Tag: Family

Posted in Netgalley

Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What’s worse than a big little lie? An even bigger little truth . . .

Ten years ago, at the Pirriwee Primary school gates, the friendships of Celeste, Jane and Madeline were forged in the fires of young motherhood, the big little lies we all tell to hide our deepest fears and secrets – and the event that changed everything.

Now mothers to hormonal teens, these frazzled friends are starting to worry about the strangers occupying their kids’ bedrooms. Or they would, if they weren’t so distracted by their own problems.

Because:

Madeline’s landmark birthday is about to land a bombshell.

Jane’s rock-solid marriage is suddenly crumbling.

And Celeste’s mother-in-law is asking awkward questions about the past.

Not to mention the mystery of who sent the school principal a freshly severed finger.

So many difficult little truths.

Such a pity then that not a one of them can see the biggest ugliest truth hiding in their midst . . .

Reading this book felt like catching up with old friends and listening to their latest gossip. It was good to be back in Pirriwee and it’s a testament to the HBO series that I was surprised to be in Australia. The music, casting and setting of the series were so strong that I was seeing Reece Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman as I was reading. The ongoing lives of Madeline, Celeste and Jane are narrated in chapters headed with their names. In between is the transcript of a group counselling session with all the teenagers. All of this must link to a package, sent to the school containing a severed human finger. Their narration has all the hallmarks of life in the dreaded ‘middle’ even though Jane is a little younger than her friends. Their days are taken up with the care of their teenagers and elderly parents, ill health, the question of more children before menopause, big birthday celebrations and a role as mother of the bride for one of our friends. There’s also a cool new teacher at the school who’s keen to make friends. Underlying this are the events of the previous novel – the trauma of domestic violence for Celeste and the loss of Perry her husband, the discovery that Jane had a non-consensual experience with Perry resulting in the birth of her son Ziggy, and Perry’s ‘accidental’ death at a fancy dress party. Bonnie, the wife of Madeleine’s ex-husband Nathan is processing the trauma of pushing Perry to his eventual death and both she and Renata have larger roles in this follow up. 

Our new storylines are the growing presence and confusion of Celeste’s mother-in-law Mary Louise, who is both monstrous and hilarious at the same time. Celeste has to cope with Mary-Louise’s perception of Perry as her golden boy and her perception of Bonnie as a murderer. In a co-hort of liberal and correct women, her loose canon approach is hilarious at times. However she’s in danger of ruining her twin grandsons and turning them into their father. On a more positive note she treats Jane’s son Ziggy equally and insists on spending time with all three, much to Jane’s anxiety. Jane is coping with Perry’s ever widening circle of victims as the consequences of his actions affect her marriage and Tom in particular. Celeste is worried that Mary-Louise is being unusually spontaneous, erratic and forgetful. The fear of being responsible for a woman she never bonded with is always in the back of her mind. Madeline is turning 50, but instead of all eyes being on her the limelight is stolen by her eldest daughter and the ‘perfect boyfriend’ when he decides to publicly propose. Madeleine is just waiting for the cracks to show in this seemingly faultless young man, but soon planning for the wedding falls to the wayside as she finds a lump in her breast and needs to undergo diagnostic procedures. Facing her mortality and waiting for her test results has Madeline on a very thin rope, however it’s a bombshell from husband Ed that really brings life to a crashing halt. It. was interesting to see Madeline actually lose some of her famous composure and with very good reason.

The peripheral characters are also back and with a little bit more space to grow, something the author has deliberately done after watching actress Laura Dern turn the small role of Renata into something really interesting. Now she’s in the centre of the group more and I really enjoyed her ballsy choices and independent spirit, such as taking motorcycle lessons. She’s also a lot more astute than the others give her credit for, calmly sitting back and reading people perfectly. Bonnie has always felt underused in the first novel, now we focus on her a little more as she continues to process the trauma of Perry’s death and struggles to communicate with her daughter. Then there’s new woman in town and everyone’s favourite teacher, Melody, who is soon at Tom’s morning boot camp and gravitating towards the friends. She’s a good listener and brilliant at giving women permission to focus on their own needs between all the demands on our time. The freedom Jane feels when she’s taken to a club spontaneously and just lets loose is so lovely to see. The rather magical weekend away she organises is another hit, allowing Madeline to open up about struggles she’s having. Melody starts to feel like a fairy godmother and as the women welcome her into their friendship group, their teenagers enjoy her approach to teaching and she looks like a welcome addition to their community. There’s a new principle too and Celeste meets a man called Marco who has also just moved to Piriwee and is pleasantly surprised to feel that tingle of excitement when meeting someone who has romantic potential.  

So when a severed finger arrives at school addressed to the new principal rumours start to fly. A particularly worrying one for the parents is their kids casual joke about a ‘paedo’ middle aged man hanging around and asking questions about the school. Another rumour involves a mob boss who has the reputation for sending body parts through the mail when displeased, but who is his intended target? This central mystery meanders along through their busy lives. As before this set of parents are trying their best to work together, despite their tangled web of blended families. Jane hates being with Mary Louise, in fact it makes her feel sick, but if it’s the price of Ziggy having a grandmother in his life she will persevere. Maddy tries to work with Bonnie and Nathan, actually turning to her ex-husband for help when she realises that she’s overwhelmed. I felt so much for Jane and her experience of giving birth to the child of a man who has assaulted her. She finally shares something about Ziggy’s birth that I really identified with and found very emotional. The only jarring note in the whole narrative was the transcript of the teenagers who seem to be super intelligent and articulate compared with teenagers I know. They felt way more sophisticated (and rich) than me. I did have some inkling of the central mystery but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment at all. I’d feared I might be let down by this sequel but it definitely lived up to the first novel and the TV series. It still had that difficult to describe magic that makes you want to read it all in one go and I pretty much did. 

Out now from Michael Joseph

Meet the Author

Liane Moriarty is the Australian author of nine internationally best-selling novels: Three Wishes, The Last Anniversary, What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist’s Love Story, Nine Perfect Strangers and the number one New York Times bestsellers: The Husband’s Secret, Big Little Lies, Truly Madly Guilty and Apples Never Fall. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and sold more than 20 million copies.

Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers and Apples Never Fall were adapted into popular television series with the star-studded casts including Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Melissa McCarthy and Annette Bening.

Liane lives in Sydney, Australia, together with her husband, son and daughter.

Posted in Film Adaptations

Practical Magic 2 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As all my readers know by know I’m a huge fan of Alice Hoffman, since the early 2000s when I first read Skylight  Confession. I then tore through her entire back catalogue and fell in love with her mix of magic realism, the north east United States and moments from history. I hadn’t realised she was the original author of Practical Magic, the 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the Owens sisters, Gillian and Sally. Sally, the more sensible sister has her life disrupted when Gillian turns up in her life, as always bringing trouble behind her. However, it’s only in recent years that she’s revisited the Owen’s family, going back to their origins in the UK with Magic Lessons. This is the first book chronologically, starting in the 1600s when wise woman Hannah Owens finds a baby abandoned in a snowy field. She brings Maria up as her daughter, passing on her wisdom and plant knowledge to benefit the women who arrive at night looking for their help. Maria soon has her own familiar and when Hannah is taken and burned as a witch she flees England for the Caribbean and then Massachusetts USA in pursuit of the lover who lies and breaks her heart. It is Maria who intends to create a protection spell for the women in her family, keeping them safe from heartbreak. The spell becomes a curse that every Owens descendant has to face: they fall in love their lover will die. 

I went to see the film Practical Magic 2 last week, starring the original actresses as Sally and Gillian, plus Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as the aunts who brought them up – Frannie and Jet. The younger generation are Sally’s daughters Antonia played by Game of Thrones Maisie Williams and Kylie played by Joey King. Once I got over the shock that Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock look younger than they did in 1998, I began to enjoy the film. It’s based mainly on the third book in the series – The Book of Magic but does allude to Maria Owens too. Gillian’s daughter Kylie is falling in love, knowing nothing of the curse that hangs over their family. Gillian wanted to bring up girls free from their heritage as witches, even though women do still queue up at the door for their help. Sally has been against this decision, keeping her promise to her sister while worrying that this secret will only bring trouble. Unbeknownst to Sally, Kylie is slowly falling in love with Gideon at university oblivious to how dangerous her emotions can be. Meanwhile Aunt Jet has heard the death watch beetle clicking all over the house and knows her time is close. Before she dies she wants to use the book of magic to free the younger generations from the protection spell that has become a curse. As tragedy strikes and Gideon’s life hangs in the balance, Kylie takes the book of magic and makes her way to England hoping to find someone who can help her break the curse. 

The film has all the charm of Practical Magic and some emotional moments as Sally battles to save her daughter using the magic she’s kept from them all these years. Gillian is right by her side as they follow Kylie to England, leaving Aunt Frannie and Antonia to look after Gideon in hospital. There are some comic moments, mainly based in the difference between the sisters. Gillian is much freer than Sally, shown in short scenes like the one as they leave for England with Sally’s only luggage being a small weekend bag and Gillian’s comically large suitcases having to be lugged up and down many flights of stairs. The casting of the men in the film is very good, particularly the magic professor Ian Wright, played by Lee Pace with a quiet intensity and the chemistry between him and Sandra Bullock is off the charts. We’re introduced to him as the sisters blunder their way into his third floor flat (with all their suitcases) only to find him naked on his bed paralysed by magic. Sally covers as much of his body as she can while performing the magic to break this powerful spell. Meanwhile Gillian is quite happy to enjoy the view and tease her sister at the same time. One he’s awake he can’t believe the famous Owens sisters are in front of him and helps them to follow Kylie on her journey to their heritage, the small village where Hannah Owens was burned. There’s magic, loss, romance and laughs along the way with the sacrifice that needs to be made to save Gideon especially emotional. Films are almost never better than the book and this one isn’t, but it’s a fair adaptation of Practical Magic’s two prequels and definitely keeps the charm of the original film. I recommend the books wholeheartedly and it seems they’re doing a film tie-in repackaging The Book of Magic to match the film. If you want an easy, engaging night at the cinema then this is definitely a good girl’s night film. As always with this family I came an away wishing I was an Owens, even if it’s just to live in their incredible house! 

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

The Treasures by Harriet Evans 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

One golden summer. One missing treasure. And a secret that binds two lives together. 

Every year, Alice’s father gives her a treasure. Then on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, her final gift vanishes – along with the fragile certainty of her world. Alice runs, towards New York City and away from the memories of that last summer at the orchard where she grew up.

Across the Atlantic, Tom has always felt that something is missing from his life. When he finds a long-forgotten letter, it leads him away from Sevenstones – the house at the heart of his family for generations – and towards a truth no one has ever fully told.

From post-war London to 1960s New York, Alice and Tom’s stories become entwined. But will the secrets of their past bring them together, or break them apart?

I always think that the good marker of a book is when you find yourself thinking about it days later and discussing it – or in my case boring someone who hasn’t even read it with my thoughts and feelings. This book brought up so many feelings! While we start with Alice’s devastating story of her early years, it was Tom’s narrative where the book came alive for me, with his early life in Dumfries and Galloway only a stone’s throw from my favourite yearly holiday destination. The descriptions are so vivid, from the hand to mouth existence of Tom and his father and their total connection with the seasons. The frozen sheep they find that keeps them going all winter and the beautiful hare at the gate signalling the oncoming summer. It’s a magical place and although life isn’t easy it’s familiar, with a strong connection between father and son since the death of his mother. To be torn from all of that and transported to post-war London by his mother’s family feels so unjust. His Aunt Jenny and Uncle Henry are eccentric and not as wealthy as they once were, evidenced by the ghosts of sold paintings on the wallpaper and their diet of tinned goods. As Tom deals with new expectations, the fractured feel of the city and its bomb sites, we start to sense a secret behind all of this, only hinted at and never made clear to Tom. A promise was made in wartime, one that couldn’t be broken and has it’s roots in a house called Sevenstones where ravens nest in the trees and a key was left under a stone at the door for anyone who needed an interlude from their wartime duties. It’s a secret that follows Tom throughout his years at school and eventually across the Atlantic. 

Each section of this book is so evocative of its time and place. The captures the unrest in 1950s London and attitudes towards those who enlisted to fight in the war from Britain’s colonies, now returned to settle here as part of the Windrush generation. There are Teddy Boys rioting and children playing in bomb craters, the contrast of Westminster school and forays into Portobello Market. Meanwhile, Alice’s narrative takes her from a small town in upstate New York where minds and opportunities are equally small, into Manhattan during the unrest and change of the 1960s. Living in a squat in the East Village she is part of the hippy generation, with the backdrop of protests against segregation and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Then comes the anti – Vietnam War demonstrations accompanied by the music of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. All seen through a haze of pot, LSD and The Beatles more psychedelic years. Alice’s generation is my mother’s too so the music, peace and love, the fashion and political beliefs are familiar and nostalgic. Tom travels to the USA to look for Alice, who he accidentally spoke to by phone briefly, for answers about his past and a woman called Teddy Kynaston who seems to be the key to the secrets he’s discovered. 

Alice’s humming of Yesterday is so symbolic, with its twin refrains of the young girl running away early one morning and the parent’s lament that they sacrificed everything for her. Both young people are damaged by the generation before and there’s a definite sense of Phillip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ about the narrative – everyone always remembers the first line but forgets the second “they do not mean to, but they do’. The generation before us were messed up by their parents too, a theme that I imagine will run throughout the next novels in this series. Tom and Alice are failed by parents keeping secrets and making decisions to right the wrongs of the past that only make things worse. I felt something of Tom’s confused identity, having gone to a grammar school where many of my classmates were considerably better off than we were. I was taught to drop my accent and while I got a great education I didn’t  feel like I belonged anywhere. For Tom the disparity is even greater and in his beautifully naive way he reminded me of Jay Gatsby, unaware of how ruthless the rich can be even when it comes to love. The parallel reaches across the Atlantic to Alice’s family and her dad’s employer, the oily and deeply unpleasant writer Wilder Kynaston. He’s wants to write from a young girl’s perspective, perhaps Daisy Buchanan’s but Alice is quite clear that no one cares about the Buchanans, they’re just as careless with feelings as Tom’s Westminster friends. Gatsby is great because of his loyalty and fierce love for a girl who doesn’t deserve his devotion, something Tom understands. 

I felt so deeply angry with the Kynastons and the Caldicotts, especially as the truth of their wartime connection comes into the open. Their story made me understand why people of my grandparent’s age feel nostalgia about wartime – there was a freedom that disappeared into the 1950s and what felt like a concerted effort to force women back into their pre-war roles and behaviour. Women were flying planes up and down the country, joining the ambulance service in heavily bombed cities, working as land girls or taking on roles in the forces. They experienced a freedom in their social life they’d never had before and people took risks because they didn’t know if they’d live through the next day, never mind see the consequences. For women like Jenny, Teddy and Irene it allowed them to be fully themselves only to find themselves controlled and back in the domestic sphere and for some the consequences of being different are devastating. The author takes 20th Century events and shows their consequences in one generation of a family and I’m fascinated to see where these characters go next, something hinted at in the final chapters. As the book drew to a close I found myself hanging on through the final twists that bring us back to Sevenstones. I was so desperate for a specific outcome that when a previous character popped up unexpectedly in the final pages I swore out loud! The treasures in this story are not necessarily the trinkets that Alice carries with her or the carved house that Tom always carries in his pockets as a talisman. It’s the people they represent and the love that flows between them, even long after they’ve gone. 

Out now from Penguin and part of the Sevenstones Trilogy

Meet the Author

Harriet is the author of an incredible fourteen novels, selling over a million copies and being a Top Ten bestseller as well as a Richard and Judy pick twice. Prior to that she worked in publishing, editing authors like Marian Keyes and Sue Townsend. She claims working on the reissue of the book LACE as a proud moment from her junior career.

The Treasures was released in 2025 and is the first book in a family saga featuring the Ravens over a fifty year stretch of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Last year she published her first murder mystery featuring detective Dora Wildwood, a character she hopes to continue into future novels.

She is on the management committee of the Society of Authors, fighting for better deals for authors, talking about the dangers of AI, ghostwriters, bad contracts, ghosting, royalties and other issues facing authors. She also volunteers with Inspiring the Future, aiming to widen aspiration for all children, and am an ambassador for the London Library.

Harriet lives in Bath with her family and a huge fluffy cat.

Harriet can be found on instagram as @harrietevansauthor.

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!