Mrs Danowski – known as Danni – is the housekeeper of a grand mansion on the wild coast of Cornwall. When glamorous young writer Daphne du Maurier visits Manderville Hall to research her new novel, she and Danni are drawn into a clandestine and intoxicating affair.
For Danni, it is an all-consuming love; for Daphne a submission to long-suppressed desires. But their fragile secret is vulnerable to prying eyes and destined for heartbreak. When Daphne’s novel launches to triumphant success, Danni is distraught to find herself transformed into a malign and jealous character on the page. She seeks respite from the hurt by telling her own story: The Housekeeper.
I remember my mum first showing me the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation of Rebecca, the novel by Daphne du Maurier and I have loved it ever since. Of course as an adolescent girl I thought this was a romance and missed most of the complex psychology between the characters and their insignificance next to the overwhelming presence of Max de Winter’s dead wife Rebecca. She’s in the diary in the morning room, on the stationery, the bed linen and in the sheer and fragile nightgown still laid out on her bed in the wing overlooking her beloved sea. So significant is her ghost that Max’s new and unprepared young bride doesn’t even have a name. One thing that always stayed with me though was the pale and haunting face of the housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. Beautifully played by Judith Anderson in her severe black dress, she seemingly floats quietly through the house always catching out his new bride who is inept and deeply self-conscious. She doesn’t have the upbringing or self-assurance to assert her own opinions and ideas for how they live at Manderley, simply acquiescing to the status quo and Mrs Danvers lead. We never know whether she means harm or is simply devoted to her dead mistress, a relationship that as I got older took on a different meaning – the display of the sheer nightgown, the way Rebecca told Danni of her sexual exploits and how she talks about touching Rebecca’s hair all have a sapphic undertone I didn’t see when I was young. It remains one of my favourite books and films to this day, so knowing there was a novel inspired by Rebecca was really exciting and this book didn’t disappoint.
Judith Butler and Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca 1940
Rose Tremain takes everything we know from Rebecca and gives the novel an origin story. At Lord Grenville- Whithers’s house, set on the Cornish coast, we meet Mrs Danowski, the housekeeper of Manderville. Danni, as she is known, worked for Grenville’s wife who recently died. She’s protective of her employer who was so shocked by his wife’s untimely death he suffered a small stroke. Along with the other servants Danni runs a tight ship and still keeps her mistress’s things in her part of the house. Her quiet and regimented world is blown apart when the novelist Daphne du Maurier visits the house. She falls in love with its position on the cliffs near Fowey, where she lives at Ferryside. She tells Lord Grenville that she is struggling to write in their family home always interrupted by the children and the servants. She asks if she can use the small boating shed in the cove for a writing place. He agrees that she can come and go as she pleases and orders Dani to make sure the place is ready for Daphne’s visits. It’s soon clear that there is more to Daphne’s request than meets the eye. An intoxicating pull of desire exists between the two women and as Daphne confides, there are times when the boy inside her needs to come out. As they embark on this passionate and dangerous affair change is in the air. The possibility of war looms and closer to home Grenville- Whithers is thinking about the future and where to bestow Manderville if he should die. He’s considering his niece Adelaide, a loud and careless girl who has no experience running a big house. The servants are feeling restless and start looking at other options for their future. Suddenly the place Danni felt safe and stable is in flux and she’s living life on a dangerous edge again.
The confrontation at the ball
I loved how the author incorporated Rebecca into the novel, so that her whole story becomes the reason for its creation. Mrs Danvers becomes the repository of Daphne’s passion and ‘perverted’ nature. She makes Danni into this evil and obsessive woman to excuse her own behaviour. Then there’s Rebecca and the second Mrs de Winter who function as two sides to Daphne’s character: the social butterfly with insatiable passions and the inept and inexperienced mistress of the house.
“What I see in this character is Daphne’s horror of her own nature.’
As well as using the boat house in the cove for her novel, Daphne incorporates the ball thrown by Grenville- Whithers at Manderville as the scene of the young wife’s disastrous choice of costume, encouraged by the housekeeper to drive a wedge between them. This is the unforgettable night where Mrs Danvers takes the young wife into Rebecca’s bedroom and shows her Rebecca’s alluring sheer nightgown and how she would confide her sexual exploits. It’s where I first realised the depths of her obsession with her mistress, she’s almost living vicariously through Rebecca and getting an erotic thrill from her sexual conquests. Rose Tremain uses the ball as a catalyst for change too. It’s the moment where Manderville’s future is decided and where a decision is made about Daphne and Danni’s relationship. Danni has to look at herself in the mirror at times to see whether the woman she sees in the glass is who she expects or if she’s become the woman immortalised in Daphne’s new book. She replays parts of her upbringing in Poland in her mind, the terrible rise of hate against Jewish families like hers and being ostracised at school. Even though the memories are painful she uses them to reaffirm who she is, Mrs Danowski born in Kalinskiego Street now housekeeper of Manderville Hall with the attention to detail and quiet deference the position requires. Overriding the memories of Daphne and her naked in the boathouse giving in to their desires.
“The more she is made guilty by these feelings, the more terrible she must make me in her story.”
I enjoyed the two subplots about two younger servants called Roly and Florence and around Dani’s dressmaking. Roly wants to get ahead and dreams of opening a tobacco and sweet shop. Danni supports the young couple and is willing to help them set up, but is horrified when Roly goes to extreme lengths to secure what he wants. She feels an affinity with a young woman called Emerald, brought along to Danni by her mother because they are finding it impossible to buy a wedding dress that suits her. Danni gets the sense that Emerald isn’t looking forward to her wedding, but sets to work creating a dress that’s simple but cut beautifully to suit her fuller figure. When Danni gets the chance to talk to Emerald alone, she confides in her about the real love of her life. Danni’s thwarted feelings for Daphne drive her to help Emerald live the life she wants, on her own terms.
The pace of the novel is perfect, slow and languorous at first with moments of intense and hurried desire. My heart raced at times, terrified they would be found out. There was a constantly ticking clock in my mind, waiting for the moment everything would change. The author’s representation of Daphne du Maurier feels genuine, even to someone who has read a lot about her background and life at Menabilly – her very own Manderley near Fowey. It’s easy to see aspects of Rebecca and the second Mrs de Winter in her character and behaviour, but also Daphne herself. It was interesting to imagine Danni beyond the Hitchcock film’s representation of Mrs Danvers. Instead of the austere and ghostly housekeeper we see a woman in moments of abandonment, with her hair down her back and nothing but a fur coat on, the object of Daphne’s desire. A desire she’s so ashamed of she makes her lover evil in print then burns her to death. I must mention the stunning cover of this book too, a wonderfully stylised Art Deco representation of the housekeeper, perhaps peering from her dead mistress’s window to the sea below. It’s stylish and immediately takes us to the East Wing of Manderley where the housekeeper is stood as a boat runs aground bringing disaster for Maxim de Winter. Most exciting is the news that Rose Tremain has also written a screenplay to turn the novel into a film. Now in post production this is a Richard Eyre film with Anthony Hopkins as Grenville and Outlander’s Catriona Balfe as Danni. I’m really looking forward to seeing this and I’ll be placing this book pride of place in my collection of books I inspired by Rebecca and Jane Eyre.
The Dixon family house was once a crown jewel of the White Mountains. Perched on a cliff with breathtaking views, it promised summer adventures, winter skiing, and family gatherings around a roaring log fire.
Until late one August night, when both parents and their four children vanished, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints, and a mystery that has endured for generations.
Thirty years later, the grand mansion is stirring back to life. For Raquel and Theo Collins, restoring their new home represents a fresh start after a terrible tragedy.
For Amanda Grady, the recently appointed police chief of Shereford, it’s good to see a fresh start for the derelict house. But a new family in the old home can only mean one thing: the past has returned with a vengeance.
When a stray dog arrives and discovers a skeleton on the property, Raquel and Theo face a daunting choice of what to believe, who to trust, and how to survive.
Because in the tiny village of Shereford the time has come. A town, a couple, a cop must all work together to unravel the terrifying events that happened one night thirty years ago, or…
They will all be sorry.
I love that even seven years into blogging about books I can still find authors I’ve never read before and this recommendation came from a fellow book reviewer. My first thought a few chapters in was that the writing had a feel of Stephen King with its small town setting, secrets and horrific things hidden in unexpected places. The remoteness of this community adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere, especially in the final chapters as a storm sets in and cuts them off from outside help with only Chief Grady to defend the residents. There’s also a theme of something malign passed down the generations, but is this an evil that human beings inflict on each other or is it something lurking around this town, something that never dies? The action is focused around a property known as the Dixon House, a house that stayed empty ever since the tragedy from a few decades ago. When Chief Mandy Grady was a little girl and her dad held the role of police chief, the six members of the Dixon family disappeared. It was a confusing scene with various footprints, some of them bloody and others from bare feet. The lack of DNA testing meant finding any answers to the mystery or identifying a possible suspect never happened. The house has since stood empty and has been the site of teenage meet-ups, graffiti art and wild animals taking shelter. Now though the house has new residents, interior designer Raquel and her husband Theo have taken it on as a project. They are an intrepid couple, happy to take risks and with the funds to remodel the home to their own needs. However, they have suffered a personal tragedy before arriving in Maine and when they find an unexpected feature in their grounds with horrifying contents Chief Grady starts to question. Will they still be able to enjoy their new remote lifestyle and settle into Shereford or can a house hold a trauma, dooming every residents to repeat the experience over and over again?
The two main investigators in this mystery are Chief Mandy Grady and new resident Raquel, providing the interesting contrasting perspectives of someone born and bred in Shereford and someone completely new to the area and its residents. For Mandy it is hard to imagine that her father did anything but his best when investigating the Dixon’s disappearance, but she knows how tight knit this community is. Would they tell her if they knew something? Would she believe them? This is the difficult and lonely job of policing your own community, often too close to see things objectively but somehow always an outsider too. These families can trace their ancestors back for generations and have a vested interest in keeping old crimes hidden. Raquel is new enough not to care who she upsets, perhaps not realising that the consequences could be more serious than being snubbed by the neighbours. When she finds a well on their land with a woman’s skeleton buried inside she becomes fascinated with this decades old mystery and whether it’s linked to the Dixon disappearance. When researching in the heritage centre she’s restricted by the hovering of its guardians Betty and Mason, but thinks nothing of stealing a journal from under their noses. As she reads she discovers it’s been written by a local wise woman and midwife, something that links in with the well. Is there a supernatural element here or a witch hunt against a woman simply treating her fellow women? Though it does seem strange that a retriever type dog turned up at the house when they moved in, just like the one that the Dixons took in. It’s as if their house is caught in a time loop, doomed to repeat history every time a new resident moves in. What she finds as she reads Rita’s journal is a suggestion of witchcraft and satanic rituals, something that seems almost unbelievable as she walks around and meets friendly residents, but she knows better than most that proximity isn’t a guarantee of safety.
A huge theme in the book is motherhood, both within the mystery and for Raquel and Theo personally. When smaller bones are found with the woman in the well, Raquel identifies them immediately as infant’s bones. This set off a few alarm bells about her past because it seems to trigger something emotionally. We know she had a difficult childhood but there are secrets she’s keeping from us and from Theo. She agonises over not being good enough for her husband who is described as handsome and comes from a rich and well connected family. He has proven himself loyal to Raquel but are there things he doesn’t know and if so, will their marriage survive? As a couple they’ve gone through pregnancy loss, a devastating experience that can often break a couple apart, yet they’ve survived. Theo has made the decision that he wants to be with Raquel because he loves her, not because of her ability to be a mother. I loved the chapters where this was explored from Raquel’s perspective as she muses on her lost children and as someone who experienced recurrent pregnancy loss it really resonated. She captures the difficult gap between those who only experienced the idea of a baby and the fully formed little person who was a reality to the mother who carried them:
“Did babies have souls? Even the ones who never took a breath, but kicked their precious feet and turned funny little somersaults inside the safety of their mother’s womb […] were they just fragile wisps of what might have been, an idea never fully formed.”
This combination of addictive thriller with real emotional intelligence captured me completely. As days pass and Mandy is driving around the more isolated parts of the community to see if they’re prepared for the coming snow storm, we can see how complex her job is. She’s taking care of these people but also suspicious of some of them. Even while she checks if they have supplies, she’s assessing them and wondering who holds the town’s secrets and who has been actively trying to keep them buried. I found both women brave, forthright and willing to stretch the rules to find the truth. As the storm hits they end up together, chasing down their suspects in an intensely claustrophobic town, completely cut off from any reinforcements or chance at escape. There’s been so much hiding in plain sight, simply needing a different perspective to unlock the truth both literally and figuratively. The twists kept coming and I was astounded by the layers of lies and collusion. Mandy finds herself at the centre of a web of deception woven into a more complicated pattern by each generation that followed in order to preserve reputation and power. I love it when a book grabs my attention so much that I’m choosing to read it rather than turn on the television. I’ve placed this author on the list I keep for second hand bookshops because I definitely want to read more of her work.
Out now from Penguin
Meet the Author
Lisa Gardner started her writing career aged seventeen. Having caught her hair on fire while working in food service, crafting a novel seemed a safer bet. A mere ten years later she became an overnight success with the publication of her first thriller, The Perfect Husband.
Now an internationally bestselling author and winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for best suspense novel, Lisa lives in the mountains of New Hampshire with her family.
When not glued to her computer, she can be found hiking the mountains with her dogs and/or researching new and interesting ways to get away with murder.
When three-year-old Tippi Macklin goes missing on a weekend break with her parents, her face appears in newspapers around the world, sparking endless debate and conspiracy theories. Wealthy and glamorous Jed and Gabby never give up hope that ‘Little Tippi’ will be found.
Eighteen years later, a young woman arrives at their door claiming to be their lost girl. She has a new name, a new history and some startling evidence to support her claim. Can she really be Tippi – or is she an imposter?
A DNA test will prove her identity one way or the other, but when the results come back, it seems the mystery has only just begun…
I do LOVE a Louise Candlish novel, so much so that when I saw I’d been approved on Netgalley I spent my whole Saturday reading it. I’m never disappointed and this is such a fascinating subject and family. Narrated by Gabby Macklin’s sister Bel, this is about how such a huge tragedy affects a whole family, but also about the underlying tensions and dynamics between its members. If it wasn’t for Jed and Gabby losing their daughter eighteen years ago you would absolutely hate them. They’re one of those couples on Escape to the Country or Grand Designs who say ‘I’m a cheese maker, my wife is a freelance bid writer and we have 2.4 million to spend.” Those people who claim to want a country kitchen, but really mean Downton Abbey. It’s now eighteen years later and a young woman claims that, after her parents died in a car crash, she’s discovered things that make her think she’s their lost daughter Tippi. This isn’t the first time their hopes have been raised, but it’s by far the most exciting lead they’ve had in a long time. Gabby tells her sister she feels that Eden is her daughter but Bel isn’t so sure and starts to investigate. Told mainly through Bel there are also a few different narratives: feeds from the couple’s social media pages for Tippi, some creative writing pieces from Tippi’s perspective from someone clearly obsessed with the case and text messages between two people that are very hard to decipher and suggest illegal activities.
The characters are fascinating with Bel and her sister Gabby at the story’s heart, but also a weird dynamic between Bel and her brother in law Jed. The two families are in very different positions financially. Jed runs a very successful training business and Gabby makes candles in at home studio. Their home is clearly interior designed with a sunken living room area and so much party space. Theirs is the house where the family get together and with such a disparity in their earnings, it’s clear that some resentment is felt by Bel. She’s supporting her family while husband Marc gets his business off the ground. They rent their home and are aware that if London prices go up much more they will have to move, probably to a worse area than now. Their home is lived in rather than designed and with Bel working full time as a trading standards officer she has a lot on her plate. Daughter Luna is coming up to her GCSEs and becomes more incommunicative by the day. Grace is away at university studying psychology and seems the most sensible and sorted out of all of them. Wherever Bel’s busy schedule allows she is quite determined to find out whether Eden really is her lost niece or has she realised her similarity to Tippi and noticed Gabby and Jed’s wealthy lifestyle? It’s hard to like Bel but there’s a lot to empathise with. Jed came across as a man who is used to setting the agenda and uses his money to control and manipulate. Gabby is almost like a shadow, physically present but quiet and passive. Losing her daughter has been a trauma she will never get over and Bel doesn’t want her sister to sleepwalk into a relationship with Eden without proof that she’s definitely who she says she is. But why is Bel so sure Eden isn’t Tippi?
I thought the author captured the endless speculation and media attention around a missing child, especially one as photogenic and appealing as Tippi clearly was. When a case captures the public attention it’s as if everyone wants to be involved. The furore surrounding Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has shown us that people on social media will comment, discuss and make wild accusations about the family. The excerpts from the Facebook page show that people want to be part of the story whether that’s pretending to know something, throwing a wild theory out there or just sending their love and prayers. Often there appears to be no thought for the family who have to wade through this just in case there is a clue. The creative writing pieces are particularly cruel and well written. Who would do such a thing? What’s their aim? Is there any truth in them? It plays on Gabby’s hope that one day she’ll find her. The guilt of the parents felt very real and I found it very hard to believe that Eden was preying on that hope, just wishing that Gabby’s need to find her daughter might overwhelm the need for the truth. In the midst of DNA tests, research and quizzing Eden, has Bel has taken her eye off the ball at home? Something that has bothered her for years keeps resurfacing, a frustration that her sister’s ongoing drama overshadows her and her daughters. Because of what happened, Gabby is the precious sister who they can’t upset. Every problem Bel’s family has pales in comparison to what the Macklins have gone through. As her mother says, she can’t complain about her daughters because at least she has them.
There are so many secrets here and as always I was glued to the page as they were revealed. Each revelation was a surprise and explained a lot about the family dynamics. The twists were not just focused on the Macklins though, Bel’s family had a few surprises in store too. I thought this was an addictive read and captured perfectly how trauma like this ripples outwards into wider family and friends. Through Gabby we can see how the loss affects a mother, leaving her in limbo and something of a recluse in her own home, perhaps not wanting to miss any development and having her hopes raised and dashed continually. Bel tells the story very well, becoming obsessed with Eden perhaps at the expense of her own daughters. My thoughts about some characters were confirmed, but others surprised me completely. You will devour this novel like I did as it’s Louise Candlish at her very best.
Out November 5th from Harper Collins
Meet the Author
Louise’s previous thrillers include OUR HOLIDAY, a Sunday Times bestseller, WHSmith Richard & Judy Book Club pick, and OUR HOUSE, now a major four-part drama starring Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton (watch the full series on ITVX in the UK and PBS/Amazon Prime in the US) and winner of the British Book Awards Book of the Year – Crime & Thriller.
She has celebrated her 20th anniversary as an author with the news of two prestigious awards for 90s-set thriller THE ONLY SUSPECT: the Capital Crime Fingerprint Award for Thriller of the Year and the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction. Filming has just wrapped in London for the ITV adaptation, with Kevin McKidd starring as Alex, a middle-aged man with a deadly secret to hide. More soon on that – and on the adaptation of THE HEIGHTS, starring Anna Friel.
She lives in South London with her husband, daughter and a fox-red Labrador called Bertie. Books, TV and long walks are her passions – and drinking wine in the sun with family and friends. Authors she loves include Tom Wolfe, Patricia Highsmith, Barbara Vine, Agatha Christie and Evelyn Waugh. Her favourite book is Madame Bovary.
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.
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.
When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the past hidden.
In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door. But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while trying to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar. Dark, atmospheric and rich with psychological suspense, The Last Tenant confirms Eva Björg Ægisdóttir as one of Iceland’s finest crime writers, as a meticulous investigation and a series of unsettling discoveries draw a close-knit community towards a reckoning no one can escape…
Wow! I love this series and at the sixth book in it just gets better and better. Elma’s case is a difficult and historic one as remains of a woman are found on a remote farm next to the long-buried bones of an infant. Elma will have to wait to find out whether the two are linked and how they’ve died, in the meantime she will have to trawl through missing person reports to find a likely candidate for the woman. She finds one in a young woman named Solrun, a medical student who had been dating a local boy when she went missing and both her car and clothes were found on a beach. Now Elma must delve into her past and reopen the scars for those she knew and loved because Solrun did not walk into the sea and drown. The baby’s DNA matches hair found buried with Solrun, but she hadn’t been pregnant and the baby’s remains predate hers by some years. Confused, Elma becomes engrossed in the case that is bound to cause a stir in her home town of Akranes as dark family secrets are uncovered. We see the case through Elma’s eyes but we’re also taken into the life of a young woman called Karitas who has recently moved into town with her young son Bessi. At first glance their basement flat is small but clean and her new landlord Baldvin seems odd but kind. There are also transcripts of a young man recording his troubled relationship with his father and the disappearance of his girlfriend on to his phone. Lyrical jornal entries from a young woman book end the novel. These different narratives are just one of the reasons I love this author’s writing. It reminds me of the Shetland novels by Anne Cleeves. In a remote small towns cases become complicated because everybody knows each other and their history family history. It brings home the emotional fallout of the crime committed and the toll it takes on the detectives like Elma who grew up here and have to picture their friends and neighbours as suspects. There are twists here you won’t see coming, but they’re not there for sensation but come about because people have secrets and tell lies. In the background runs the tension between retired police chief Otto and Elma, who blackmailed her on a previous case by claiming he knew a secret about Saever.
Elma throws herself into this case, mainly working alone but with Saever close by or at home to test her theories. Otto’s claims from the last book haven’t been addressed between them and along with having a lively toddler it has definitely sewn a bit of distance into their relationship. Her concerns grow when she sees he is distracted and receiving emails or messages from a woman that he isn’t sharing with her. I love the equity of their relationship, always equally responsible for chores, cooking and childcare, with none of the angst or guilt we often read with fictional female police officers. She’s a great mum but when she’s at work her mind is on the case, endlessly scrolling what she knows so far like a fruit machine in her head until something suddenly matches. She’s so absorbed that she’s not always checking her own well-being, with her mum intervening here and there to let the couple have some time and fun. On a night of wine with friends she’s horrified to have blurted out something about the case and mentally kicks herself for being unprofessional but she has discovered something she didn’t have before – other people’s impressions of someone she’s considering.
I enjoyed the character of Baldvin, the landlord of the basement flat where Karitas and Bessi live. He’s just the sort of the elderly gentleman I’d make friends with and I’ve had some eccentric friends over the years! He comes across as harmless and lonely with monologues that drift off at tangents and become philosophical. With a typical child’s innocence Bessi forms a bond with him, mainly fuelled by biscuits and ice-cream. He’s kind to them both so Karitas is surprised when neighbour Kristofer suggests she should be careful, insinuating he was creepy around his previous girlfriend. He does mention something about Karitas’s last name, its meaning and something about three suns that seems odd. She couldn’t be so wrong about him surely? She does sometimes come home and feel that someone has been in the flat and perhaps senses the whiff of his aftershave. When Elma asks around she finds that many people find him an odd character, almost like a child himself with a strange little giggle. A story about him did the rounds some years ago, that when working at the leisure centre he touched a young girl inappropriately, but one of her friends insists it wasn’t true. It shows that ‘apparently the truth doesn’t matter’ she says, something that seems more true today than ever before.
These cases are never tidy. There’s always something that doesn’t quite fit or can’t be explained. I imagine this is the norm in real life police work, but often detective fiction is way too cleanly tidied away. Here someone always knows more than they’re willing to say or are more involved than you imagined. Then there’s the burden of proof needed for a conviction. Elma knows Solrun was chasing down a clue before she disappeared, because one of her friends mentioned she’d asked for help about symptoms and medication. It wasn’t a personal enquiry but Elma can’t see where it might fit in her death, even when everything else is explained. Then there’s how everyone in Akranes is interlinked and having grown up in a small rural town I can see how it’s easy to think we know everything about another person. The truth is that we rarely see the full picture, just our part of it coloured by our own experience. Even within families there are things people know but no one talks about, there are different versions of the family history, things we’re open about and things we bury. Even so, how far would we go to protect those we love, especially our children? Throughout this series the people of Akranes are like a wider family, burying each other’s crimes and collectively forgetting the truth. The impact of one generation’s choices affecting the next. This the genius and the darkness at the heart of this series. The scariest truth about monsters is they don’t look like they do in storybooks; they can come out in daylight and ‘on the surface they’re just like ordinary people.’
Out Now from Orenda Books
Meet the Author
Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel. Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestsellerin Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023. In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key. The Forbidden Iceland series, due to hit streaming servicesin Autumn 2026 via GlassRiver, has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in twenty-nine languages with more than a million copies sold.
There have been some absolutely belting books this month and I loved telling you all about them. So I’ve been in the US, Italy, Greece Scotland and Sheffield. Oh I forgot about the ‘anti-verse’. It’s been a whirlwind of monstrous mermaids, a universe that goes backwards, the Greek civil war, a family dealing with the aftermath of 9/11, a crime writer who wakes up in a Sicilian villa with a dead body, a counsellor dealing with coercive control and a group of young boys trying to save their summer boy’s club. I’ve struggled to keep my mind on my reading to be honest it’s been a tough month. At the end of the last heatwave my cat returned home late one night and collapsed in the hall. I thought it was heatstroke and we tried to cool him but I could see he couldn’t put any weight on his back end. We rushed him to the vets where they diagnosed possible epilepsy. I knew this wasn’t right. She gave us some anti-convulsants but I wasn’t sure this was the right call. We kept him confined and on pain killers but he still couldn’t walk. I decided on a second opinion and went to a vet I used to see before moving house and he was brilliant. Poor Max had broken his pelvis in two places, his hip and damaged his lumbar spine. He also had a partially healed wound on his side. I can’t believe all that was missed. I could feel where his pelvis was pushed over, twisting his whole lower body. He’s had some surgery and lots of care at home. It’s going to take twelve weeks or more to fully settle. My husband has built him a three bedroom home under the stairs so he’s confined some of the time but can come out for exercise and fuss. My animals are my daily company now I don’t get out and about too well so they’re an important part of my life. I was so upset and I’ve really been focused on making him comfy and safe. So there’ll be lots of reading time in the upcoming weeks and I can’t wait be use it looks like an amazing autumn. I’ll share some recommendations for your tbr at the end. ❤️📚
I’ve been looking forward to this new release from Jodi Picoult and I was lucky enough to get it on NetGalley. I dived in and read it very quickly over a couple of days. My full review will be later in the week, but this was a fascinating read, bravely taking on some of the most contentious and sacred subjects in modern day America. We follow Molly, a young woman in her twenties who is incredibly driven and has the difficult job of coordinating emergency response in her state. Her job is not medical, it’s to prevent incidents and plan for potential disaster situations based on the geographical features of the area, possible targets and population. Having just got through COVID, Molly is happily settled down with husband Jesse close to her dad and stepmum. It’s easy to see that it’s the loss of her mother that has influenced Molly’s choice of career. Eloise was lost on 9/11 when she attended a medical appointment in the South Tower. Every year Molly takes the trip to NYC for the memorial ceremony and tucks a red ribbon behind her mum’s name, representing the one she always wore in her French plait. What Molly doesn’t know is that her own life is about to blow up unexpectedly, changing everything she’s ever known and challenging what she knows about motherhood and risk prevention. I thought this was a classic Jodi Picoult novel with dilemmas, big emotions and using different narrative voices to give us all sides of an argument. We think we know Molly’s story, but a different narrator throws all of that up in the air so unexpectedly. Reading Molly’s narrative I kept thinking “ah this is going to be about x” but I was wrong. There are strong issues here – mental health, abuse, cult mentality – and they are shocking, because they should be. Jodi Picoult has such an easy, conversational style and it was great to be back in the hands of a fantastic storyteller.
This is a great premise for a thriller and having been a therapist I’m always fascinated by books that are based on the therapeutic relationship. I think there’s a fascination in what therapist’s personal lives actually look like. Do they have it all sorted? The answer is invariably no and here 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. This is an issue for supervision, where Helena should disclose that she’s finding Belle’s passivity and indecision on leaving very difficult, but she doesn’t and now Tala is talking about how positive early responses have been to her new novel. Yet she doesn’t offer Helena a proof. When Helena stumbles across one at Tala’s flat she takes it and reads in horror as she realises Tala has fictionalised the problems of her client. This is going to be like a grenade in her personal and professional life.
The lives of Tala, Helena and her boyfriend Dylan 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. The tension is almost unbearable as I worried about Helena overstepping with her client, the client finding out what’s in Tala’s book and somehow passing that on to her husband 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 supervision 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.
This epic story from Victoria Hislop really taught me a lot about a period of history I knew little about. The events happen after the end of WW2, a turbulent time that has already seen the punishment of Nazi collaborators and now many would like to see the end of their right wing government. The setting is a village called Kalopetra where Fotini’s husband has gone to fight for government forces against the communists, causing a schism in the family because Fotini’s brother-in-law fights for the communists. The sudden divide causes friction across the village, but the women must work together if they’re to survive. When government forces come to the village they capture all the women and Fotini is allowed to bring her baby son with her but older daughter Iliana is left behind with older children. How will they survive? That moment of Iliana chasing the truck, with her mother unable to do anything to reassure her, is burned into my memory. Although soon enough communist forces will round up the children and move them into camps where they are fed, clothed and then sent on to other countries like Yugoslavia. After having the entire burden of the other village children on her shoulders, Iliana is relieved to be fed and clothed by such kind people and so the process of brainwashing begins. All Fotini can think about is returning to her peaceful village and living the rustic existence that has survived for centuries, she doesn’t know that her way of life is already dead and nothing will be the same again.
I really enjoyed the later parts of the novel where we see Fotini piecing life back together in the city of Piraeus. It’s a massive change for this country girl but she can see the benefits of more job opportunities, entertainments like the cinema and eating good Greek food again at a lovely restaurant run by Demetrios. He’s such a kind man and gently reminds Fotini that she can’t spend the rest of her life wandering and looking for the children. The best thing she and Mitsos can do is stay in one place and hope the children find her, the place she was trying to get back to is gone. There was so much material to choose from in this book that it could have filled a trilogy. I had questions about all sorts of characters, such as Fotini’s relationship with her sister Stella. I also had questions about Nikos’s journey and his adoptive mother, there just seemed to be more about her that could have been explored. However, I loved Iliana’s growth and her life as an adult living under communism. The differences between Greece and Hungary were fascinating and as always the author captured the beauty of the Greek islands, their isolation and wildness and how this conflict disrupts a way of life that existed for centuries. The book symbolically ends with a circular dance that’s life affirming and perhaps a way of capturing, just for a few moments, that lost way of being.
I loved the first book in this series and I devoured this one in a day. Hannah is once again fretting over writing her latest book, disgusted that copies of the romance novel she poured her heart into is being ignored, while the crime novel she wrote in one month for a bet is a bestseller. Hannah is a brilliantly flawed character full of writer’s neurosis, hating that she is forced to write what will sell rather than the books she aspires to write. Again she’s on a deadline and as a last resort her editor Bastian finds her a quiet villa in Sicily with its own swimming pool. No distractions and plenty of time to unwind and write the novel she’s had an advance to produce. I love this character because she says and does the things I’d love to, but my inhibitions keep it inside. She has no such restrictions, happily saying what she thinks when she thinks it. Her disgust with the crime genre and Jorn Jensen in particular is so funny. I wonder if she has ever had a thought or need she didn’t express? She also seems totally unregulated. I would have asked the elderly couple who caretake the villa for help but Hannah decides to walk to the village without thought about the heat, how far and which direction home is in. She has no idea which hill to take and ends up exhausted and on the verge of sunstroke on her way back. This is where she is found by Hans and Greta who take her to their incredible house to clean up and drink something. This turns into dinner, wine and a night spent in their house. It’s when she wakes up in a strange place that she and the housekeeper Lucette find a dead body. Greta has been murdered and Hans is nowhere to be found. Has he been kidnapped or could he be the murderer? Hannah seems to have an inability to weigh up a decision before taking action. There’s so much going on in her head that it’s very hard for her to remain in the present. I’m always wishing she’d slow down a minute and breathe, but the only times she seems to do this are in water.
The case is an absolute maze of connections and suspects showing up a tension between villagers and tourists, a misogynistic police force and possible Mafia interference. Despite Hannah’s aversion to crime as a genre, she’s just as caught up in the mystery of this murder as any reader would be. She’s utterly reckless, in a comical way and there’s a chase on a moped during the final chapters that is clumsy and hilarious to imagine. Sparks fly when Jorn Jensen appears, but she can’t deny he helps make things happen. His arrogance is brilliant and when he suggests they write a crime novel together I thought Hannah might hit him with something heavy. The creepy moment in the basement, including Jensen’s cardboard cut out made me laugh out loud. This is a dark humour that I love. Jorn’s statement that he has ‘enormous sex appeal’ and it’s that and not his wealth that attracts women shows what sort of brash and conceited character he is, but there’s no denying his bravery and quick thinking. They are quite the investigative team, despite her reticence about working with him. Hannah’s instincts are good. She won’t accept the police’s conclusion that Hans killed his wife, reasoning that he adored her and couldn’t have done it. Instead she follows the money, often blundering into compromising situations and dangerous people. If the conclusion teaches her anything it’s that people will murder for very unexpected reasons. This is a brilliant second instalment of Hannah’s adventures and I’m going to resolve to be a little more Hannah and say what I think here and there.
I love when monster stories are given a retelling and in this one it’s a mermaid living in a loch, but not the Disney-fixed Little Mermaid we might be used to. Here she is a truly fearsome creature named Moireach with yellow eyes, sharp teeth, shiny scales and the drive of a predator. She lives in the loch, only changing after dark when she reverts back to her human form – Iris. As a young girl Iris defied her father and fell in love with Thane. He forbade their relationship, as the daughter of a laird she must marry well and for the clan’s gain not her own. Devastated she visits a witch hoping to be free of her father’s obligations, but the witch cursed her and she became banished to the loch by day. Now, some fifty years later, when Iris emerges she is still the beautiful girl of her youth. Thane has never come for her and as dead men have been discovered around the loch with their hearts ripped out, the name of the monster is on everyone’s lips. Her childhood friend Duncan, now an old man, knows it cannot be Iris. She isn’t capable. He hides her with all the love and loyalty he had fifty years earlier, even though she chose someone else. The laird has made a big decision, he’s hired a hunter of monsters, a man called Henry Cartwright and he has never failed to catch his prey.
The backdrop of this story is perfect, using the mist, cold and breathtaking landscape to add to it’s mystery. There are parallels with Outlander here in the feel of this place, making good use of Scotland as a thin place where the paranormal, time travel and a history of monsters seems part of life. With the historical backdrop of the witch trials it’s also a dangerous place, particularly for a woman. Iris talks about the smell of the burnings and how women must be careful, but it’s no easier being a monster when men are turning up dead. The background of misogyny and brutal witch trials hangs over them all and shows a willingness to believe in magic, curses and female malevolence. It’s not just witches though, other fantastical creatures exist here like the seelies and selkies and there’s more one woman with powers a man would kill for. All of these things appear to be aligned with the nature that surrounds them and we can see that wildness as Iris changes to Moireach. It’s not just the yellow eyes and scales but the way her mind becomes that of a predator with only one goal. Reading this felt like being a child again and discovering a fairy tale rooted in darkness. Yes, some elements are fantastical, but it doesn’t read like fantasy. It’s more like a hybrid of historical fiction and fairy tales with aspects of a thriller. The pace speeds up as Iris begins to run out of time and we still don’t know why she was cursed, who cursed her and what will finally break it. There are those in the village who may seem kind, but could benefit from keeping Iris in her watery prison. As she takes us back to those fateful days in flashback, when her family were all together and her father didn’t yet know about Thane. I was engrossed with the tangled web of lies and betrayal but also by the question of what life Iris would choose if she could lift the curse. Would she pick the life she’d always wanted or had things changed? There are some unexpected revelations too, making for an exciting and absorbing conclusion. I thoroughly enjoyed this dark and feminist take on the mermaid stories we’re used to and I look forward to what the author writes next.
I feel like I’ve been living under a rock because I’m the only book blogger who hasn’t read Frank and Red, so this was my first introduction to Matt Coyne. I don’t even follow him on social media so went in completely blind. This book was a gem from start to finish. Matt Coyne’s ability to write a novel with the emotional intelligence to balance weighty subjects like war and loss against laugh out loud comedy is akin to Sue Townsend and her wonderful creation Adrian Mole. Sister Francis is like my rather formidable previous schoolteacher, Sister Joan. She had the sharpness and discipline of a military veteran, but underneath that there was a twinkle that made me think there was a sense of humour and quick wit underneath. Sister Francis drives an old van as if she’s in a rally, always has a cigarette on the go and reads the racing post. I have always found nuns to be singular and quirky individuals so I warmed to her immediately. Although she’s a comic character there’s so much more to her. She’s clearly keen on restarting a boy’s club she used to run years ago, with origins of supporting boys who had lost their father in WW2. She has a way of relating to boys from the area and our four friends can see she’s a formidable ally from the first day. When they roll up to the clapped out shed they’re accosted by one of the local priests, asking what they’re doing hanging around the presbytery and accusing them of looking for things to steal. When Sister Francis bursts out of the shed he’s taken aback and the boys notice she uses her sweetest voice and emphasises the holy intentions behind her club, but as soon as he’s gone she lights up and is her sweary self. Behind this exterior are buckets of empathy and determination to help the boys in her care, not that she’s easy on them. The four boys have a deal with her, if they come and help her clean the club house on the last Saturdays of term they can come to the club in the holidays and keep the entrance fee. It’s hard work but they stick at it and it’s not long before the Dead Dad’s Club is up and running.
I developed a soft spot for Rich’s Grandad Bob, who has a keen sense of humour and is a great role model for a young boy who has lost his father. I loved how he made Rich laugh with his assessment of Aunt Carole – she has a beard and looks like a pirate. He’s also there for the worse times too, after Rich’s dad died he has enough sense to simply sit with him as the loss hits him, no platitudes or promises, just sitting with him in his grief. Alongside Rich’s 1980s narrative is the journal of another boy who went to the Dead Dad’s Club after the upheaval of WW2. This narrative is evocative of a totally different era as Reginald is evacuated to a small village near Sheffield that’s something of a culture shock after growing up in London. Evacuees didn’t always have the best time and Reginald is coping with the boredom of the village – his observations on what passes as news worthy are so funny. He’s also navigating that rite of passage from primary to secondary school and the author really does conjure up those fears about the bigger school, getting lost and being without your usual friends. I wasn’t sure where his story fit with our four main characters and this is kept under wraps until exactly the right moment. This book has been a wonderful mood lifter just when I needed one, like a warm hug in book form. One line made me think about the friends who knew me in my small village at a similar age, one of whom I’ve tried to see regularly more recently. We try to get together at least once a month for cake and a catch up and I remember being taken aback at first by exactly how well she knew me. But of course she does. As Matt Coyne writes ‘real friendships are cast in the everyday’ and even though my friend and I often just walked her dog, cleaned out the rabbits and watched telly we grew up together and that counts for a lot. I heartily recommend this hilarious but heartfelt story that’s a ray of sunshine in book form.
This book has to be my book of the year so far. I’ve been going on about it since May because it really is something special. I was quite simply blown away by this complex and beautiful story of science, loss and second chances. 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 she thinks about its significance. When she becomes aware there is a matching basin underneath the water, her imagination is fired. Could this possibly be a portal? A gateway to a different world? She knows Eli won’t be far behind 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. 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 when 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.
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 loss 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…”
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.
Hannah is miserable. Her love life is in ruins, her contract demands a sequel to her bestselling crime debut – and she’s out of ideas. After a mortifying TV interview, her agent ships her off to a sun-drenched Sicilian villa with a simple order: finish the book. No distractions. No excuses.
But inspiration doesn’t strike – murder does. When a night out ends in murder, Hannah finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation … again. The police want her out of the way, and the only person who seems to believe her is a young but charming Italian police officer. That is, until she doesn’t.
Soon Hannah is chasing suspects, fleeing crime scenes, and doing whatever it takes to avoid becoming the next victim. She came to write a crime novel. Now she’s trapped inside one. Dark, sly and deliciously atmospheric, Under the Blazing Sun is the second novel in the award-winning series featuring accidental sleuth and disgruntled literary author Hannah, whose pursuit of plot twists keeps turning dangerously real.
I loved the author’s first book in this series and I devoured this one in a day. Hannah is once again fretting over writing her latest book, disgusted that copies of the romance novel she poured her heart into is being ignored, while the crime novel she wrote in one month for a bet is a bestseller. Hannah is a brilliantly flawed character full of writer’s neurosis, hating that she is forced to write what will sell rather than the books she aspires to write. Again she’s on a deadline and as a last resort her editor Bastian finds her a quiet villa in Sicily with its own swimming pool. No distractions and plenty of time to unwind and write the novel she’s had an advance to produce. I love this character because she says and does the things I want to, but my inhibitions keep it inside. She has no such restrictions, happily saying what she thinks when she thinks it. Her disgust with the crime genre and Jorn Jensen in particular is so funny. I wonder if she has ever had a thought or need she didn’t express? She’s also totally unregulated and this is what lands her in trouble every time. She decides to walk to the village without thought about the heat, how far it is and which direction she takes. So when it comes to going back to the villa she has no idea which hill to take and ends up exhausted and on the verge of sunstroke on her way back. This is where she is found by Hans and Greta who take her to their incredible house to clean up and drink something. This turns into dinner, wine and a night spent in their house. It’s when she wakes up in a strange place that she and the housekeeper Lucette find a dead body. Greta has been murdered and Hans is nowhere to be found. Has he been kidnapped or could he be the murderer? Hannah seems to have an inability to weigh up a decision before taking action. There’s so much going on in her head that it’s very hard for her to remain in the present. I’m always wishing she’d slow down a minute and breathe, but the only times she seems to do this are in the water.
This hot Italian island couldn’t be further from Hannah’s Scandinavian home and is a great backdrop for a murder. Hannah is a fish out of water here and she notes the contrast between the cold and snow of her last case and the relentless heat and dryness of Sicily. The area throws up different obstacles too. There’s the rather sexist and misogynistic Sicilian police, aside from their one female recruit Carlotta. Hannah has to consider the local community and possible objections to people like Greta who are making money by bringing even more tourists into the area. There’s the possibility of corruption too with links between the Mafia, business and local government. We see the contrast of what the area is like for holiday makers and wealthy incomers, as opposed to the young people in the area who are struggling to find work and homes without moving away. The young police detective Carlotta wants to be the difference in the police force, banding together with Hannah on a couple of occasions and proving to be quite the distraction. Hannah is still in love with Margret and is dangling on an open ended waiting game. They’re not in a relationship until Margret can extricate herself from her marriage and make the best decisions for her children. Hannah isn’t always patient with this and doesn’t seem to realise that if Margret was in her life permanently so are her children. When she imagines them together I’m not sure the children feature in that picture. It was interesting to see her getting more than she bargained for and having the cheek to ask Margret’s police officer husband for help! He voices what many readers might be thinking when he tells her she’s the most annoying person he’s ever met.
The case is an absolute maze of connections and suspects and despite her aversion to crime as a genre, she’s just as caught up in the mystery of this murder as any reader would be. She’s utterly reckless, in a comical way and there’s a chase on a moped during the final chapters that is clumsy and hilarious to imagine. Sparks fly when Jorn Jensen appears, but she can’t deny he helps make things happen. His arrogance is brilliant and when he suggests they write a crime novel together I thought Hannah might hit him with something heavy. The creepy moment in the basement, including Jensen’s cardboard cut out made me laugh and worry about her safety at the same time. This is a dark humour that I love. Jorn’s statement that he has ‘enormous sex appeal’ and it’s that and not his wealth that attracts women shows what sort of brash and conceited character he is, but there’s no denying his bravery and quick thinking. They are quite the investigative team, despite her reticence about working with him. Hannah’s instincts are good. She won’t accept the police’s conclusion that Hans killed his wife, reasoning that he adored her and couldn’t have done it. Instead she follows the money, often blundering into compromising situations and dangerous people. If the conclusion teaches her anything it’s that people will murder for very unexpected reasons. This is a brilliant second instalment of Hannah’s adventures and I’m going to resolve to be a little more Hannah and say what I think here and there.
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.
