Tag: relationships

Posted in Random Things Tours

Fallowfield by Nicole Swengley

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Fallowfield Hall: once an avant garde art college, now abandoned and decaying. To journalist Rowan Woodhouse it is the fabled backdrop to her parents’ 1970s love story. But is there more to Fallowfield – and her family – to uncover?

Seeking solace after the loss of her artist-teacher father, Rowan accepts a research project to interview college alumni, hoping this may reveal more about him – and her enigmatic mother who died tragically young.

But Rowan soon discovers that Fallowfield had a darker side than hedonistic student life and idyllic picnics on its famous daffodil lawns. Jealousies, betrayals and rivalries emerge when she learns of the mysterious death of one young woman and the unsolved disappearance of another. As part and present become dangerously intertwined, how will the suspicions sparked by her investigations impact Rowan’s own troubled life?

I was immediately intrigued by this story that uncovers life at a progressive art school called Fallowfield, where journalist Rowan Woodhouse’s parents met in the 1970s. The opportunity to contact alumni from her parent’s years at the college has a personal benefit, to find out more about her parent’s relationship. However, she finds a surprising amount aren’t keen on talking about their student days, with some coming across as rude on her first phone call. Where people do engage with the project the author has cleverly created different perspectives of the same time, showing that while people might be in the same place they haven’t always had the same experience. This is usually because everything in life is experienced through our own filter, formed by our personality traits, learned behaviours, past experiences and general outlook Time also affects memories, causing events to be distorted, bundled together and confused. We each create a narrative of our past, but how do our friends and family see those same events? Previous student Patrick remembers his college days as living in a hazy bubble but recommends she talks to Maksym, a rival of her father’s who might remember it differently. Of course there’s also the possibility that people are lying, bringing a more sinister edge to the story and inspiring Rowan to dig further. Parts of the mystery are only revealed as Rowan uncovers them so we experience her emotions in the moment. It’s a slow- burn read and I enjoyed the chance to really understand the characters and Rowan’s complex emotions as she moves through people’s hazy memories and her father’s memorabilia and sketchbooks.

I thought the passage of time – can it really be over fifty years – played an interesting part, because the world has changed so much in that time. In the same way ideas about childhood developed during the Victorian period and into the 20th Century our views on teenagers and young people has changed. I feel like we’ve extended the protection and care we give to a child to this older age group. We’re more aware that they might need support with decisions and that they’re more open to exploitation. This comes from psychological research but also from the decision to extend school or training to the age of eighteen. Added to that is an extended time living at home for many young people thanks to the cost of living crisis and rising rents. The #MeToo movement has made us more aware of inappropriate relationships and power imbalances so behaviour that was perhaps frowned upon in the late 20th Century is an absolute ‘no no’ for today’s students and tutors. The criminalisation of coercive control and emotional abuse has finally made people realise that intimate partner abuse isn’t just physical and young people are vulnerable to manipulation and grooming. Rowan realises that her father’s romantic stories about how he met her mother Annie at Fallowfield could be viewed differently now. Nick had been a student at the college before returning as a lecturer and as Annie’s tutor he knew their relationship was against the college’s rules but they still continued to see each other. Now her father has died Rowan has been visiting his country cottage as an escape from her London home. She’s surprised to find newspaper articles in her father’s things about a student who went missing and a tutor’s girlfriend from around Fallowfield who was found dead during her parent’s time there. Could these articles contain the big secret behind the alumni’s reluctance to reminisce and what part do her parents play in the events of that time? 

I’m fascinated by artists and the art world and I learned a lot about a genre I’d never come across before. Rowan’s father painted within the Good Girl genre – an illustrative style often used for comics, book covers and erotic art. It’s glamorous women in tight or skimpy clothing and had been around for a few decades before Nick was a student. Rowan didn’t seem keen on her father’s style, branding it as trashy although she did listen as he showed her why his women were different from the more exploitative side of the style. I still wondered if there was a link between the representation of women in his art and his behaviour? It’s clear a toxic atmosphere was brewing at the college, an interesting contrast between the idyllic setting at Fallowfield which was a secluded country estate. Not many painters become household names and an atmosphere of determination and competition thrived between this group. It’s clear some will let nothing stand in the way of their success, creating dangerous situations. After the events in the articles and the summer ball Fallowfield was closed suddenly leaving students struggling to find other courses. The governing committee felt the scandal was too great for the college to continue in its current form. Alongside Rowan we’re starting to understand the rather permissive regime at Fallowfield, with drinking, drug-taking and free love. A woman called Zizi is part of the art college’s social scene but lived in a hippy community camping in a nearby field. Is she the one described in the newspapers as the girlfriend of a tutor? Could her father have been seeing this woman at the same time as her mother?

The most fascinating part of the story from a psychological perspective is how her parent’s ‘perfect’ love story seemingly prevented Rowan from forming loving and functional relationships as an adult. She sees Nick and Annie through a romantic lens, mainly due to Nick reinforcing the story throughout her life and after Annie’s death. All families have their own myths and this one was so strong she’s measured every relationship next to it and none have made the grade. She met current boyfriend Doug in a work capacity with Doug providing the photographs to her features on an assignment. It seems that he is often absent and while this is normal for someone who works freelance, when present in body he often isn’t in mind. Rowan seems a bit lost in terms of how he feels and where he sees their relationship going and is reluctant to invite him to her father’s cottage. She cooks him a dinner from scratch before leaving but he’s incredibly late and when she does get in touch he’s tired and wants to stay home, with no apology for wasting her time. I wondered if her feeling that she came second to her mother in her father’s affections had led to her repeating the pattern with emotionally unavailable partners. I found her a little bit childlike in her acceptance of her parent’s great love story. It’s something we often re-evaluate as we get older, especially when we start having our own relationships. As she starts to uncover student stories of drinking, drug-taking and multiple lovers she seems surprised and I wondered what sort of student experience she had because I would have expected it. It’s a jolt for her to realise Nick and Annie weren’t perfectly romantic and had their problems. I wondered whether her mother would have categorised their relationship differently had she lived longer? Rowan has to face that maybe she’d let people go who could have been a great partner. Being performatively romantic like Nick isn’t everyone’s style and verbal, public declarations of love often cover up a multitude of secrets. 

The anniversary celebration is to be held at Fallowfield’s original site, now a resort hotel owned by another alumni student. Everyone, apart from her father, will be present in the same place as the events of that final summer. The tension really kicked in at this point and I wondered if Rowan was placing herself in danger. Can this event be the catalyst to breaking through all the confusion and lies to finally see the truth? Through each of these characters we can see a stark contrast between the self- fulfilment of using your artistic talent and the dangerous and competitive scramble towards fame and success. Often incredibly talented people also have huge egos and narcissistic traits, a combination that could become deadly when their ego is bruised. I had so many questions at this point. I was intrigued by sculptor Maksym’s suggestion that he provided a service for Rowan’s father. I wanted to know whether it was true that Nick was seeing other women as well as Annie. Could being at the original college for an event like that final summer ball bring up new memories for the students? Rowan’s research had thrown up some disturbing truths in my mind and I was happy and satisfied by the ending. I wondered how the truth would impact Rowan’s life going forward. I was strongly reminded of the opening to L.P. Hartley’s The Go- Between – ‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. 

Out now from Breakthrough Books

Meet the Author

Nicole Swengley is an author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, the Telegraph, The Times, Wall Street Journal, London Evening Standard and many other publications. Her short stories have featured in women’s magazines, a crime anthology and themed anthologies from Breakthrough Books. A past student of Faber Academy, one of her stories was shortlisted in a national TV/magazine competition some years ago. Her debut novel, The Portrait Girl, was published in 2024. Fallowfield is her second, standalone, art-and-design inspired mystery.

Posted in Orenda

Ghost Notes by Doug Johnstone

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The Skelf women have been keeping their heads down, running the family’s funeral directors and private investigation businesses. But when a woman collapses at her husband’s funeral and is saved by Dorothy, she finds herself drawn into the murky world of ‘grief tech’ – a booming new industry that creates digital avatars of the dead.

Jenny’s latest case – a simple blackmail job for an old school friend – quickly spirals into chaos as the woman’s tangled love life pulls Jenny towards dangerous old habits.

Meanwhile, Hannah and her wife, Indy, are confronted by the unexpected arrival of Indy’s ex-boyfriend, claiming to be dying and eager for the Skelfs to arrange his funeral. But his arrival uncovers more ghosts from the past, and threatens to upend everything they’ve built.

As their cases collide and their personal lives spiral, the Skelfs face danger from all sides. How far will they go to protect one another, and what will it cost to finally silence the ghosts?

I always love the ideas and philosophies that Doug Johnstone brings to the Skelf series and in this eighth book his musical knowledge must have inspired the title. A ghost note can be played on piano, but more frequently on the drums and the matriarch of the family, Dorothy, is still drumming. She teaches and plays in a band that comes together for what used to be called ‘pauper’s funerals’, a duty that the funeral parlour perform for those who are buried or cremated by the local authority. As Dorothy teaches she explains ‘ghost notes’ to her student – a soft note like a whisper, usually on the snare drum played between the accented beat. The listener might not hear them being played, but would feel a difference when they’re not. They partner beautifully with one of Hannah’s physics concepts, the ghost particle, invisible and very rarely connecting with other matter that makes up our world but ever present. There are people in our lives who are like these notes, ever present but often completely unnoticed, until they aren’t there any more and we can feel their absence. I’ve felt like this about Hannah’s wife Indy in the series and have often wished to hear more about her life and experiences. She’s always quietly been in the background of the Skelf’s very dramatic and noisy lives, she is the person who notices you haven’t had a drink and brings you one before you’ve even asked. I was so excited to see her taking more of a central role in this story, where three cases are also dividing up their time. Jenny’s investigation comes from a local estate agent who is being blackmailed. Dorothy is investigating a family’s tragic losses as they bury the father of a girl found dead several months before. This takes her into the world of ‘grief bots’ and how anything built for profit has a harmful element to it. Finally there’s Hannah who is investigating the trouble brought to their door by Indy’s ex-partner and those he has wronged. 

The book opens with a funeral and a widow who has a heart attack by the grave side. This family have already experienced tragedy, because the man in the coffin has killed himself after the death of his daughter. If the widow can’t be saved then her son will have lost his whole family. On her return home the widow asks Dorothy to look into her husband’s death and the first thing she discovers is very strange – a company who scrape a dead person’s identity from the internet and use AI to create a lifelike avatar of that person. The account holder simply signs into the app to visit their loved one, but innovations like this – including social media and other apps – are rarely altruistic and always based on money, so somewhere there’s a catch. I found this part of the story quite emotional because there’s something about seeing your lost love one moving and breathing. I can’t even watch videos I have of my late husband, photographs are fine but a moving version is still too much for me twenty years on. Also, thinking from a therapy perspective, how do we ever get over losing someone when they’re still there at the opening of an app? Apps like this could be seriously harmful to someone who’s grieving, complicating already painful emotions. Quietly, Dorothy is dealing with a loss of her own as her detective boyfriend Thomas is still not accepting her letters sent to the prison where he serves a sentence for murder. Jenny’s case seems simple but quickly turns into something more complicated, emotionally and investigatively. Watching an estate agent with a very busy sex life drags Jenny into a realisation that she’s been hovering around for some time. Luckily she has Archie there to support her and I loved how non-judgemental he is because Jenny needs to know someone is staying for the long haul, even while trying to push them away. 

It’s Hannah and Indy who have the most dangerous encounter when an unknown face from Indy’s past comes crashing into their life, along with everyone who’s looking for him, to settle scores or the money owed. It seems implausible that Indy dated a man who is involved in the drug scene, although for Hannah it’s a revelation that Indy even dated a man. This chequered past brings violence into their home and Hannah has to reevaluate the woman she’s married to in light of their conversations. It’s clear there is so much Hannah didn’t know, not just about this relationship but about the deaths of Indy’s parents and other losses. So far in their relationship Hannah has always been the one to bring the chaos and her wife has always been the calm ship steering them into safe waters. To me Indy has always seemed like a wise woman, slightly mystical and enigmatic, but now we can see that her wisdom is hard won and comes from mistakes she can never take back. It’s when Schrodinger disappeared that I began to worry, the Skelf’s cat has been with them through thick and thin and I was so worried that he’d been taken as a threat.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with the world around me, feeling more and more dislocated from what ‘ordinary’ people think. Being a disabled person in a world that appears to hate our very existence is draining and even depressing. Added to that, the work we do with Stand Up To Racism means we’re exposed to individuals who hate others, people who they perceive to be different thanks to the hateful rhetoric from some of our politicians and the sections of the media. It feels so prevalent that more than once I’ve found myself stopping and asking ‘is it me?’ Am I in the wrong? Then I read a Skelf novel and feel like I’ve found my tribe among these intelligent, flawed, tough and compassionate women and their found family. Each one is genuinely woke and I mean that as a positive thing, rather than the insult it has become. Having your consciousness raised was always considered a good thing and these incredible women give me hope. Their compassion for others is shown again and again, in their work on civic funerals, their search for more environmentally friendly funeral options, their tendency to take in waifs and strays and their constant love and care for each other. Doug Johnstone’s writing reassures me that there are people like this in the world and that I might fit here after all. Good people like Archie, Brodie and Indy who quietly go about their business supporting the Skelf’s are the ghost notes of the family. Barely noticeable, but incredibly vital too. 

Out now from Orenda Books.

Meet the Author

Doug Johnstone is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Great Silence, the third in the Skelfs series, which has been optioned for TV. In 2021,The Big Chill, the second in the series, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2020, A Dark Matter, the first in the series, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Independent Voice Book of the Year award. Black Hearts (Book four), will be published in 2022. Several of his books have been best sellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions, and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also player-manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.

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 Netgalley

Love Unlocked by Cecilia Ahern 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Out now from Harper Collins

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

The Bestseller by Jenny Knightsby 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Therapist Helena Salve knows that client confidentiality is the number one unbreakable rule of her job. But the constant stories of coercive control and threat she hears from her client Belle about her dangerous husband have been wearing her down. One night over too many glasses of wine, she tells her best friend Tala everything that Belle has told her. The problem is, Tala is a down-on-her-luck novelist who is looking for an idea for her new thriller.

Months later, Tala is excitedly telling Helena that her publisher is saying this is going to be her biggest book ever. The story is Belle’s story. Not only is Helena’s job on the line, but if Belle’s husband is as dangerous as she says, her life is too…

Why would Tala do this to Helena? She knows what’s at stake.

Your friends are meant to protect you… aren’t they?

This is a great premise for a thriller and having been a therapist I’m always fascinated by books based on the therapeutic relationship. I think there’s a general fascination about what therapist’s personal lives actually look like. Do they have it all sorted? The answer is invariably no and in this novel there’s so much projection happening between Helena and her client Belle. Confidentiality is the bedrock of any therapeutic relationship, but that can get tricky when the therapist knows the client needs either specialist help or practical help. Helena is there to listen and guide Belle towards her own answers, but the constant disclosure of coercive control is uncomfortable to sit in. The urge to do rather than sit back and listen becomes difficult for Helena and it’s this discomfort that leads to her talking about it with best friend Tala. She asks Belle to bring her husband Julius to the sessions as she’s normally a couple’s counsellor, but that wouldn’t work either because he might take the opportunity to abuse his wife verbally and emotionally in the session. It is impossible to counsel a narcissist.This is an issue for supervision, where Helena should disclose that she’s finding Belle’s passivity and indecision on leaving her husband Julius very difficult. The fact that she doesn’t, tells me she wants to show her supervisor Martha that she’s doing this ‘right’. Helena is a perfectionist and perhaps she seeks approval from her supervisor rather than being totally honest. There’s something about Helena that’s very responsible, aware of her ethical framework and unwilling to break out of it. However, sometimes this demeanour doesn’t seem real.

I found Helena an odd central character because we have access to her inner life but I still felt she was almost ‘missing’ in the story. She feels very flat compared to other characters and it was as if she’d fallen permanently into her counselling role, treating everyone with empathy rather than displaying honest human reactions to events. However, as those events start to spiral out of control, that serene outer surface does start to crack. The author uses flashbacks to give us a picture of how all the characters meet while they’re at university, but also to show us incidents that would have me dumping her boyfriend Dylan, but Helena accepts and forgives. One scene is a dinner with Martha her tutor, but Dylan is late. When he does arrive he’s very drunk and relieves himself on the rug! This would have been an unforgivable red flag for me. Helena seems to have the measured outlook a lot of counsellors have, the ability to think on something for a while and not act on her first emotions. There’s no doubt she’s furious and betrayed when she realises best friend Tala has written a book based on her current client Belle. Inside she’s screaming ‘how could you do this to me?’ She’s terrified of her career and reputation being finished by this breach of confidentiality but she doesn’t show it. She waits and mulls it over, never displaying the emotions underneath. This either shows an ability to rationalise obstacles and work out a response that’s fully thought through, or she’s completely out of touch with her own emotions and unable to express them as soon as they arise. It made me think of the famous book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ where the author explains how trauma is not just a psychological event, it’s a physiological one too. The trauma is felt bodily and stays within the nervous system, causing physical reactions if not addressed through holistic therapy such as a combination of EMDR, yoga, meditation and neurofeedback. The body stores the trauma as muscle tension, hypervigilance and a rapid heart rate continuing to experience them long after the trauma has passed. I felt like Helena was storing her emotions bodily, without truly feeling and expressing them, that is until events start to spiral out of control.

Tala is Helena’s opposite in every way. She’s impulsive, creative and a torrent of emotion at all stages of her life. There’s clearly been an event that’s affected her permanently and it’s only through flashbacks that we see what this is. It makes sense of her neediness when it comes to relationships and when she thinks she’s found one after years of being single, she isn’t going to give it up easily. I couldn’t believe the audacity of taking Helena’s private impressions and worries for her client and turning them into a sensational thriller. It seems out of character for Tala who has been a steadfast friend for many years. Maybe she didn’t expect the book to take off the way it does and now it’s being advertised on the Tube and on the side of buses she can’t take it back. Risky behaviour isn’t new to Tala, we see in flashbacks that she experimented at university with drink and drugs. There’s an element of mothering in Helena’s relationship with her friend, replacing a missing element in her life? Helena and Dylan are that stable couple Tala runs to when things go wrong, but what about when things go right? As Helena reacts to the new book I wondered how much she was threatened by Tala’s success? If Tala gets her act together and does really well with the book, she might stop being the person who depends on Helena. No longer the person to be pitied and sighed over. When she brings a new boyfriend into the mix it’s as if all the problems in Tala’s life are being resolved at once and she is well aware of this change in their dynamic. 

I loved the way the author wrote about coercive control and as a survivor of this type of relationship it matters when people get it right. One of the worst elements for me was that other people can’t always see it, it’s subtle and hard to pin down when someone is exerting their will over you. It’s rarely straightforward because it exists within the dynamic of your relationship, so one seemingly innocuous word could bring you sharply back into line and leave you dreading the real ‘fallout’ later when you’re alone. The worst thing about this type of relationship is that you start to police yourself, trained into acting the way that pleases the abuser. They might seem to champion you to others, but in truth are jealous of what you’ve achieved and once the reflected glory has worn off they might try sabotage. After leaving my relationship I felt an enormous amount of relief but then self-doubt would creep in as if I’d internalised the abuser’s voice. It’s disorienting because the person you were in love with isn’t real, but just a mask they wear to hide their true self. All of this can be seen in Belle’s relationship with Julius and I think my own experience helped me understand why Helena wants to help this woman, even though she’s struggling to stay within the boundaries of their therapy. It’s very hard to sit back and not give advice in these situations or offer help beyond the counselling room. It was interesting to see how the professional distance became impossible when Martha ended up in hospital and Helena was without supervision. 

It seems that the lives of these three friends and their paths into adulthood hinged on a single night. I thought the author managed these flashbacks well, placing them absolutely perfectly for maximum effect. It seems everyone has secrets but they are slowly revealed creating a very addictive read with short, pacy chapters that make you want to read just one more – I desperately wanted to know where Martha’s cat had gone! The tension is almost unbearable as I worried about Helena overstepping with her client, or the client finding out what’s in Tala’s book and somehow passing that on to Julius. Would Helena be safe? As her well-ordered life starts to fall apart Helena starts to lose her belongings, forget her schedule and have terrible nightmares. She has no access to Martha and her relationship with Tala is broken. I wondered if she was heading for a breakdown. You may see the twist coming, but that doesn’t detract from the story. Eyes are opened, secrets past and present are revealed and I devoured the last few chapters late at night, unable to wait till the morning to find out what happened. This was an excellent thriller, full of psychological drama and really nailed the experience of being a counsellor with a problematic client. I also loved the ‘meta’ structure of reading a book about a book and just like Tala’s new novel this one should be a bestseller. 

Out now from Mountain Leopard Press

Meet the Author

Jenny Knightsby is a hospital doctor based in West London. The Bestseller was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2024 and is Knightsby’s debut novel.

Posted in Personal Purchase

Dissection of A Murder by Jo Murray

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A dead judge. A silent defendant. And a courtroom full of liars.

When Leila Reynolds is handed her first murder case, she’s shocked at how high-profile it is: the murder of a well-respected, well-known judge. This shouldn’t be the kind of case she’s leading; it’s way beyond her expertise. But the defendant, Jack Millman, is clear. He wants her, and only her.

To make things worse, he’s refusing to talk. How is she supposed to prove herself on what appears to be an unwinnable case?

Losing is not an option. She must find the most persuasive argument. Trials aren’t won by convincing judges or fellow barristers – they’re all about convincing a jury.

Suddenly, Leila finds herself fighting not only to keep Jack out of prison, but also to keep her own secrets buried.

It’s true what they say – there are two sides to every story.

Guilty or not guilty?

Wow! This was a ‘devour in one sitting’ thriller in the high stakes setting of a barrister’s chambers and an incendiary case where two of their barristers have been requested; one in prosecution and one in defence. The defendant has requested Leila, an up and coming young barrister who has just heard she’s getting a mention in an exclusive legal publication. The man who’s keen to let Leila know she has him to thank for that mention, is her previous mentor Julian. As a pupil she had to work under Julian to complete her training and he’s now going to be her opponent in court. Even more complicated is the fact that they’re now husband and wife. This is a murder case and the victim was a high court judge, Anton Smythe, who died in a flat above a nightclub after being hit in the head with a doorstop. The accused is Jack, who works as security for the nightclub owner and lives on the premises. Leila is surprised that his solicitor has requested her because she has defended this client before, and lost. When they meet again for instructions, Jack tells her he will be pleading not guilty but offers no defence. She absolutely refuses to put him on the stand and his solicitor agrees. They should argue his case if he will trust them with the truth. Jack sticks to his guns, he will not say a word about his defence until he is on the stand. Could this be paranoia? Although to be a judge like Anton means you have powerful friends, maybe it is sensible to keep his story under wraps for now. 

I’m a big fan of legal dramas like Silk and North Square so the setting in a barrister’s chambers definitely appealed to me. I loved Maxine Peake as Martha, she was Northern, intelligent, quick with a put down and nobody’s fool. Leila comes across as more of a gentle character than that, but definitely intelligent, determined and perhaps driven by a background that has its secrets. I intensely disliked Julian, but he is so well-written. There was a definite power imbalance between them, especially since she’d been his pupil. He must have seen her star quality and I had the thought that maybe he’d married Leila to keep her under him, both literally and figuratively. The layers of charm and ease soon fall away as the case starts. 

“You want someone whose mind is in alignment with yours, but whose appetite for dominance will never exceed your own”. 

When Leila is congratulated on her mention he makes sure to comment that without his influence it wouldn’t have happened. I noticed that his ex-wife seems to want to talk to Leila, something she’s avoiding but might be worthwhile. As lines are drawn in the court room there’s a definite misogyny in how Julian gangs up with the police witnesses against her, but because he can couch it in terms of prosecuting competently even though she’s his wife, it’s hard to narrow down his intentions. Is he just serving the best interests of his client? Or is he trying to rattle his wife and make her feel like she’s dependent on him? As the case continues their once calm married life becomes more fraught and separate. Leila isn’t sure whether it’s just the case and the distance needed to be opponents or whether something more fundamental is wrong. The other thing that struck me as odd is that it’s Leila who goes to spend Friday evenings having fish and chips with her mother-in-law Audrey who is in the early stages of dementia. Julian never goes with her. When she does have one lucid moment Leila asks what she thinks about her son. ‘You can’t trust him she says very quietly. Thats why he doesn’t come to see me. He hates women who can see through him.” Maybe Leila is just starting to see the real man she married. There is also mystery around Leila’s background, definitely a poorer area of the North East than Durham but she seems to have no family. It’s as if she has totally reinvented herself. She calls it a wretched life that’s left it’s mark: 

“It’s the smaller, subtler things I’m now fiercely protective of, like feeling safe when I turn the light off before I go to sleep […] recognising my body is my own and I now get a say in who touches it. The things I had to do to get here you’d be horrified to know.”

It feels as if her relationships have been transactional even when she’s had a choice. Could Julian just be another rung on the ladder? It seems he wasn’t her first mentor and she wonders often whether this past will catch up with her. The twist is very good indeed. I had an inkling, but it is a proper ‘sixth sense’ moment where you’ll want to flick back through the book and see the clues you missed. This is a high drama, high stakes, legal battle and only one of them can win. The tension is unbearable as Jack takes the stand, it almost feels like a done deal but no one is expecting his testimony. The fall out is seismic. This is such a clever thriller with a cast of characters you won’t like but will be fascinated with. It’s very well written by an author who knows this profession and its pitfalls for women, particularly working class ones. It feels like social commentary – with the well educated, upholders of the law and all their status, against the ordinary, working class person who’s usually in the dock. Can the law be the great equaliser it seems or are some people more equal than others? This was a great debut with a fast pace and some brilliant ‘oh my God’ moments. 

Meet the Author

Jo grew up in Teesside during the 90s when working class girls were told they probably shouldn’t try to become barristers. Thankfully, she ignored everyone. After studying Classics at Newcastle University, she went to law school and did just that. Jo was a criminal barrister before leaving the profession to look after her two children. She lives in North Yorkshire.

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Under Story by Chloe Benjamin 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

WHAT IF TOMORROW WAS ALREADY WRITTEN, BUT YESTERDAY WAS YOURS TO CHANGE?

At an isolated research station in Antarctica, biologist Laurel Salter washes dishes for a living ten hours a day, six days a week. She tells no one why she left her career, or why her marriage ended.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t outrun her past. When a strange light appears across the ice and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo, her former husband, Eli, won’t be far behind.

Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole, and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them – to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?

And this time, live it differently.

Once read, never forgotten, Under Story is a genre-defying exploration of the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love.

This is my book of the year so far and I can’t stop talking about it. I’d read it on NetGalley in the spring and I was desperate to review but it felt too early. So when I found out my fellow squadettes were reading this in August I had to join in. I was quite simply blown away by this complex and beautiful story of science, loss and second chances. I still think about it all the time. Our heroine Laurel is a scientist, studying fungus and how it grows but for some reason that isn’t clear at first, she’s on a research station in the Antarctic, away from her former husband Eli and without any fungus in sight. When she develops a fascination in the Arc that appears above the pole she thinks about its significance, but when she becomes aware there is a matching basin underneath the water, her imagination becomes fired. Could this possibly be a portal? A gateway to a different world? She knows Eli won’t be far behind her because she remembers his theory of the ‘duoverse’, the idea that at the moment of the big bang time and space was formed in two directions: our universe, the planets and the development of the world we know and in the other direction it’s complete opposite. I am not a scientist, in fact I barely have GCSE Biology, so I wasn’t aware of any background to this idea so could drift with it and enjoy two incredible minds exploring ideas. I was fascinated with Laurel’s experiments with fungus growing in a maze and whether it moved in a specific direction. She was disappointed to find it tried out all routes then doubled back on itself, but then a second batch made straight for the right route as if it had learned from the previous batch’s mistakes. It felt like a demonstration of Jung’s collective consciousness:

“Ideas spread and somehow we’re all plugged into them.”

I often feel this about ideas, like when several books come out on the same subject at once. It reminded me of something I’ve read before – that ideas are hanging in the air and if we don’t grab them someone else will. As Laurel presents her paper at conference she’s asked some particularly tough questions by one delegate who is unimpressed with her work, claiming she’s applying a human lens to interpret her results. Laurel’s retort is to ask why the delegate is assuming that all intelligence is human? Laurel knows that we like to separate ourselves from animals and plants, safely in our own superior category, but oxygen from our atmosphere is running through our veins and the word human comes from the Latin word ‘humus’ meaning soil. Thinking that we are of the earth is the only thing that comforted Laurel when her dad died. She thinks about how bronchi in our lungs branch like trees and how a ‘neural network in the brain is structured like a galaxy’. I loved reading these aspects of the book and really appreciated how cleverly the author plants these ideas in the first part of the book and they grow in the second part. 

Our characters are fascinating, Eli and Laurel are a couple who were made for each other but their relationship is real and they face tough times, particularly devastating events crash into their lives but I never doubted their love for each other. It’s fascinating to watch their characters face the concept of the duoverse, not just whether it is a portal, but if it is what will their relationship look like there and will going backwards fix whatever tore them apart. I felt both were analytical and might even appear cold at times, but in the moments of heightened emotion we really see who these characters are and the deep wells of love they hold. It was two other characters that caught my imagination though: Gloria and Mr Nakamura. I absolutely loved Gloria who is Laurel’s mentor in our universe and her house in San Francisco was so brilliant I wanted to live there: 

‘It was an old Arts and Crafts house on Prospect Avenue, dark wood with purple roses growing in the garden and ivy trailing over the windows. Inside was enchantment; half melted candles, cabinets of oddities, a Maine Coon cat the colour of midnight.’ 

Gloria is intelligent, feisty and an incredible mentor to Laurel and I had a feeling they would meet in any universe. Mr Nakamura is a character from later in the book who is an ‘overtaker’ – a thought I’ll leave with you – who’s incredibly wise and understanding, helping with the difficult parts of life’s journey with dignity. Every character springs to life and has a backstory. 

The book’s settings are incredible. First the frozen wasteland of the Antarctic and its different scientific research bases are fascinating. I had no idea how many were there, but McMurdo is like a mini town and it’s the tiny details that give it authenticity. Many of the scientists go home for the winter months when it’s impossible to go outside and cabin fever can really kick in. Some people have an ‘ice-wife’ or husband who they’re in a relationship with in the summer months, then go home to their real spouses in the winter. Bits of the real world come through, such as the disappointment in a second Trump presidency, but it feels like a different world and the perfect place to avoid reality too. Every world the author presents to us feels absolutely real even though some of it seems impossible. I was on tenterhooks wondering about the duoverse under the ice and if Lauren is right whether they’ll ever be able to return? I found myself wondering how this world would look as time scrolled backwards. I was genuinely scared for them but also full of admiration for their bravery. The mirroring is so cleverly done, showing how life always comes full circle and we’re often helpless at the end and the beginning, if we’re lucky enough to lead a full life. As someone who worked in nursing homes in my twenties this really made me think of the role of nostalgia and how often elderly people hanker after experiences from their childhood. Laurel wants her mother’s blueberry pancakes, to watch a film she’s seen a million times and disappear into a favourite book because there’s comfort in it. It might seem like science has sent them on this potential journey, but it isn’t. The totally unscientific emotion of love is what pushes them on, but also guilt, hope and desperation. Loss is a huge theme in the novel, something that always hits me in the heart, and I was deeply moved by how the author dealt with grief across the novel and how the scientific concept of a duoverse changes this experience. This novel was moving, profound, invigorating, deeply intelligent and so full of life. I kept thinking about the symbols of the cover, the circle and the tree, the same under the ground as they are over it. As Laurel observes: 

“A line implies before and after; a circle says And then, and then…” 

Out 1st September from Tinder Press

Meet the Author

Chloe Benjamin is the author of THE IMMORTALISTS, a New York Times Bestseller, and THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS. Her third novel, UNDER STORY, will be published in September 2026.

A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, THE IMMORTALISTS was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Originally from San Francisco, CA, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Posted in Wordpress Prompts

Rewriting the Ending

Posted on by thelotusreaders

If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?

If I could rewrite a book’s ending it would be for purely sentimental reasons. The first time I read One Day by David Nicholls I burst into tears. Genuine gulping sobs. Spoiler alert here, this line broke me.

“Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.”

It’s such a simple line, but beautifully written. The change from past to present tense so we’re right there in the moment of the accident, it’s the finality too. Not just a body but that peculiar magic of thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that make up a person. That make us fall in love with a person. David Nicholls spends three quarters of the book manipulating us into falling in love with Emma and in a moment she’s snuffed out.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this response was down to my personal experience. Probably so. Partly I probably was grieving for my husband Jerzy, he’d only died two years before. Isn’t it strange the way our memories become confused but I would have sworn the book came out before he died. I imagined I’d read it while I was at university in 2001 but since the book was published in 2009 my grief would have been raw.

It’s the futility of all the time they danced around each other, for twenty years until Dexter gets his act together and recognises how much he loves this incredible woman. He certainly takes his time. Only for their time as lovers to be cut short in a second.

For me Emma is at her happiest in Paris. She’s cut her hair. She has a lovely apartment. She writes books for children. Everything she’s hoped and worked for is hers and then Dex turns up, newly divorced and suddenly she’s on his radar. Finally he sees what’s in front of him. So I would leave Emma in Paris, meeting men who see her value and writing her books, exploring the city that’s kickstarted her dreams and done with being Dexter’s consolation prize. She will always care but knows that’s the right decision for her and her happiness. We leave her with her thoughts and feelings intact, buying flowers and meeting a man for a gallery and dinner.

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.