Mabel, a lady in her late nineties, residing in a retirement home that she is the owner of, and Belinda, a newly appointed carer in said home, strike up an unusual friendship. Both women have their secrets and mysterious past, but bit by bit they unfold their stories to each other, with the promises that neither will tell the other’s history.

Told over three timelines, during WW2, fifteen years before present day, and present day, the plot revels how both women came to be as they are now.

I have read this author previously and found her books to be somewhat of a mixed bag. However, the premise of this storyline was interesting and well worth a shot, or so I thought. Too many inconsistencies (e.g. is Mabel 15 years old or not? Being told to go and play and treated like a 10 year old seems an unlikely comment even in the 1940’s), and there are some unfortunate history errors when all information is well documented.

Choppy, rough chapters, with one dimensional characters and poor execution of plot left me cold.

With apologies to the author, but not one of her best.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin General UK.

I enjoyed this interesting historical drama as it's full of surprises. I found the author's note at the end particularly poignant and added to my enjoyment of the story.

Belinda has been married to boring Gerald for twenty-five years and has two grown daughters, but is still languishing after her university sweetheart, Imran. An anonymous phone call precipitates a turn of events which results in Belinda being charged with a serious crime. I found all of this a bit unlikely and not particularly engaging, but things picked up for me when we started following another plot strand about Mabel's story during the war, which was much more interesting.

It was pretty obvious early on what mean Aunt Clarissa and the Colonel were up to, but interesting to read about.

In a further, present-day thread, we see now-elderly Mabel living in a care home with the ridiculous name of Sunnyside Home for the Young at Heart. (It's desperate for staff, which is realistic, though I'm not therefore sure how a certain carer has quite so much time to spend with one particular resident.) Something's clearly going on there, with Mabel as its target, but it takes time to find out what. (There's one of those "mysterious sections in italics from unknown POV" narrative devices.)

Some things don't ring true. Belinda is told by the police that she, or someone, will have to pay a six-figure sum for her to be allowed bail. While we're all familiar with this concept from US crime dramas, it doesn't generally happen in the UK - bail conditions aren't normally financial. Anyway, this does mean that we get to see Belinda experiencing prison life.

I enjoyed it, especially Mabel's story, but there's something rather prosaic about the writing style, with short, blunt sentences, which doesn't quite engage me. I'm not saying I want it to be overly flowery, but there must be a balance to be found somewhere.

Thanks for the opportunity to read and review!

I have read a couple of books by this author and I was looking forward to this novel. The story is told with alternating chapters. The protagonists, Mabel Marchmount in the 1940’s during the Blitz and Belinda, a carer, in the present at Sunnyside Home for the Young at Heart, where Mabel is a resident. Each has a story to tell and they both hide dark secrets. Belinda was sent to prison for the murder of her husband, Gerald. Mabel, aged 13, suffered loss of family members during the Blitz and was sent to Devon to live with her Aunt Clarissa who has her own deep secrets. The characters were a little bland. The writing and chapter style was not for me and the plot, at times, was jagged and did not flow. There are twists and turns in every chapter.

THANK YOU TO NETGALLEY FOR THE OPPORTUNITY OF READING AN ARC OF THIS BOOK IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW. ALL OPINIONS ARE MY OWN.