Tag: Mystery

Posted in Publisher Proof

Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkiss

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What a year it’s been for debuts!! This is another excellent read that I’d put on the back burner because I had over committed myself to blog tours. I’m so sorry I didn’t read it sooner because I absolutely LOVED it. This is my absolute favourite genre – gothic, historic fiction – but when added to the elements of spiritualism, transgressive females and dysfunctional families this would definitely come up on Goodreads as highly recommended. In Paris, 1866, a couple of sisters are living very separate lives; Sylvia who is now Baroness Devereaux and Charlotte Mothe, the sister she left behind with a drunken, violent father. When Charlotte pays a heavily disguised visit to Sylvie’s home she assumes their father is ill, but it’s a different aspect of her past she’s bringing to her sister’s door. Their mother had a business as a spirit medium, but Sylvie promised to put such shady dealings in the past when she married the Baron. Charlotte needs her sister for one last con, to pay her father’s medical bills. The aristocratic de Jacquinot family think they are being haunted by an aunt killed in the revolution. They will need to use all their tricks to frighten money out of this family, but they didn’t bank on being absolutely terrified too.

The Perrault fairy tale underpinning this story is ‘The Fairies’ but the sisters don’t necessarily agree on the interpretation. One sister is asked a favour by an old crone, a glass of water from the well, but she ignores her and is cursed to expel toads every time he opens his mouth. On the next day the other sister is commanded to provide a glass of water by a young beautiful woman and grants her the favour. The second sister opens her mouth and gold coins spill out. Perrault says one sister is good and one is bad and Sylvie accepts this, but Charlotte thinks changing her disguise was a mean trick.

“The test is rigged from the start – even before the fairy turned up, when Perrault labelled one sister good and one bad on the very first page, before either got a chance.”

However, by the end Sylvie has changed her perspective. She muses that if she had a daughter would she be toads or gold? She decides not to read her Perrault; ‘I think I will let her decide for herself how a girl should be.”

The de Jacquinot family are dysfunctional and have narrowed all their problems down to the daughter, Josephine. They are clearly struggling to stay afloat, with clear spaces on the wall where there used to be paintings. Yet none of them are working or making any money, still living like the aristocrats they once were. The grandfather seems grumpy but is convinced they have a visiting spectre – Aunt Sabine who died in the revolution when her throat was cut. Brother Maximilien is cynical, in his book there is no such thing as spirits and his sister is suffering from a prolonged bout of lunacy brought on by a dalliance with a once trusted friend of his. Josephine is absolutely convinced there’s a spirit. Charlotte and Sylvie started their routine and I’d not expected them to be charlatans! I loved the details of their routine – the snuffing out of candles, the ring of salt. I thought that the story of creating waxed spectral hands with their mother was a brilliantly quirky childhood memory! Charlotte adopts the patter again straight away, talking about “penumbral disturbances” and “liminal spaces”. Sylvie almost admires her sister as she weaves a tale around the de Jacquinot home and their errant daughter.

However, everyone is shocked when Sabine appears to possess her niece. Josephine has become a different person, babbling about something being taken from her and spitting with anger at her grandfather. Then she’s overcome, with ectoplasm pouring from her mouth. This is something they’ve heard of but have never seen spontaneously like this. That night the library walls are trashed and the ancestral paintings are slashed to pieces, all expect Sabine’s. The family suspect a poltergeist but how could they have slept through such destruction? After this even Maximilien is on board, yet Sylvie suspects something isn’t what it seems. Charlotte was vociferous in her defence of Josephine, almost as if she actually cares. Sylvie knows that her sister has become unnaturally attached to young women before. Before they can go any further Sylvie’s husband confronts her at home. He’s had her followed and suspects an affair with Maximilien de Jacquinot who is closer to Sylvie in age. Sylvie tries to protest her innocence, but it’s difficult when she has betrayed her husband, just in a different way. She can’t reason with him and can only do what he asks, to leave. Now she is back in her miserable childhood home, listening to her father snoring as she lays awake and bereft.

Here the author pulls a brilliant ‘Fingersmith’ style twist, with a change of narrator and perspective of the same events. This narrative is what happens to the girl who spews toads and doesn’t conform. Charlotte is the daughter who stayed behind and still nurses the father who she suspects of killing her mother. In Charlotte’s story, instead of the aristocracy we meet an interesting set of characters who live and love outside the norms of society. I loved meeting Mimi who could fill a book of his own! The atmosphere and settings in the book are brilliant and give a very varied look at the city of Paris, from the poverty Sylvie and Charlotte come from to the remaining aristocrats and their crumbling mansions. This is a society recovering from the shock of revolution and a shift in the existing hierarchy. The de Jacquinot family are like their mansion, falling apart. I loved the dual staircase too, with Josephine and Charlotte using the servant’s exit together when surely they should use the main stairs? There’s are further tantalising hints of people who live outside the rules, quite lavishly if Mimi’s quarters are the example. I could see why Sylvie had opted to disappear into the money classes, because the difference between her rooms and the home she came from is stark. She also truly loves her husband and hasn’t married him for a comfortable life as her sister thinks. Charlotte does feel the dice was loaded when it came to their differing fortunes and I think she sees the Perrault fairy tale as an allegory for her sexuality. Sylvie is able to conform in this way and Charlotte can’t, she’s born the way she is into a world that doesn’t accept her. I was also sympathetic to her situation at home, trying to care for a man who is hard to love and has been violent towards them all. This was an amazing read, genuinely spooky but also a novel about families. Those who fit into their family and those who don’t. This is a fabulous ghost story with an unexpected twist and a wonderful glimpse of a society in flux.

Meet the Author


Carmella Lowkis grew up in Wiltshire and has a degree in English literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick. After graduating, she worked in libraries, before moving into book marketing. Carmella lives in North London with her girlfriend. You can follow her on social media @carmellalowkis. Spitting Gold is her first novel.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Midnight Hour by Eve Chase.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I was looking forward to the new Eve Chase novel, but really surprised to win a competition for a hardback copy plus a vase of my favourite flowers, peonies. All I’d done was describe what I loved about Eve’s writing: her female characters; the secrets from the past just waiting to spill out; the gothic feel and atmosphere she creates, especially around old houses; lastly, it’s the dynamics she creates between the characters particularly the mothers and daughters. I feel that in this novel she has gathered all those aspects together beautifully with an intriguing plot and such a relatable central character in Maggie. Maggie is an author, living in Paris and struggling with writer’s blog. Something from her shared past with brother Kit keeps coming into her mind. Her mother Dee Dee died from cancer recently and Maggie was there for her, until her last moments. Her mind keeps being drawn back to her late teenage years when Dee Dee was a famous model, living in the Notting Hill area of London, close to the Portobello Road with it’s antique and collectible traders.

One summer morning, Maggie wakes up to find that Dee Dee hasn’t come home. This isn’t too unusual, late parties and sometimes modelling shoots can drag on into the night and she isn’t worried. She loves spending time with Kit anyway. Kit is using his skateboard when he has a fall, breaking one of the wheels. A stranger comes to their aid, dusting Kit down and trying to repair the wheel. He introduces himself as Wolf and when his eyes lock with Maggie’s they’re the clearest blue she’s ever seen, his name becomes him. There’s also an instant spark between them and for Maggie it’s instantaneous, first time and first sight love. He recognises the connection too. It’s what makes him take the skateboard back to his uncle’s antique shop so he can use his tools to fix Kit’s skateboard properly. Just so he has an excuse to go back. These are emotional days as Maggie navigates this new feeling, but also concern for her mother who still hasn’t come home. She calls Dee Dee’s friends and they rally round but still no one knows where she is. Maggie needs to leave her Paris flat and travel back to England and Aunt Cora’s house in the country. It’s time to ask some questions and catch up with Kit. Once in London she makes her way to the old Notting Hill house with the pink door and bumps into a man on his way out. She’s surprised to see this is a much older Marco, Dee Dee’s hairdresser. He tells Maggie he’s digging out the basement of the house, sending her into a complete panic. Maggie knows that secrets lurk in the garden of their old home and it might not be long before they’re found.

Eve really gives us time to get to know Maggie and Kit. As a child Kit was the baby of the family, adopted by Dee Dee when Maggie was a little older. His blonde curls and sunny disposition give him an angelic demeanour and he’s certainly noticed by Wolf who dotes on him. Even grumpy Gav at the antiques shop falls under Kit’s spell, especially when he sees his polishing skills! As an adult Kit is more wary, now a dealer and collector himself, he has learned that not every customer is as honest as they appear. He does have a big heart though, so when an old gentleman comes into his life asking Kit to source some pieces for his new home, he wants to help. Roy appears a little down on his luck and Kit senses a loneliness under the surface. Of course someone’s appearance isn’t necessarily indicative of how wealthy they are, so Kit takes his request at face value. It’s only when Roy starts to turn up unannounced, wants to go for dinner and then talks his way into Kit’s flat that he starts to wonder if Roy is what he appears to be. In fact he isn’t even sure he likes him. He needs to be firm to shake him off but Kit dislikes confrontation and wonders whether he should trust his instincts, or is he just being paranoid? It’s lovely to have Maggie back in the country, they’re still close, but she seems consumed by that summer years ago when they first met Wolf. Kit isn’t sure what happened that summer, but he knows that one night Maggie took him from their home in a hurry and they ended up on a train to Aunt Cora’s in Paris. He knows she was protecting him but doesn’t know why and he knows his mum was missing for a while. They never returned to the Notting Hill house, instead moving to Cora’s in the country, into the house of their grandparents. Kit promises to look for Wolf, finding his real name helps and soon Kit has him tracked down to one of the better auctioneers in London. Will seeing Wolf again put Maggie back on track?

I fell in love with Maggie. I was a similar age when I first fell I love and reading about her summer with Wolf brought back all those feelings. The wonderment when someone suddenly becomes your absolute world. The beautiful surprise when they feel exactly the same. The discovery of sexual chemistry, totally losing yourself in another person, being vulnerable physically and emotionally, it’s all here. In very delicate strokes Eve sketches a teenage girl who is emotional and intelligent. Little hints about her physical appearance makes us aware that she is a curvy girl, she wears glasses and is a little lacking in confidence. She’s astonished that Wolf loves these things about her and Eve captures that self-consciousness, the apprehension about revealing her body to this young man totally swept away by his obvious desire for her. It’s honestly so beautifully captured that it took me right back there. Maggie’s an incredible sister to Kit and nurtures him with a fiercely maternal love that I think comes from him being so much younger. It takes days before she starts to struggle a little with the responsibility, because Kit’s that age where he’s on all the time. Her feelings for her mother range from concern, to anger and incomprehension. It’s Aunt Cora who has always been the fuck-up of the family, an addict who would arrive at Christmas and grace everyone with her acerbic tongue and disappear again. However, she’s been clean for some time when Maggie and Kit arrive in Paris and it seems strange to Maggie that she’s so together and furious with Dee Dee for leaving them alone. Cora concentrates everything on Kit and Maggie, who is heartbroken and possibly hiding something about the last days they were in London.

You will be swept up by the romance, the mystery and the relationships between the women. I loved the atmosphere of the Notting Hill setting and I always love the smell and sound of an antique or junk shop: the library feel of quietness and reverence; the smell of beeswax; the ticking and chiming of several clocks. I always find myself drifting into another time when I’m in an antique shop. The mystery of adult Kit’s visitor grabbed me too, because his influence is subtle and I found myself questioning just like Kit does. Is he being manipulative or is this a coincidence? Did he intend to do that? Is he lingering for genuine reasons or for some other nefarious purpose? I wasn’t sure, but felt an undercurrent of danger for Kit if he didn’t keep his wits about him. What the story tells us is a therapist’s mantra really – unresolved emotions and trauma will always bring themselves to the surface. Whether through a similar event happening or a big change in our lives, these memories float to the surface with more resonance than they should all this time later. This is because they weren’t processed properly the first time. So Maggie is feeling a torrent of emotions as if she’s still a teenager and they’re just as confusing, painful, beautiful and overwhelming. She and Wolf never had a proper ending and I found myself longing for that closure to happen when she comes back to England. This was a wonderful read, deeply emotional but also a compelling mystery. I honestly think this is Eve’s best novel yet!

Out Now from Michael Joseph.

Meet the Author


Eve Chase is an internationally bestselling British novelist who writes rich, layered and suspenseful novels, thick with secrets, unforgettable characters and settings. Her latest novel, The Midnight Hour – ‘Her best yet…I loved every word’ – Claire Douglas – publishes June ’24, in the UK. Other novels include, The Birdcage, The Glass House (The Daughters of Foxcote Manor, US) a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and Richard and Judy Book Club pick, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde (The Wildling Sisters, US) which was longlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award, and Black Rabbit Hall, winner of Paris’ Saint-Maur en Poche prize for Best Foreign Fiction. She works in the Writer’s Shed at the bottom of her garden, usually with Harry, her golden retriever.

Say hello @evepollychase on Instagram, X, and Facebook

Posted in Netgalley

Cross Bones (The Accidental Medium 3) by Tracy Whitwell

Posted on by thelotusreaders

There’s a queue at her door, and not all of them are living …

If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Tracy Whitwell’s character Tanz yet, you’ve been missing out. This bold, sweary Geordie actress and accidental medium is a delight and this is her third adventure in the series. Tanz is being torn in two directions as she reluctantly agrees to do a fringe play in London, but is also suddenly ‘activated’ as her spirit guide Frank explains. She is sent a new guide who she calls ‘Soft Voiced Lass’ and her flat is suddenly teeming with visions and apparitions, including a nurse who is on duty and walks through the wall into Tanz’s bedroom, which is quite a feat when you don’t have any legs! Luckily she has friend and fellow medium Sheila to rely on, but there’s a lot of sleeping with the light on too. As the play she’s been cast in becomes more dramatic off stage than on, Tanz has time on her hands and is guided down to Southwark and a cemetery known as Cross Bones. This is the burial place of the Winchester Geese, so called because they were prostitutes licensed by the Bishop of Winchester. After their deaths it was decided they could not be buried in consecrated ground and so this small burial ground became theirs and many of the poor in the same parish. Tanz is greeted by a horrific vision of the ground in the Victorian period, when overcrowded tenements spread diseases like wildfire and deaths from cholera, typhus and consumption were the daily norm. What Tanz sees isn’t an ordinary graveyard though. The smell hits her first; death, smoke and sewage creates a miasma that seems to cling to your clothes. In the yard Tanz can see a grave digger with a woman screaming at him, when she looks down she can see some fingers and a skull where he has been digging a body up to make room for more. She is overwhelmed and doesn’t really know what her purpose is here, just that it isn’t going to be easy.

The gates at Crossbones Graveyard

I love Tanz because she’s one of the most real people I’ve ever met in a book, despite the spooky stuff that surrounds her. She’s very down to earth, independent and has a few vices. She’s also very compassionate with the living people she helps and the dead ones too even if they do scare her. She has a couple of solid friends, especially Sheila, but sometimes she gets lonely, especially as she gets older and sees friends pairing off and making new lives together. She’s in the same flat, still scraping by with no big break in sight. The play she’s rehearsing is comical and the small company has such vivid characters they leap off the page. Gerald is a particularly fun addition to her circle – an elderly actor with the old school manners of a man who was inspired to act by Olivier and Gielgud. Everyone except the playwright knows the play is rubbish and the sexual politics in the company are impossible to work with. At home different visions pop up, from an Irish family who look like they’re starving, to a woman at a sewing machine and very strangely, a ghost that lurks in the hallway with a blackened face. She knows all of this must make sense to someone and keeps visiting Southwark and doing her research into the area. The history behind the story is fascinating and had me searching and reading for information afterwards. Eventually the graveyard was used for all the poor in the area and with an influx of families from Ireland, escaping the dreadful famine ( to quote Sinead O’ Connor ‘there never really was one’) overcrowding was common. The place inside that should have been somewhere to view the dead, especially for Catholic families who prefer to have an open coffin, became a charnel house. There were rotting bodies everywhere from those they had no room to bury and those who’d been dug up to make room for more. It’s a vision of hell, made worse when the traumatised gravediggers, dulled by compassion fatigue and possible PTSD, started playing skittles with human skulls. No wonder the woman in Tanz’s vision is screaming.

No 2 in The Accidental Medium Series

Tanz thinks her visions relate to a single Irish family, the family she sees in a tenement room starving and looking completely shell-shocked by their circumstances and their losses. When Tanz sees a soldier called Robert, shot in the head and looking for his wife she starts to piece things together. Could this be several generations of the same family and could any of them still be alive? Between the spooky action there’s a huge injection of dark humour that I really appreciated. I love Tanz’s slightly prophetic phone calls from her ‘mam’ who strangely seems to always know when her daughter’s up to something while scolding Tanz for meddling in spooky situations. Thank God she doesn’t find out about the black faced woman, the homeless man and the knife! There’s also a side order of romance in this novel, with a younger police officer stirring up rather unexpected feelings for Tanz. Usually she wouldn’t consider a younger man, especially one of the good guys, but maybe now is the time for changing habits. It’s nice to see Tanz meet someone who likes and respects her for a change. Maybe Tanz has developed some boundaries and boosted her self-worth enough to accept that someone like this could like her. She’s also stopped the habit of always keeping her eye on the exit in her romantic affairs. She’s taking her gift seriously and maybe has to accept that it’s this type of work that she finds most fulfilling. Although, she also makes a radical move in her acting career too. It’s lovely to see Tanz in such a strong position in life, she’s ready to take on the world and I can’t wait for her next adventures.

Out on 17th July from MacMillan

The first novel in the series.

Meet the Author

Tracy Whitwell was born, brought up and educated in the north-east of England. She wrote plays and short stories

from an early age, then moved to London where she became a busy actress on stage and screen. After having her son, she wound down the acting to concentrate on writing full time. Many projects followed until she finally found the courage to write the first in her Accidental Medium series, a work of fiction based on a whole heap of crazy truth​. Apart from the series, Tracy has written novels in several other genres and also writes mini self-help books as the Sweary Witch.

Tracy is nothing like her lead character Tanz in The Accidental Medium. (This is a lie.)

If you’d like to know more about Crossbones Graveyard this is a great site to start with:

History

Posted in Netgalley

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I started this book in bed at night, which turned out to be a big mistake because I didn’t want to go to sleep once I’d started. There was a lot of yawning the next day. We’re introduced to the village of Tome (pronounced ‘tomb’ by the locals just to add a sense of foreboding) and the new wellness retreat created there by Francesca Woodland who inherited The Manor and it’s land from her grandfather. Her husband Owen is the architect on the project and has created woodland ‘hutches’ for guests, featuring outdoor showers and luxurious linens. The Manor itself is the central hub where there are classes in meditation and yoga, with a spa that has reiki alongside all the usual treatments. The opening weekend looms and while there’s a hint of anxiety around the late building of the tree houses, Fran is sure she has everything under control. On the final night of the stay she has planned a mini-festival with live music, a meal out in the woods and strange wooden sculptures. Every guest must wear a crown fashioned from twigs creating the look and feel of a pagan celebration. While the music is at it’s loudest she has given Owen the go ahead to start digging the foundations for the tree houses, in the hope the music drowns out the noise. However, that’s not the only problem on the horizon. In order to build the houses, they must take down some of the ancient trees and when Owen arrives the workmen are confused by the new symbols on their bark. They look like seagulls in flight. By the morning there’s a burned effigy and a body on the beach, a wrecked Aston Martin with blood inside and the manor hiss been rased to the ground by a ferocious fire. There’s also an elderly fisherman rambling on about seeing giant birds. It looks like the midnight feast was a rather Bacchanalian event, with discarded drink bottles, feathers and clothes littering the ground, but something went badly awry. Everyone in Tome knows the local saying- ‘Don’t disturb the birds’. Could Francesca’s dream be over when it had only just begun?

The book starts with the aftermath of the festivities, but there are two more timelines: fifteen-twenty years ago when Francesca was a teenager living at the manor with her grandparents and twin brothers and the beginning of the weekend leading up to the feast twenty-four hours later. This multi-layered effect is multiplied with several narrators – Bella who is befriended by a young Francesca and later becomes a mystery guest at The Manor’s opening weekend; Owen who is Francesca’s husband but also hides a secret past; a young man called Eddie who is the retreat’s kitchen help and Francesca, the founder. It seemed like a lot of perspectives and timelines at first but the author is very skilled at creating distinctive characters so I soon got to know them and I didn’t feel lost. Francesca radiates a sense of calm and purity. However, like many people who put up a facade like this, it’s only so long before they blow and I was waiting for that moment. Bella is very secretive, realising she isn’t The Manor’s target demographic she’s worried she might stand out. Owen is very successful architect, wealthy and absolutely in love with Francesca, but seems to know a lot about local folklore and knows his way to a secret beach. Eddie, who I was rather fond of, lives in the shadow of his older brother who went missing years ago after becoming an addict. He lives at home with his parents on the family farm and feels his father’s despair that the son who loved working the farm is gone. Eddie wants something different, but given his parent’s disapproval of the retreat, he hides his job there while hoping to work up the organisation. Finally there’s the DI on the case, who is trying to piece together the night before and recovering a body from the beach, while the only witness to the death is the elderly man who still blaming giant birds.

There’s a sinister ‘them and us’ feel to this novel, a distinction that’s in one way about class and in another way about belonging. Locals are different from tourists and even though Francesca is local because she comes from the big house she can’t be one of them. Bella’s mother scolds her for spending her summer up at the manor and wishes she would make more friends from the village. Those at the big house don’t understand the village ways. When Bella bumps into a good-looking surfer down on the secret beach there’s an instant attraction, but when she takes him to the manor Francesca and her brothers tease him as if he’s a yokel. Bella starts to wonder where she fits in at all. There are those who have transcended where they came from, but the transformation was painful and has left it’s scars. I could sense a lot of references, such as The Wicker Man and Midsommer where a seemingly pastoral and innocent celebration slowly builds towards violence. The note left for Francesca, the marked trees and the chicken nailed to her door could have been someone disgruntled with the retreat, but it felt more personal. Francesca struck me as a powder keg. When younger, she appears to have very little empathy, especially for those she views as beneath her. Her brothers have a similar outlook, convinced they can do whatever they like to the locals and it will be swept up by the family as if it never happened. Francesca was like a cat playing with a mouse and the pleasure she got from hurting others gave the impression of a psychopath in the making. Then at the opening weekend, the local kids make their protest felt by pelting the pool with stones and building fires on the section of the beach reserved for guests only. They have bigger plans too, but they’re saving them all for the night of the Midnight Feast. They want to make clear that Tome’s forest and it’s beaches are for the villagers and not to be fenced off for the use of rich visitors.

Bella wants her revenge to be more permanent than a simple one-off disturbance and she’s determined. With bleached, short hair she’s not easily recognisable as the girl she was and manages to be under the radar. When she first sees Eddie she’s taken aback, he looks so much like someone she used to know. Is she seeing ghosts everywhere? She is psychologically haunted by what happened all those years ago at another midnight feast and she’s appalled by Francesca’s decision to name the event after their final night as friends. Bella wants to make sure that the perfect, pious Sunday supplement Francesca is shown up for who she really is. By this time I was desperate for her to get her comeuppance to as we slowly see the consequences of that night long ago spreading into several local families. Each one has their own grudge: a father who’s been drinking ever since; a baby growing up without it’s mum; a young man with an addiction so strong he’s willing to lie and steal. Yet Francesca and her twin brothers are still rich, successful and as insufferable as ever. So it isn’t just our narrators who have reason to hate The Manor and some of them exact their revenge in amusing ways, while others want to end the retreat and Francesca for good. I loved the folk ritual element, reminiscent of Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home mixed with a dose of Hitchcock’s killer birds. They are the size of a human, covered in black feathers and under their cloak is the huge beak. The villagers take them seriously, even the contractors who turn up to remove the trees don’t want to mess with those marked by the birds, they’d rather give the money back. Are the birds a simple folk tale that keeps Tome safe or are they real? As we countdown to what happened on the big night, two parties twenty years apart reveal their secrets and the birds will have their final say. The ending is terrifyingly final for some, while others will wake up hungover and wondering what exactly they witnessed. As for me, I devoured this book overnight and the final page reveal really made me smile.

Out now from Harper Collins

Meet the Author

Lucy is the No.1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party, The Guest List and most recently The Midnight Feast. It’s set at a luxury new countryside resort built on old secrets beside an ancient wood. The opening weekend takes place during a heatwave (and with a big summer solstice celebration) and temperatures and tensions are rising, the local community is incensed by the influx of wealthy newcomers and some unexpected guests have come to stay. Then a body is found… 

Lucy always knew wanted to work with books somehow, so studied English at university before working in a bookshop, a literary agency and then as a fiction editor at a big publishing house, during which time she realised that every book starts off as a messy first draft full of plot holes and mistakes. She thought she’d have a go at writing herself — the result of which was her first historical fiction novel, The Book of Lost and Found. She wrote two more historicals, The Invitation and Last Letter to Istanbul, before turning to the dark side and writing her first crime thriller, The Hunting Party: her first Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Month, set over New Year’s Eve at a remote, snowy spot in the Scottish Highlands. 

Next came The Guest List, a murder mystery set at a wedding on an island off the coast of Ireland, which was a Reese’s Book Club pick, a Goodreads Choice Awards winner, a Waterstones Book of the Month, and has sold over three million copies. Then came The Paris Apartment, which is a number one New York Times bestseller and Sunday Times bestseller. Her books have been translated into over 40 languages and all three murder mysteries are currently being adapted for TV and film. 

She’s also written a short story for the brand new Marple collection, a brand new series of short stories featuring Agatha Christie’s legendary detective Jane Marple, alongside writers such as Val McDermid, Kate Mosse, Alyssa Cole, Ruth Ware and Leigh Bardugo, out September 2022 to coincide with Christie’s birthday! 

If you enjoy her books or want to say hi, she’d love to hear from you: She’s @lucyfoleytweets on Twitter and @lucyfoleyauthor on Instagram, or you can check out her Facebook author page @lucyfoleyauthor

Posted in Netgalley, Publisher Proof

The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Goblin Market’,Christina Rosetti, 1862

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

Out now from Allison and Busby.

Meet the Author

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Netgalley

Bonjour Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Out now from Corvus Books

Meet the Author

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

Posted in Squad Pod

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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

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

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

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

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

Out now from MacMillan

Meet the Author

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

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

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

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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

When I was nineteen I started a summer job in a nursing home and went back to the work on and off for several years, both as a carer and an activities organiser. I was so fond of the first set of ladies I looked after, in fact I still have photos of them all and remember their quirks and their stories. I was deeply fond of Mary, an eighty year old lady with hair she could sit on. Other carers didn’t want to be bothered washing and drying her hair, but I loved it and would plait it for her and arrange it into the topknot she liked that left her looking like Little My from the Moomin books! She was convinced I was a boy, despite the dress that was our uniform. This was the nineties and I think she was confused by the crop I’d had, inspired by Demi Moore in Ghost. Having listened to a lot of stories from all my ladies, when I became an activities organiser I was determined to show carers that the people they looked after had once been young and full of dreams too. So many times I’d watched carers get someone out of bed and talk over them to each other instead of including them in their conversation. I worked with each resident on collecting photos and telling stories about their lives for a display that would hang outside the door on their room. It would give carers and visitors subjects to ask about but also help them see people instead of bodies. This lovely, gentle novel from Susan Fletcher reminded me of these times and some of the stories I uncovered from the residents I worked with – amazing, heart-breaking and life changing stories. Florrie Butterfield is one such resident. At the age of 87 and after losing her leg, she has decided to take charge of her future and move into a rather smart residential home called Babbington Hall, set within the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside with a church nearby. She’s now a wheelchair user, but still wants to keep some independence so chooses a place where she can have a ‘suite’ allowing her to manage for herself as much as possible. Florrie has just settled in to her new home in a converted apple store when one of her new friends, Arthur, is found dead in the gardens.

Suffering a bout of insomnia later that night, Florrie decides to take a look at an advancing thunder storm and makes her way over to the window. As she throws open the window she hears a scream and something falls heavily from the third floor of the hall. When Florrie looks down she realises with horror that it is Renata Green, the home’s young manager. Surely she can’t have survived such a fall? In the ensuing moments Florrie is helped back to bed, with many entreaties from the staff not to stand and wander around. Inside she is cursing her disability, she wants to race up the stairs to Renata’s room immediately and find whoever pushed this lovely young woman to what must surely be her death. As the day goes on, she is interviewed by the police and is confused by their questioning, they seem to be suggesting that Renata was depressed and had nothing to live for in the lead up to her fall. However, Florrie knows different, because that very day Renata had approached for for a discussion about matters of the heart. Renata was in love with someone and had singled out Florrie as a woman who might understand. Their exchange had made Florrie feel hopeful that she might make a friend, that she might be of some use. Renata chose her confidante well because Florrie does indeed have hidden depths. In her room is a box of keepsakes that remind her of the love affairs she’s had with some very different men. Florrie is pleased to be asked, charmed that Renata could see underneath her age and disability to the woman inside. The reader is taken on the journey into Florrie’s past lives and loves, while in the present she works alongside fellow resident Stanhope Jones to uncover the truth about what happened to Renata, treating it as attempted murder. She also hints at an incident in her past that she’s spent a lifetime trying to keep covered up, one night that looms so large in her life it splits it into before and after. Will we find out what happened on the night in question?

Florrie is a fascinating character and I loved that an elderly lady, who are often completely invisible to those younger than themselves, becomes our guide through this journey. She has a kindness and approachability about her that seems to set people at ease, but we shouldn’t let her sunny nature disarm us, because inside is a razor sharp mind. As she investigates the mystery I could see how good it was for her to have such a responsibility in her life again. Alongside the present mystery, we also get to know how Florrie reached this point in her life and I loved reading about her childhood, wondering which events shaped her into the woman she is today. There’s a depth and strength to her character that’s built up of so many layers and for me it was like working with a counselling client – while keeping the presenting issue in mind I delve deeply into the past, drawing out those events that have had the biggest impact and contribute to the client’s current problems. It’s rare to find book characters that are so reflective and self aware. The author also fills the rest of Babbington Hall with some interesting characters, each one detailed and with their own role in the community. While Florrie lives in her own apartment converted from an old apple store, residents with more complex needs are based within the main hall. There are those who are more introverted and keep to their own rooms, while others are the life and soul of the place. The so-called ‘Elwood twins’ keep the gossip mill in action, while simultaneously claiming that they never stick their nose where it isn’t wanted. Stanhope is also one of the more ambulant residents and is a great foil for Florrie, able to investigate parts of the home that Florrie can’t reach. She immediately dispatches him to Renata’s third floor room where she wants him to note the details of the crime scene and any clues to Renata’s last moments before the fall. He is equally unconvinced and confused as to why the police are willing to write the incident off as a fall. Florrie knows that any clues or evidence might be ruined if the staff get to Renata’s room first and start cleaning. However the only clue seems to be a single magenta envelope. It feels like Florrie has sensed a kindred spirit in this quietly spoken, kind woman who has found love in her forties. She wonders if Renata also has keepsakes that might hint at the person beyond her working role. Is she another woman who has lived an interesting life, grabbing hold of chances at love and adventure that might seem unexpected for someone so unassuming.

The pace and structure of the novel are perfectly crafted; the author reveals a little at a time, just enough to move the story along but keeping us waiting for the next clue. Florrie reveals her own story through the six loves of her life, from her diplomat husband of thirty years Victor Plumley, all the way back to her first love Teddy Silversmith. Of course Teddy was involved with ‘the night in question’, the happenings in Hackney that anchor this story and provide it’s title. Only when we know what happened that night and the cause of the scars on Florrie’s knuckles that have silvered with time, can we truly understand her life since. It was interesting to see that her childhood was governed by two very individual women, her mother Prudence who is probably best described as an eccentric and her Aunt Pip. Her father was a policeman, killed on duty when Florrie was very young and Aunt Pip moved in to help look after her and her older brother Bobs who was injured during WW2. It is lovely to read about Florrie’s relationship with her brother and how it changed after his return from war. We also find out that Aunt Pip left an abusive marriage to come live with them, showing a great strength and willingness to forge her own path that possibly brushed off on her niece. In all Florrie can count six loves in her unconventional life, all of whom are very different: the charming Gaston Duplantier who she meets in Paris: Jack Luckett, a very physical, good looking man in Africa; the mysterious sounding Hassan abu Zahra and Dougal Henderson. Through each love we learn about Florrie’s globe trotting life and her freedom of spirit, culminating in a wealth of experience and wisdom that might seem unexpected in the octogenarian lady she is now. It is these very experiences, that would probably go ignored by most younger people, that help Florrie and Stanhope solve the mystery of Renata’s ‘fall’. The author judges perfectly where to reveal the Hackney business, when it has most impact and brings a lump to the throat. It is a gift to be able to bring such depth and feeling to what could have been just another cozy crime novel about charming elderly residents playing detective. This book is so much more than that, revealing a rich and eventful life that could teach us so much about taking chances and not missing out on our potential. It also explores the corrosive nature of secrets, especially for the person holding on to them. I left Florrie the same way I used to feel after looking into the past with a resident – that I’d uncovered a treasure trove of experiences and met their young selves. I felt like I’d met a friend.

Meet the Author

Susan Fletcher was born in Birmingham and studied English Literature at the University of York. 

Whilst taking the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she began her first novel, Eve Green, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award (2004) and Betty Trask Prize (2005). Since then, Susan has written seven novels – whilst also supplementing her writing through various roles, including as a barperson, a cheesemonger and a warden for an archaeological excavation site near Hadrian’s Wall. Most recently, she has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Worcester.

She lives in Warwickshire. 

Thank you to Transworld Publishing, Alison Barrow, Susan Fletcher and Random Things Tours for inviting me to join the blog tour.

Posted in Throwback Thursday

Just Between Us by Adele Parks

Posted on by thelotusreaders

For some reason, I wasn’t fully engaged with Adele Parks’s last novel Both of You and I wasn’t expecting a sequel. I didn’t really like any of the characters involved. Kylie has two pseudonyms and two lives: half the time she’s Leigh, wife to Mark and stepmum to Oli and Seb; the rest of the time she’s Kai, wife to Dutch banker Daan Jaanssen and lives in an upmarket apartment with luxury clothes, cosmetics and holidays. The two seem to balance Kylie’s complicated needs, she’s equally at home having dinner in a Michelin starred restaurant as she is eating sand filled butties on a cold beach with the kids. Kylie’s other important relationship is Fiona, her friend of many years who has become part of the family and unofficial aunty to the boys. There isn’t a single person in Kylie’s world who knows about her double life, until one day she disappears. Now the whole world knows about Kylie’s bigamous marriages and the husbands and children are dragged into a police operation and a media frenzy. This sequel picks up after the first, when we’ve just found out who has been keeping Kylie prisoner. Just when we think it’s all over, we’re only halfway there.

I won’t ruin any of the twists and turns of either book, because this is one of those you need to start without any idea what’s going on. We have the original characters including the rather wise and interesting DCI and we have small chapters from every point of you. However, there are some newbies too and it was here where the book really took off for me. I was so eager to know what the hell was going on and where these people fit into the original story. We are in the depths of lockdown and Kenneth has been shielding alongside his grown-up daughter Stacie. Stacie is in the early stages of recovery from cancer treatment and she has fought hard to keep living. She deliberately doesn’t look at herself but knows she looks a little beaten up with her shorn hair and the scarring. Sadly, she has the added complication of amnesia after falling so dangerously ill so she doesn’t even remember treatment or anything before that. Thankfully she has Kenneth to fill in the blanks and he seems like such a caring and loving dad, luckily he’s also a retired GP so he’s perfectly placed to reassure Stacie and support her recovery. They have a quiet routine of daily dog walks, cooking and board games. They’re in the town of Lyme Regis and Stacie does feel like she knows the place and her dad has told her about her engagement to local lad Giles. She called the wedding off two weeks before the date and moved to Paris. Then something odd happens. Stacie is on the beach when she feels a sensation of being watched. Up on the promenade there is a woman staring at her with a fierce intent. She wonders if this is someone who knew her from before. So, she makes her way over, keeping a safe social distance and introduces herself, explaining that she might look a little different, because she’s had cancer. No, the woman says, you’re not Stacie. This is a moment where the hairs go up on the back of the neck, but we don’t know who the woman is or how well she knows Stacie and Kenneth. What possible reason could she have to confuse a woman who’s had cancer treatment and lost her memory?

I enjoyed having more input from the husbands and Kylie’s two stepsons this time around. The boys are incredibly loyal to her, despite being hurt by finding out about her second husband and let’s not forget, all of them are grieving. Daan Jaanssen also shows an incredible amount of loyalty and concern, especially considering he’s being charged with Kylie’s kidnap and murder. Does this mean he didn’t do it or is he putting up a smokescreen in the hope of walking free? Mark is angry and bitter, perhaps because he’s was her husband first. He is on the verge of making mistakes because of that anger. Seb and Ollie show maturity and enormous love beyond their years and put their own Dad to shame. The short, sharp chapters keep the momentum going and definitely have that ‘one more chapter’ addictive quality. Be prepared to set aside a day to finish it when you can’t put it down. This is definitely one of those sequels where you need to read the first novel, there’s a little bit of exposition about Kylie’s ordeal but not too much. The main question is what happened to her afterwards? Is she dead as the police think? This is a great thriller from Adele Parks and it made me feel back on track with loving her writing.

Meet the Author

Adele Parks MBE is the author of twenty-three bestselling novels including the recent Sunday Times hit Just Between Us and the audible Number One sensation One Last Secret. Over 5 million English editions of her work have been sold and she is translated into 31 different languages.

Her number one bestsellers Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck were both shortlisted for the British Book Awards and have been optioned for development for film & TV.

41,000+ 5 star reviews have kindly been written by her fans on Amazon 🙂

She is an ambassador of the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency: two charities that promote literacy in the UK.

Adele was born in North Yorkshire and has lived in Botswana, Italy and London and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey.

In 2022 she was awarded an MBE by King Charles III for services to literature.

Connect with Adele Parks on Twitter @adeleparks, Instagram @adele_parks and Facebook @OfficialAdeleParks or visit her website for more information.

Posted in Netgalley, Personal Purchase

The Star and the Strange Moon by Constance Sayers.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Constance Sayer’s latest book has a lot of her literary trademarks: time slip narratives; a mystery to solve; magic realism and romance. She places her story in the world of Hollywood and film-making, with two main characters – the actress Gemma Turner and young film-maker Chris Kent. In 1968 Gemma is staying in London with her rock star lover Charlie Hicks when she is offered an unexpected film opportunity. Until now Gemma has been making a series of surfing films based in California, but she’s been longing to make something that has more critical acclaim. French director Thierry Valden is part of the nouvelle vague or new wave movement and has offered her the lead role in his next film L’Etrange Lune a vampire film set in 19th Century France. He seems open to changes and often works with improvisation so her long held skills as a writer might be needed too. However, when she gets to Thierry’s chateau the mood seems to have changed. She is greeted by Manon Valden, who warns Gemma off her husband immediately which isn’t very welcoming. Thierry doesn’t seem like the man she met before and when she reads the up to date script it still has the same stilted dialogue, despite the potential changes she had sent him. When she finally speaks to Thierry alone, he makes it clear that something has changed. He had envisioned more of a collaboration both on the script and possibly in the bedroom, but L’Etrange Lune will be his final film and he can’t afford to take risks. Gemma will have other opportunities for scriptwriting but he won’t. The next day as they’re filming in the nearby town of Amboise, Gemma has a scene where she runs down a darkened and cobbled alleyway, seconds after calling action the camera has suddenly lost her. Has she fallen on the cobbles? Are the dark shadows concealing her? Maybe she’s walked off in a huff. Yet it seems Gemma is genuinely gone and as they look back over the scene on film, frame by frame, she’s simply disappeared in front of their eyes.

Christopher Kent has had a strange fascination with the actress Gemma Turner since he was a child. Now at film school in 2007, his attachment to the actress stands out because she was never one of the greats – students aren’t usually hung up on obscure actresses from a handful of surf films. He remembers the day he first saw her, in a hotel where vintage black and white photos of actors were hung next to every door. In a very chaotic and traumatic childhood, this was one of those moments where he and his mum were without a roof over their heads. Chris could sense his mum was edgy and on the verge of a mood change, but as they approached their room and she saw the photo by the door she flew into a rage. She pulled the picture of Gemma Turner off the wall and smashed it, shouting personal insults and expletives. What was her link to the actress? Knowing Chris’s fascination with Gemma, his girlfriend and fellow student Ivy comes to him with a strange proposition. Every ten years Gemma’s final film, L’Etrange Lune, is shown to a select group of 65 guests at a randomly chosen cinema. Ivy’s father is one of the 65, but for this viewing he has offered Ivy his two place. They must wear a mask and cloak, but most importantly of all they must never approach or try to identify other members, nor can they talk about what they’ve seen. Chris doesn’t know what to make of the film. It seems to be a rather formulaic vampire movie, but there’s something odd about Gemma’s performance, almost haunting in fact. While in some places it’s fairly average, in other scenes there’s an incredible intensity to her acting. It’s almost as if she’s genuinely terrified.

I found the book a little slow at first, but once we reached Gemma’s disappearance I was hooked by this strange story. As we reach Gemma’s timeline in France and Chris starts investigating her disappearance several decades later, the pace of both timelines really picks up. There are suddenly enough strange and impossible happenings for the reader to start wondering what’s coming next. To be honest it felt like anything might happen! I loved the sense of evil created by the film – the strange melancholy that falls over those who see it, something that worsens if you keep going back every ten years. The rumours that the film changes in that decade are intriguing and suggest someone is still behind the lens. Could one of the 65 be playing tricks on the rest? Perhaps not letting on they have extra scenes that Thierry discarded, or that they have found an actress who is the double of Gemma Turner. Is something magical at work here? Despite all the warnings, I did understand Chris’s need to investigate, even when those he interviews start to feel the consequences of talking. This is such a clever concept and the author creates a real sense of mystery with wonderful period detail, especially in the 19th Century when there’s much discussion on the restriction and discomfort of women’s fashion especially in the summer. I also enjoyed 1960’s London where Gemma’s lover Charlie is part of a Fleetwood Mac-esque band where partners are swapped as readily as song lyrics. There’s even a very unexpected romance woven within this magical and unexpected series of times and worlds. What I wanted to see more than anything was for Chris to overcome the trauma of his childhood and fulfil his potential, wherever and whenever that might be.

Out in paperback from Piatkus 28th March 2024

Meet the Author

Constance Sayers is the author of A Witch in Time, The Ladies of the Secret Circus, and The Star and the Strange Moon from Hachette Book Group.

A finalist for Alternating Current’s Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

She received her master of arts in English from George Mason University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts in writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She attended The Bread Loaf Writers Conference where she studied with Charles Baxter and Lauren Groff. A media executive, she’s twice been named one of the “Top 100 Media People in America” by Folio and included in their list of “Top Women in Media.”

She splits her time between Alexandria, Virginia and West Palm Beach, Florida.