voice almost hypnotic. She’s deliberately hiding her intelligence and business brain on screen, but makes the comment that her eldest daughter takes after her because she holds “her intelligence like a knife behind her back.”However, once she becomes a traditional wife for real Caleb is the head of the household and she realises that whatever their home situation men can opt out of chores and childcare with no explanation, whereas she’s being forced out of bed while unwell. I was intrigued about where her belief system comes from, expecting generational religious beliefs and trauma but her mother and sister, while religious, have compassion and the ability to accept changes to their world view. They have understanding and compassion, something that Natalie seems to lack and it is utterly damning when her mother asks her why it’s so hard for her to be kind. I was so angry about the hypocrisy, pushing her ‘lifestyle’ to an online audience of women while keeping, not only her modern applicances, but the help hidden. She must know she’s making women feel inadequate, taking their money and lying to them. Once you become a tool of the patriarchy you’re an enemy of your fellow women, even though she gives them lip service by repeating the Christian Nationalist narrative that a trad wife is equal to her husband in the eyes of God – her work is different but of equal value. How can they be equal when only one of them has autonomy and the final say? In fact she openly fears aspects of the real pioneer life, especially giving birth. She is also aware of the paradox: 

‘To be a wealthy Christian woman and maintain good standing, you needed to publicly disavow your luxuries in order to maintain possession of them.’ 

It’s only by pretending they have nothing, that she becomes rich. I think I kept reading because I was so desperate to see her carefully planned, fake world fall apart. At a time where feminists are debating whether they’d rather be alone with a man or a bear (and regularly choosing the bear) she pedals a dangerous rhetoric and any woman selling it is colluding with the patriarchy. On a day where I’ve seen yet another group of white British men on trial for raping a woman drugged by her husband, I’m not inclined to give any man that sort of power over me. This week a pregnant woman on holiday in Florida had an incomplete miscarriage and was still, days later, unable to get the procedure she needed to prevent infection. This is because she wasn’t in her home state and doctors in Florida were unsure on the legal position of performing a D and C operation thanks to ‘pro-life’ policies. Another woman who’d been informed that her baby was too malformed to survive outside the womb, was bombarded with hate on Instagram for choosing to end her pregnancy early. Female influencers can’t post on social media without facing a barrage of abuse from trolls. Thanks to all this, men like Andrew Tate and Christian Nationalist men in positions of huge power, I have a permanent level of inner rage. There should be a special level of hell for women who take up this cause and use their religious beliefs to make life harder for their fellow women. I let go a bit of that rage while reading this because it helped me remember that what we see online is like any other representation of real life – heavily edited and stretching the truth, if not an outright lie. Not only is this book addictive and inventive, but through Natalie, the author blows apart the whole hypocritical and dangerous industry as well as the Christian Nationalist ideology that espouses trad wives and I absolutely loved that. 

Out Now from Fourth Estate.

Meet The Author

Caro Claire Burke received her Master’s in Fine Arts from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the co-host of Diabolical Lies, a politics and culture podcast. YESTERYEAR is her first novel.

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

The Sisters of Hope Square by Faith Hogan 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

All Blythe Carney ever wanted was to become a hotelier and run her family’s business, the Hope Square Hotel. But fate, and her grandfather, intervened and it fell into her younger sister Rae’s lap, taking her dreams with it. Now Blythe owns Still Water House, the most exclusive guest house on Pin Hill Island, but she can’t help but feel she’s still not living the life she was meant to.

Rae Johnson had no interest in taking over the hotel, her dreams lay elsewhere, but when she ended up with the family business her sister had set her heart on, her sense of duty to continue their family legacy with her husband was too strong to ignore.

Now, fifteen years later, newly widowed Rae is struggling to keep the hotel afloat and she knows that selling it could be the final straw in her already fragile relationship with her sister.

What do you do when your sister lives the life that you’d set your heart on? And when the perfect storm is brewing, surely, it’s time to put aside the jealousy and disappointment that can tear a family apart, and fight for the future you have always dreamed of?

I love the joy and care in Faith Hogan’s writing and this has been a brilliant book to sit back and enjoy while we’ve been having a few weeks of very warm weather. Her characters always have so many layers and usually plenty of secrets and these women are no exception. I also feel like she cares about them and wants us to understand their journey. The author takes us back and forth in time to give us the story of the Hope Square sisters, Blythe and Rae. In the present Blythe runs a very successful guest house on Pin Hill Island, at Still Water House, the home she shares with husband Kip and daughter Siggy. By contrast her sister Rae lives alone in what was the family business and the only hotel on the island, the Hope Square Hotel. The sisters couldn’t be more different. Blythe has the drive and ambition of a great business woman whose only dream was to gain her degree and take over at the helm of the family business after her grandfather. Blythe runs a tight ship, even at home, and while she and Kip are an excellent team on the business side, of late there’s been some tension between them. Their main point of contention is Blythe’s treatment of their daughter Siggy who is a teenager ready to start planning the next stage of her life, perhaps going away to university? Blythe has closed her mind to this idea, she rarely lets Siggy hang out with other kids on the island and refuses any activity she believes is unsafe. Kip is becoming frustrated, not only does he feel taken for granted, he wants his daughter to be allowed to grow up. However, there is no reasoning with Blythe. Siggy often escapes to work at Hope Square with her Aunt Rae. Rae feels fragile, not surprising since she’s a recent widow, but there’s something more that seems to be keeping her paralysed, unable to make plans and move forward. She and Marcus didn’t have children so she values her precious time with Siggy, but her relationship with Blythe has never fully recovered since Rae and Marcus took over the hotel. How did this sequence of events happen? 

The author takes us back and forth in time with both sisters so we can see events and decisions that led us here, but she also uses it to let us in on secrets the sisters have kept from each other. We as readers have the full picture, so behaviour that seems unreasonable or excessive to other characters has some context for us. It’s very frustrating to see characters misunderstanding each other completely. One such instance is Blythe’s behaviour when a new resident comes to Pin Hill Island. Val and her grandson Danial are refugees, he’s eager to find work and she’s keen to join groups and make friends. Blythe’s behaviour around Val seems utterly irrational, but there must be a reason probably buried deep in the past. I found Blythe a challenge I must admit but I couldn’t quite believe she was just a hateful person. The major question that keeps popping up is why would the girl’s grandfather make the inexplicable decision to pass the hotel to Rae and her boyfriend Marcus? The answers will come, but needless to say there were some men in this book who needed a bit of reeducation. Meanwhile as Danial volunteers at the hotel for Rae to get some work experience, he and Siggy spend some time together. Could there be romance on the cards? If there is, Blythe will be definitely have something to say about it and I worried it would have implications for her relationship with her daughter.

All these misunderstandings and secrets are set against a picturesque backdrop on this isolated island. The incredible scenery is clearly what draws people to visit, but is there still enough to sustain two hotels? Blythe is determined to get in a tourist guide and in one of the best comic moments she has a guest from hell, who she suspects is an inspector. I have to admit I imagined Maggie Smith playing this role at her most imperious. The vision of Blythe having to tolerate smoking, moving furniture and waiting on this woman hand and foot made me laugh. Her eventual response to 48 hours of this treatment was priceless. There’s a lot of trauma to unpack here. There’s so much loss for both these women, even after they lost their parents. There are themes of bereavement, motherhood, domestic abuse and being a victim of crime as well as the central family feud. As always the author gives these subjects the depth they deserve and they do have impact especially when it’s a revelation from the past that gives us more insight into the characters. What I like is that she always keeps us hopeful, that there’s a chance for healing and light in what seems a dark world at the moment. As the tension and miscommunication builds I just wanted the two sisters to talk openly and honestly, but it reaches a dramatic conclusion I didn’t expect. This is a great summer read and something of an escape from reality, full of intrigue and family drama but with bucketloads of warmth and hope. 

Out now from Aria Books

Meet the Author

Faith Hogan is an award-winning, million copy best seller. She is a USA Today, Irish Times Top Ten and an Amazon UK Number 1 Best Selling writer of contemporary fiction novels. Her stories have charmed readers around the world – she’s sold internationally and translated widely. She writes grown up women’s fiction which is unashamedly uplifting, feel-good and inspiring.

The Bookshop Ladies was shortlisted for an An Post Book Award in 2024.

The Sisters of Hope Square is her brand new summer read coming June 2026. It is a gripping and poignant story of two sisters divided by jealousy and disappointment who must put their differences aside to save the inheritance that drove a wedge between them decades earlier.

She writes twisty contemporary crime fiction as Geraldine Hogan.

She lives in the west of Ireland with her family and their Labrador named Penny. She’s a writer, reader, enthusiastic dog walker and reluctant jogger – except of course when it is raining!

Instagram @faithhoganauthor

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Smallie by Eden McKenzie-Goddard 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Smallie adj. |smal·lie|
Definition: Caribbean (informal). Describing or relating a person from a small island; a small islander.

In 1961, nineteen-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her son’s father, Clarence Braithwaite, who left Barbados to join the British army. But aboard the ship to Southampton she meets a man named Raldo who offers her a glimpse of a new life, a freer life. Bound by the memory of her son waiting at home, she chooses Clarence – realizing too late that war has made a stranger out of him.

Nearly fifty years later, Lucinda receives a letter from the Home Office that threatens to tear her world apart. Her children rally together to prove her legal arrival, and to do so they must track down an elusive man from her past, a man she wanted to love but instead lost, a man who now holds the key to her family’s future. Raldo . . . An exhilarating and expansive tale of a family thrown into collision with the Windrush scandal, Smallie shows just how easily the past can spill into our lives, even when – especially when – we think we’ve closed the door on it.

The author splits their timeline so in 2017 we see Lucinda’s children trying to make sense of the letter from the Home Office that states she has no leave to remain in the UK. Then we go back several decades to her early life in Barbados and her trip to the UK. This worked so well because we get to see the huge generation gap in her children’s incredulous response to the letter and Lucinda’s more mured response. They have lived in the UK all their lives and with their education and important jobs they’ve experienced racism but not in the same way their mother has. They don’t know that the system can fail. This is their first real sense of utter powerlessness. Whereas Lucinda has spent most of her life like a leaf in the wind. Her strict religious father would keep her at home with a life that revolved around church, chores and schoolwork. In fact it’s only her friend Sheila that manages to lure her out to a club, where she meets Clarence, a liaison that results in a hidden pregnancy and her son Reggie. Yet still her father calls the shots and when Clarence decides to emigrate to the UK she is only allowed to follow on the proviso that they marry, only then will her father release Reggie to join them. Then, on the voyage across she meets Raldo and their chemistry is immediate, he offers her a way out. When they reach the UK she can leave with him and his friend, avoiding Clarence. Will she make the decision to put herself or Reggie first? I couldn’t stop reading because in the 2017 timeline I was desperate to know whether her children would manage to find enough evidence for their mother to stay, but also I wanted to know who was the father of her children born in the UK? It’s cleverly plotted to keep you guessing, even when their father is present.  

I loved the moments of freedom that Lucinda has with Sheila, nights of jazz, dancing, laughing where she comes alive. Either in clubs or at house parties they forget the one room they share, the lack of money, the family they clean for and the way British people treat them. Sheila is older and wiser. She explains to Lucinda why their employer’s treat them differently. Both girls work for a cleaning company run by a friend and Sheila points out how differently she is treated compared to Lucinda. They speak harshly to Sheila and expect her to steal, whereas Lucinda is treated more politely. She explains what ‘passing’ means, the family treat Lucinda better because of her paler skin. She could pass as a white girl. Even so, neither of them can have bank accounts and decide to use the ‘pardner’ system. Every week they all put their wages into a pot that’s kept by the most trustworthy friend, then once a month they take it in turns to have the lump sum. It’s the only way individuals could buy a house and set down roots here. Strong communities were built from these bonds of trust. The group decide that Lucinda should look after the money, but her trustworthiness is dependent on whether Clarence decides to beat her or not, till she hands it over. She is being brought down by this relationship, but she still clings to the idea of Reggie making his way here to be a family. Yet every so often she sees Raldo, conducting buses or at the same party and that spark is still there. He brings her alive.

It seems inconceivable that someone who has lived in this country for most of their lives could be detained and placed in an immigration facility. Lucinda is placed in Yarl’s Wood and her children are falling apart. She is the foundation that supports them all. While they struggle to come to terms with the situation, Lucinda quietly gets on with it. The Home Office need proof that she arrived on a certain date, with her boarding pass or similar, but then also prove that she didn’t leave for a period of time. They are applying 21st Century rules to a time when paper tickets were damaged or thrown out, where jobs were cash in hand and there was no paper trial. As they desperately look around for people who could corroborate her account, they unearth more of their mother’s story. There’s betrayal, anger and bitterness that’s lasted over fifty years. Will they find this man called Raldo who looked after her boarding pass? As the date for the hearing looms closer, Lucinda starts to wonder whether it’s time to make decisions that suit her, not everyone else leading to an ending I didn’t expect, but that was total perfection. I felt so much reading this book – everything from anger to joy and so much inbetween. Lucinda is a brilliant central character, so used to being pushed around she almost disappears in the cacophony of her children. We know theres so much depth and experience in this woman and I was willing her on to finally make a choice for herself. Beautifully written, this is an emotional account of one woman’s life caught up in the Windrush scandal and it kept me spellbound to the end. 

Out Now From Penguin

Meet the Author

Eden McKenzie-Goddard is a UK-based writer and podcaster, with Barbadian-Jamaican roots. His work sheds light on the lives of the forgotten and bringing their stories to the forefront.

In 2018, Eden co-founded the top 30 music and culture podcast Don’t Alert The Stans – commended by Apple Podcasts, Complex, Beats By Dre and more.

With almost a decade working in publishing and a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from University of Westminster, McKenzie-Goddard is a student of literary minds Silvia Plath, Hanya Yanagihara and James Baldwin.