Tag: thriller

#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 The Diplomat’s Wife by Michael Ridpath @CorvusBooks @ReadersFirst1

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The Diplomat's WifeAbout the Book

To love, honour, and betray…

1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh’s old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn.

1979: Emma’s grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her.

But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined…

Format: Paperback (368 pages)           Publisher: Corvus
Publication date: 4th February 2021 Genre: Mystery

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My Review

Phil’s plan to spend the summer of 1979 hitchhiking across Europe with a pal, chatting up girls turns into an incident-filled adventure with his grandmother, Emma. It’s certainly a little more eventful than her description of it as ‘a little trip around Europe to revisit old times’ would suggest. But then Emma is not your conventional grandmother. For the wife of a former diplomat, she’s delightfully un-diplomatic when it comes to expressing her opinions and speaking her mind. As Phil reflects later, “He imagined her as a young diplomat’s wife confounding all who met her, diplomats and spymasters, throughout Europe”.

I enjoyed the dual time structure, switching between 1979 and the 1930s, with Emma gradually revealing to Phil her experiences in Paris and Berlin. I particularly liked the sections in which the reader experiences through Emma’s eye the atmosphere of pre-war Paris – the diplomatic parties, the Embassy politics, rubbing shoulders with artistic and literary luminaries such as Marc Chagall, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. I also found it fascinating to see the contrast Emma observes between pre-war and post-war Germany, now separated by the Berlin Wall.

For someone supposedly familiar with the novels of John le Carré some of Phil’s actions seemed a little naive, allowing himself to fall into traps that seemed fairly obvious to me. However, at other times, he proved himself quick-witted and resourceful. His steadfast devotion to his grandmother made theirs a touching partnership, even if it emerges she’s not been entirely truthful about her past – or her present, come to that.

For fans of spy thrillers, there are all the features you would expect: coded messages, emergency contact procedures and counter-surveillance measures. And for readers who like a bit of action, there are also some moments of melodrama. The currency of espionage is betrayal, lies, and more lies and there’s plenty of that here. I certainly felt some sympathy for Phil as he wonders just what to believe and who to trust. I confess I was rather more interested in Phil’s and Emma’s journey into her past than I was with the covert mission Phil finds himself entrusted with which definitely ventures into John le Carré territory, recalling the reveal at the end of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

A search for answers, a quest for justice and a story of love, loss and betrayal, The Diplomat’s Wife combines an eventful road trip across Cold War era Europe with all the ingredients of a wartime espionage thriller.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Corvus and Readers First.

In three words: Intriguing, dramatic, suspenseful

Try something similar: City of Spies by Mara Timon

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Michael RidpathAbout the Author

Before becoming a writer, Michael Ridpath used to work as a bond trader in the City of London. After writing several financial thrillers, which were published in over 30 languages, he began a crime series featuring the Icelandic detective Magnus Jonson. He has also written five stand-alone thrillers, the latest of which is The Diplomat’s Wife. He lives in London. (Photo credit: Twitter profile)

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