Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview She Came to Stay by Eleni Kyriacou @RandomTTours @HodderBooks

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for She Came to Stay by Eleni Kyriacou to celebrate its publication in paperback on 25th February.  If you can’t wait that long, it’s already available in ebook, audiobook and hardcover format. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Hodder & Stoughton for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do also check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Niamh at Mrs Book Burney.

She Came To Stay GraphicAbout the Book

In a city of strangers, who can you trust?

London, 1952. Dina Demetriou has travelled from Cyprus for a better life. She’s certain that excitement, adventure and opportunity are out there, waiting – if only she knew where to look. Her passion for clothes and flair for sewing land her a job repairing the glittering costumes at the notorious Pelican Revue. It’s here that she befriends the mysterious and beautiful Bebba.

With her bleached-blonde hair and an appetite for mischief, Bebba is like no Greek Dina has ever met before. She guides Dina around the fashionable shops, bars and clubs of Soho, and Dina finally feels life has begun. But Bebba has a secret. And as thick smog brings the city to a standstill, the truth emerges with devastating results. Dina’s new life now hangs by a thread.

What will be left when the fog finally clears? And will Dina be willing to risk everything to protect her future?

Format: Paperback (432 pages)           Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 25th February 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Switching between the first person point of view of Dina and the third person point of view of her friend, Bebba, She Came To Stay cleverly combines two elements. The first is a vivid picture of daily immigrant life in 1950s London: the poor housing, the unstable work, and the streets filled with smog that has the ability to seep through into buildings.  Added to that are the challenges of learning a new language and integrating into a culture very different from village life back in Cyprus. Indeed, Dina’s over-protective brother, Peter, clings to what he sees as his traditional role, arranging a suitable marriage for Dina whereas she views their move as an opportunity for independence.

It’s no wonder that Dina is attracted to the free-spirited and unpredictable Bebba. There’s a particularly amusing scene in which Bebba and Dina hoodwink the assistants in a famous department store. I also enjoyed seeing Dina’s growing delight at the buzz of Soho life – the coffee bars, the jazz clubs and the colourful characters who work, perform, or occupy the tables at the Pelican nightclub.  The author certainly creates a great sense of time and place throughout the book.

Things start to unravel when Dina, having introduced Bebba to Peter, begins to feel increasingly isolated.  “They were the two people I loved the most in the world, and yet when they were together something unnerved me. What was it? I couldn’t decide. And then…it struck me. They were behaving as if I didn’t exist.”  Eventually, what started as japes turns into something much darker and more dangerous.  It’s at this point the thriller element of the book comes to the fore as Bebba’s past threatens to catch up with her. The story is increasingly punctuated by moments of melodrama, certainly justifying the publisher’s description of She Came To Stay as “a page-turning novel of friendship, secrets and lies”.

In three words: Immersive, spirited, dramatic

Try something similar: A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson

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Eleni KyriacouAbout the Author

Eleni Kyriacou is an award-winning editor and journalist. She has worked in various roles across publishing and her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, Marie Claire and Grazia, among others. She’s edited national magazines and is now freelance. Eleni lives in London. She Came to Stay is her first novel.

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#BookReview Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson @MantleBooks

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Daughters of NightAbout the Book

Lucia’s fingers found her own. She gazed at Caro as if from a distance. Her lips parted, her words a whisper: ‘He knows.’

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline ‘Caro’ Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly-paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thief-taker, Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives.

But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro’s own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous than she can know . . .

Format: Hardcovere (592 pages)         Publisher: Mantle
Publication date: 18th February 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Mystery

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My Review

In my review of Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s first book, Blood & Sugar, I recall mentioning how good it would have been for Caroline, wife of the novel’s protagonist Harry Corsham, to have had a bigger role. And do you know what, in Daughters of Night I got my wish!

Teaming up with thief-taker, Peregrine Child, Caroline – known as ‘Caro’ – sets out to investigate the death of the woman she believed to be an Italian Countess but whose real identity was somewhat different.  They make a great partnership with Peregrine especially admiring of Caro’s questioning skills, likening it to ‘having Torquemada on your team’. What their enquiries reveal is that firstly, no-one in authority particularly cares about solving the murder and secondly, there are those who definitely do not want any light shone on their activities.  Despite the risks to their reputations (such as remain), to their lives and those of their loved ones, Peregrine and Caro press on with their investigation, uncovering some very sordid secrets in the process. Despite pressure from her family, Caro remains defiant to the end, managing to bring about her revenge on the culprits in her own way.

Daughters of Night positively oozes period atmosphere, transporting the reader from the bowers and pathways of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to the taverns, coffee-houses and “fleshpots” of Covent Garden.  It was fascinating to discover the existence of things such as ‘Puss and Mew’ shops (illegal gin shops) and mixed doubles boxing matches.  Equally fascinating, but rather more distasteful, was learning about the varieties of brothels that existed in Georgian London including ‘posture houses’ where girls posed naked and ‘tableaux houses’ where young girls acted out classical scenes before audiences of men, often in order to solicit bids for their virginity.   The book reveals there existed a hierarchy of prostitutes with those at the top of their ‘profession’ becoming celebrities of their day.

Daughters of Night is another hugely impressive historical crime novel from the pen of Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Its intricate plot, with its twists and turns, kept me glued to the book until the final page. And was it my imagination or were Caro’s closing thoughts a nod to those of another famous literary heroine, Scarlett O’Hara? “There will be a plan, she told herself. I just haven’t thought of it yet. Let tomorrow bring what it will bring.” I’m sure I’m not the only reader keen to find out what tomorrow does bring for Caro.  Although Laura has revealed her next novel will be a standalone historical mystery, she also hasn’t ruled out a return for Harry and Caro at some point.  Fingers crossed from this reader.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Mantle Books via NetGalley, although having seen the gorgeous hardcover with its fabulous endpapers, I may have to treat myself when my first post-lockdown trip to a bookshop finally comes about.

In three words: Gripping, atmospheric, immersive

Try something similar: To The Dark (Simon Westow #3) by Chris Nickson

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Laura Shepherd-RobinsonAbout the Author

Laura Shepherd-Robinson was born in Bristol in 1976. She has a BSc in Politics from the University of Bristol and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics. Laura worked in politics for nearly twenty years before re-entering normal life to complete an MA in Creative Writing at City University. She lives in London with her husband, Adrian.

Blood & Sugar, her first novel, won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, and a Guardian and Telegraph novel of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and the Sapere Historical Dagger; and the Amazon Publishing/Capital Crime Best Debut Novel. (Photo/bio credit: Author website)

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