Tag: dual time

Book Review – The Belladonna Maze by Sinéad Crowley

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About the Book

An old house can hold many secrets. Hollowpark in the west of Ireland certainly does. At the heart of the gardens is an intricate maze, named after a deadly poison, belladonna. If you know the way through, it’s magical, a hiding place and playground like no other. If you don’t, it’s a place of fear and sinister riddles, where a young girl once went missing and was never seen again.

Grace comes to Hollowpark as a nanny for young Skye FitzMahon. Soon the mysterious past of Hollowpark has seduced her. Who is the woman she sometimes glimpses in an upstairs window? Or the apparition who keeps showing up unexpectedly, pleading, ‘Find me’. And how can she fight her growing attraction to Skye’s father?

Format: ebook (361 pages) Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 5th May 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time

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My Review

I always feel dual timeline stories are a challenge to pull off successfully. Often they really don’t work for me, usually because I find one of the storylines more engaging than the other. Unsurprisingly, as a lover of historical fiction, it’s usually the one set in the past. I think the author managed it here though because the two storylines – one set in the mid-19th century and the other in 2007 – are woven together using a touch of the supernatural so it always feels there’s an underlying resonance between the two. A third storyline set in the mid-1970s involving the unsolved disappearance of a local girl helps tie them together as well. Despite being a supernatural sceptic, I was able to accept that Hollowpark, given its age and location, might hold many secrets. And if you’re going to suspend disbelief anywhere about ghostly apparations and ancient curses then surely Ireland is the place.

I liked the way the author introduced a character to enable her to weave into the story some of Ireland’s troubled history. In particular, the so-called ‘Great Hunger’ whose main cause was the infection of potato crops by blight. It reached its peak in 1847 and because so many people were dependent on potatoes for food and income, it resulted in a death toll of around 1 million. It also sparked a mass exodus with many people leaving Ireland for America among other places. This is also neatly reflected in the book later on.

The combination of history and mystery kept me absorbed in the story and there were a few good reveals which you’d expect from an author who also writes crime novels, although I did have my suspicions about the perpertrator fairly early on. There were a few creepy moments when Grace finds herself alone in the largely uninhabited house and the maze of the book’s title takes on a distinctly sinister aspect at times. Personally I found the relationship that develops between Grace and Patrick, her employer, unconvincing. Having only Grace’s point of view meant the attraction felt one-sided. I also thought it was rather too quickly and conveniently wrapped up.

The Belladonna Maze is a well-crafted story that will appeal to fans of dual timeline stories with a touch of the supernatural. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by the author. She did an excellent job, her Irish accent giving a real feeling of authenticity to the characters and dialogue.

I received a review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Engaging, suspenseful, atmospheric
Try something similar: The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne

About the Author

Author Sinéad Crowley

Sinéad Crowley is a writer and broadcaster, whose three DS Claire Boyle crime novels were all nominated for the ‘Best Crime’ category at the Irish Book Awards, with the first two becoming Irish Times bestsellers. She is currently Arts and Media Correspondent with RTE News, the Irish national broadcaster. (Photo: Goodreads)

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Book Review – The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner

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About the Book

Paris, 1938. Annie Mayer arrives in France with dreams of becoming a ballerina. But when the war reaches Paris, she’s forced to keep her Jewish heritage a secret. Then a fellow dancer offers her a lifeline: a ballroom partnership that gives her a new identity. Together, Annie and her partner captivate audiences across occupied Europe, using her newfound fame and alias to aid the Resistance.

New York, 2012. Miriam, haunted by her past, travels from London to New York to settle her great-aunt Esther’s estate. Among Esther’s belongings, she discovers notebooks detailing a secret family history and the story of a brave dancer who risked everything to help Jewish families during the war.

Format: Paperback (368 pages) Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 13th February 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

This dual timeline story moves back and forth between Miriam’s journey of discovery into the past of her recently deceased great-aunt Esther and Esther’s experiences growing up in Paris, including during the German occupation of that city. I thought both storylines were strong and, in fact, could have been novels in their own right. However, the frequent connections and parallels between the two women’s experiences binds them together in a satisfying way.

The book description is a little misleading in that the sections set in wartime Paris are told by means of a memoir written by Esther. We never hear Annie’s story first-hand which means that some of her experiences, even quite significant and traumatic ones, we only learn about by means of letters or conversations recalled by Esther. For me, Annie was the most interesting character so I regretted she wasn’t given a narrative of her own.

Both Esther and Miriam harbour guilt about the part they played in past tragedies, the nature of which are only gradually revealed. And they have both experienced fractured family relationships. Miriam’s experiences have resulted in a tendency to self-sabotage (although she prefers to think of it as self-protection), believing that any relationship she forms is destined to end in disaster. Luckily (no pun intended) she has a encounter of the ‘meet cute’ variety with a man who resists all her attempts to push him away. (I did think his character could have been more developed.)

As we learn, for much of Esther’s life, she was prevented from forming the relationship she really craved. Her memoir, written specifically for Miriam, whilst describing the horrors that Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, is also her way of demonstrating that it is possible to move on from terrible experiences and find fulfilment, if only you have the courage to take a chance.

The author’s professional and personal interest in dance is evident in the novel, especially in the scenes set in the Bal Tabarin theatre in Paris, renowned for its spectacular floor shows, daring tableaux and gorgeous costumes. In Miriam’s story, learning to dance is shown to be both an act of self-expression and intimacy. And how, especially in the case of the tango, the concentration required to master the intricate steps can provide a temporary distraction from external worries.

Despite some reservations about the narrative structure, I found The Paris Dancer an absorbing story with moments of real tension and emotion.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Aria via NetGalley.

In three words: Dramatic, emotional, insightful
Try something similar: The Paris Network by Siobhan Curham

About the Author

Author Nicola Rayner

Nicola Rayner, born in South Wales, is a novelist and dancer writer based in London. journalist. She is the author of The Girl Before You, which was picked by the Observer, picked by the same newspaper as a debut to look out for in 2019, optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. Her second novel, You and Me, was published by Avon, HarperCollins in October 2020.

In her day job as a journalist, Nicola has written about dance for almost two decades, cutting her teeth on the tango section of Time Out Buenos Aires. She edited the magazine Dance Today from 2010 to 2015 and worked as assistant editor of Dancing Times, the UK’s leading dance publication, from 2019 to 2022. She continues to dance everything from ballroom to breakdance, with varying degrees of finesses.

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