The Fossil Hunter splits its point of view between two different timelines and characters connected by a fossil. Cooper manages to keep this deft balancing act going, creating three very interesting and worthwhile heroines.  Dark and engrossing and with dual timelines that are expertly captured in both time and place, it’s phantasmagorical and beautifully grounded at the same time. 

1847- New South Wales, Australia. Dirt-poor twelve-year-old Mellie Vale has a habit of sleepwalking to the edge of the millpond.  She has recently lost her home to a fire; her father is nowhere to be found and she is staying with Dr. and Mrs. Edith Pearson as she recovers from the chicken pox, which made her seriously ill. She doesn’t know that her father was a bushranger who fell in with a bad gang in the wake of the death of Mellie’s mother and brother, and that he was been captured and hanged.  Mrs. Pearson decides that Mellie might best recover by taking a holiday in Bow Wow Gorge with her friend, Anthea Winstanley, an amateur paleontologist.  Mellie believes the bunyip, a mythical creature, has been chasing her and causing her nightly wanderings, and Mrs. Pearson wants to break her of this notion.  Mellie is packed off with Lydia, Bea, Grace and Ella, the Pearson’s daughters and girls who are also in the Pearson’s care as “charity cases,” (only Lydia is kind to Mellie), to Anthea’s home.  

Mellie comes to learn that Anthea believes that a large, sea-dwelling prehistoric creatures once lived in the area around her property, the ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur.  Keeping an eye on Mellie and a group of other girls who have been sent to her for the summer, Anthea senses a special kinship with Mellie, and shares with her this belief she holds.  Soon, the girls are hunting fossils beside Anthea, but it’s Mellie who emerges as the woman’s mentee. Mellie decides that she’ll be the one to discover if the    ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur really floated under the ocean… if only she can conquer her memories of the bunyip and the violence it did to her. 

In 1919, Australian Penelope Jane (PJ) Martindale is trying to collect herself in the wake of World War I.  She and her twin brothers, Dan and Riley, all served, but only Penelope made it back alive.  She worked with Sam Groves, an American, on the front lines, as an ambulance driver, ferrying the wounded from the battlefield, and the memories and mental scars are still with her – as is her attraction to Sam.  She’s gone to the London’s Natural History Museum to reconnect with her brothers’ spirits through their love of fossils.  When she learns that the boys have fossils in their collection from Bow Wow Gorge, where Anthea Winstanley, a colleague of Mary Anning, lived, she becomes determined to prove that her brothers’ collection is an important and worthwhile connection to Winstanley’s discoveries, and that they might even be part of a complete skeleton of some kind.  When Sam proposes marriage and declares that he wants to obtain her father’s permission to marry her, they travel to Bow Wow Gorge.  Grappling with her father’s disapproval, PJ soon learns that seventy years earlier, several girls staying with Winstanley mysteriously disappeared. When PJ stumbles over a skeleton down in the gorge, it seems as if the ugly secrets of the past might be intruding on the present. 

Mellie and PJ’s stories threaten to collide under the hot Australian sun.  What happened, and who is the owner of the remains that PJ found? 

The mysteries and tension inherent in the Fossil Hunter are double-layered, and there are many twisted and tangled threads that tie Mellie to PJ and vice-versa. It’s impossible to avoid loving Cooper’s main heroines here; they’re distinct and strong in their own ways, their dilemmas and relationships real and engrossing.  The book balances mystery, thriller and historical novel elements in its enchanting prose, and Cooper keeps the audience on their toes. 

The conflict between Mellie – whose imagination has given credence to a host of monsters because of some very real violence that has been done to her – and science-minded Anthea is fascinating.  There are villains for them to fight – Victor Baldwin, who wants Anthea’s land, the bratty and disobedient girls – together with the demons of the mind.  But this is about the mother/daughter relationship Mellie and Anthea forge together through healing. 

PJ has to heal from the rash actions of her brothers (they ran away to the front and enlisted), and her own sense of self-recrimination, and she manages to do that through self-examination and talking to her father.  Her romance with Sam sometimes seems superfluous to that point, but Cooper works to convince the audience of Sam’s worth. 

Which brings me to the only real problem I had with the book - Sam.  Obnoxious in his belief that America is the best country in the world, disappearing erratically, providing some emotional support for PJ’s journey but not enough, it feels as though the romance between him and PJ is unnecessary to a degree. Don’t take a drink every time he brags about how great Philadelphia is, you’ll get alcohol poisoning. 

But overall The Fossil Hunter is a really great novel about a very unusual topic.  With notes of Picnic at Hanging Rock perfuming its heady bouquet, it’s a great little book.

Note: This book contains on-page recollections of childhood sexual assault and rape. 

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I loved the dual timelines set in 1847 and 1919. The timelines being linked by fossil hunting was very interesting and unique. The author's writing brought the setting to vivid, full color life. The story definitely had me hooked from beginning to end. My only complaint is that I would have liked a bit more explanation at the end, but I really enjoyed the book regardless.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Muse for access to this arc.

The Fossil Hunter is a dual timeline novel that focuses on the devastating results of child abuse, the role of women in scientific discovery, the role of women in society, and how the truth is related and preserved. Tea Cooper's novel focuses on Australia's mid 19th century and early 20th century life.

This historical novel includes details taken from the historical paleontological digs undertaken in the Bow Wow Gorge. However the characters who populate the novel are fictional. In 1847, Anthea invites 4 teenage girls to visit, as they have been doing for several years. They bring along Mellie, a traumatized young girl, who has been the victim of assault and who, although "rescued" by a family, has been the object of hazing and abuse. The ten days described in this novel include suggestions of a mystery that will need to be solved.

In 1919, Penelope brings her fiancé to Australia to meet her father, who holds her responsible for the deaths of her two younger brothers, who died at age 16 after lying about their ages to join the far in Europe. Cooper does a nice job linking these two stories and setting up a mystery that happened in 1847 and will be solved in 1919. The Epilogue further ties many more of the two timelines together. The mystery was good, although I had solved it quite quickly. Cooper, though, does unfold the details slowly--in some case too slowly.

I did enjoy this novel, though, and so want to thank the author and Harper Muse for providing this ARC for me to read and review. The comments including in this review are my honest thoughts about this book. This was my first Tea Cooper novel, and so I also owe NetGalley my gratitude for providing this novel.

This book was so different from anything I have read before! It is a split-time story that takes place in Australia in the mid-1800s and in 1919 and centers around women and girls who looked for fossils. That alone made me interested, but there are also multiple mysteries to unravel that will keep you reading as well!

I loved this book. I loved the genre-defying story: a little science; lots of history, and a significant mystery. Tea Cooper weaves a seamless story consisting of two timelines that coalesce into a great ending. Character development is excellent as is the pacing. The writing is crisp and there is never a point where the story gets bogged down. Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Muse for the advance reader copy.

3.5⭐️‘S

PJ Martindale left her home in Australia to drive ambulances in Europe during WWI. She is mourning the loss of her brothers who were lost in the trenches fighting. She has fallen in love with an American ambulance driver and as she prepares to head home to Australia when the war is over, she decides to make a stop in a museum. She is instantly drawn to the fossils on display because fossil hunting is something her brothers loved to do. When she stumbles across some fossils that are dated 1847 and were found right in her own backyard in Australia…she becomes obsessed with their origin, their story and the person who found the remains.

Set in a dual timeline, this story is a historical mystery with lots of twists and turns, rain and mud what is left behind when the water washes the mud away.

I enjoyed this story but was hoping for a bit more suspense. It is definitely an interesting read and I learned a lot about paleontology in Australia and it’s folklore.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harper Muse and Tea Cooper for early access to this story. I loved getting a chance to go down under and learn about Australia in the 1800’s

The Fossil HUnter
TEa Cooper
Pub Date: August 9, 2022
Harper Collins Publishers Austrailia
Thanks to the author, publishers and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.
I loved the cover! I think it will draw readers into this book. MS Cooper has dug deep into research and given her readers a fabulous story set in duel timelines around The Hunter Valley, this time we discover fossils and the wonderful people who spend their lives searching for the past in some very interesting places and make such wonderful discoveries do come along and meet the fabulous characters and enjoy their stories as much as I did.
4 stars

Another great read from this author, set in Australia with a mystery to be solved. The story alternates between the 1847 and 1919 with a mystery that begins intriguing PJ after a visit to the Natural History museum in London and continues to intrigue her once she is back in her home in Australia. The end isn't quite what you'd expect and all the more enjoyable because of that.

Highly enjoyable and would recommend.

A fascinating and enthralling read about fossil hunting in Australia, with the woman in question having a connection with the famous Mary Anning in England. It jumps between the 1840s and 1919, when a young woman returns to Australia after her wartime service in Europe, and begins to question the links between the mysterious Bow Wow Gorge and the long-dead fossil hunter Anthea Winstanley. Informative, well written, and a little spooky in places, this was a marvellous story.
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

*4 Stars*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley for an honest review.

This was an interesting read with interesting characters.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harper Muse, I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This is a hard to put down read, it beautifully encapsulates the mystery of the people involved connecting the two time zones of 1847 and 1919 that come together by a young lady walking into the Natural History Museum in London at the end of WW1 and discovering a connection to her home town in Australia. After Penelope "PJ", so named by her American boyfriend Sam, discovered the connection of paleontologist Anthea Winstanley who died in England but had lived in Australia and her two brothers' interest in collecting fossils from the same spot she had to find out more about this woman. There is a strong emotional attachment to this quest in relation to her brothers who died in the war with her thoughts that any discovery may play a part in healing the wounds that her father's passive objection attitude to war and to his abhorrence that they went against his wishes and enlisted, along with the belief that PJ had encouraged them may bring some peace to him.

1847, a young traumatised girl has been rescued again from her nightly wanderings, sleepwalking to the millpond. Her nightly terrors have made her the target of abuse and ridicule from the Pearson girls and their friends where Mellie has been placed, her father encaserated having been accused of murdering a man. The ridicule from the cook and others of a monster bunyip adds to her fear and confusion. As the read progresses the author leaves no doubt of what transpired to this young girl but tastefully leaves the events to the reader's imagination.

PJ becomes obsessed with the need to discover the connection between Anthea's work and her brothers' own obsessions and fossil collections. She rakes through the collection and paraphernalia stored in a leftover trunk that had belonged to the Pearson's, known as the Doctor's house, her father like Pearson also a doctor. Startling discoveries are made which pushes PJ further, the need to know the truth of Anthea's abrupt departure from Australia. Ultimately after heading down to the cave sites a tragic discovery is made. However this just adds to the puzzle and it's not until later when PJ and Sam having acquired the keys to Anthea's abandoned house discover recent human disturbances and the sounds of a typewriter in use in the garden shed that all the pieces will start to fit together.

This story is based on the lives of two women born many years apart. It is a great read, and provides fascinating detail into the victorian period of fossil collecting. I liked both the main characters but also the peripheral people who are well drawn and mostly likeable. A great adventure story also, the mystery of the missing archaeologist gives it a frisson of curiosity. Highly recommended. My thanks to Netgalley, the publishers and the author for an ARC of this absorbing book

Tea Cooper’s latest mystery delves once more into the history of her homeland by following two storylines. The first introduces Anthea Winstanley, a paleontologist who discovers a fossil in Bow Wow gorge, in 1847, and sends it to the British Natural History Museum for identification. Bow Wow is a prehistoric ocean bed, potentially concealing a wealth of fossilised sea creatures, and her greatest wish is to find something to rival the finds of Mary Anning.
In 1919, Penelope Jane (PJ) Martindale happens across the fossil and is fascinated by its origins because her familial home, at Wollombi, is close to Bow Wow. The Great War being finally over, her American fiancé takes her home to Australia, to seek her father’s permission for her hand in marriage. Once there they become embroiled in their own private investigation at the gorge, where they come across long-held secrets and a lot more than just fossils.
Once it reaches its momentum, this becomes a fast-paced mystery with some unusual twists and turns. It’s atmospheric and eerie and leads the reader in some intriguing directions, not always what one might expect. The Australian settings are well-realised and felt very real, no doubt because the author is familiar with the locales she evokes. The story benefits from the use of timelines only 70 years apart, posing Victorian sensibilities against the changes wrought by WWI. Recommended to all readers of historical mysteries.

Overall this was a good book. I really like the premise of a female paleontologist, but I did feel a little cheated in calling this a historical fiction. As per the definition, a historical fiction usually centers around a real historical event and is then fictionalized from there. One could argue that the historical event was WWI, but I was disappointed to find that Anthea and her entire storyline was fictional. Looking at the book as a work of fiction, rather than a historical fiction, it was a good storyline. It was a little longer than I felt it needed to be, but when I started to lose interest, Miss Baldwin popped up and provided the encouragement to keep going. To found out who the body in the gorge was and how it had gotten there. My biggest takeaway was Anthea explaining to Mellie how fossils were formed. I'm 30 and took a geology class in college, but it took Ms Cooper for me to truly understand the process. I definitely would be willing to try another of Ms Cooper's books.

this book has a duel time line, it was not what I was expecting, very good read, there is a mystery that has to be solved.

The Fossil Hunter tells the stories of two very different women, separated by some 70-odd years, both transfixed by the possibility of fossils found in the wilds of Australia.

PJ, a young Australian nurse returning to her homeland after serving for the Red Cross in WWI, gets caught up in the paleontological history — and mystery — of Bow Wow Gorge, a remote area near her hometown. Back home after the war and bringing an American sweetheart with her, PJ tries to come to terms with the loss of her twin soldier brothers while hoping to unravel the secrets the gorge contains. Unexpectedly, she finds herself caught up in the intrigue of what happened to the mysterious ‘fossil hunter,’ Anthea Winstanley, and the young girls she was rumored to bring on her digs with her, now the subjects of local gossip and lore.

This dual timeline switches between 1919 and 1847, when Mellie Vale, a young girl shattered by life experiences, becomes caught up with the Pearson and Ketteringham girls and their annual trip to visit ‘Aunt Anthea.’ Orphaned and taken in by the Pearson family, yet bullied mercilessly by the younger two of the other four girls, Mellie comes into her own as she falls in love with the daily routine of fossil hunting and is taken under Anthea’s wing as her protege.

What happened at Bow Wow Gorge? Did Anthea and one of the girls mysteriously disappear as the locals believe, or did she in fact emigrate to England for the rest of her life, according to the grave PJ saw in Lyme Regis? The reveal at the end of the book was not wholly unexpected to me, but there were a few pieces I did not connect.

This was a strange read for me. I’m not sure if I didn’t click with her writing style, or if none of the characters really appealed overall, but it was a miss for me. I never felt eager to read it, except for the last bit to confirm the conclusion to the mystery.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

In two timelines two different women fall under the spell of a time when dinosaurs roamed the land and sea. Shortly after World War I, Penelope Jane Martindale returns home from the trenches, hoping to make peace with her father and honor the memories of her two brothers, killed in the war. Roaming the London Natural History Museum, PJ notices a fossil recovered from her brother’s favorite camping spot. She is drawn to the area where her brothers were last seen before enlisting, but Bow Wow Gorge is inhospitable, haunting even. Perhaps it has something to do with the six women who disappeared there in 1847. One of those women was Mellie Vale and she and her friends were determined to find evidence of the “dragons” they believed once lived there. Cooper has obviously meticulously researched the background for this fascinating story about two women with an unquenchable desire for knowledge

4.5★s
The Fossil Hunter is a historical novel by Australian author, Teà Cooper. In early 1847, twelve-year-old Mellie Vale is sure her short life is at its lowest point: her mother and baby brother have drowned; her father has left and not returned; and her home and her meagre possessions have been destroyed in a fire to contain the chicken pox she had contracted.

Dr Pearson’s family took her in, but she is mercilessly bullied by his staff, one of his daughters, and their friends. When the girls travel to Bow Wow Gorge to stay with Edna Pearson’s good friend and renowned palaeontologist, Anthea Winstanley, Mellie is wary. But she is soon won over by this rather strange woman’s excitement about the possible discovery of the skeleton of an ichthyosaur: the picture she shows them is clearly of a dragon, and Mellie would love to be a dragon hunter.

In 1919, as Penelope Jane Martindale waits for Captain Samuel Groves to arrive in London, she heads into the Natural History Museum, the very last place she saw her twin brothers, Dan and Riley, before they were killed in the war. Recalling their enthusiasm for fossils, she wanders into that section only to happen upon fossils from right near her home in Wollombi, NSW, which were found by a woman! Immediately fascinated, she decides to investigate further, as a sort of tribute to her brothers.

When PJ and Sam arrive in Wollombi with their war ambulance, locals are very closed-mouthed about Bow Wow Gorge, the actual location that her brothers went looking. When they eventually get to Bow Wow, they find a boarded-up house and some outbuildings. The Gorge has, PJ tells Sam, a haunted feel. Their search for fossils is almost fruitless; the piece they bring home is not at all what they first believe, and exposes what could well be a murder mystery.

This dual timeline story is told by Mellie and Anthea in the mid-nineteenth Century, and by PJ in the early twentieth Century. The depth of Cooper’s research is apparent on every page and her descriptive prose is very evocative: the sights, sounds and smells of the Australian bush are particularly well-rendered. The element of mystery will keep the reader enthralled through to the final pages of this superb Australian historical fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Har