Book Synopsis:
From top-ten bestseller Ella Carey comes a gripping, haunting and utterly captivating novel about love, secrets and betrayal in a story that spans the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century.
What happens when the truths you have built your life on start to crumble?
Emma Temple sits looking out of the window in her beautiful apartment in the heart of London, surrounded by memories of her younger years as one of England’s most influential artists. Nearly ninety, it would be easy to overlook her as a forgetful older lady. But Emma’s past, including her great love affair which survived two world wars, is about to come crashing into the present.
When her granddaughter Laura arrives asking questions about the portrait that hangs above her bed, Emma is transported back over sixty years. The picture was painted by the only man she ever truly loved, the one soul on earth who knew her deepest secret. But when a newspaper claims that the portrait is a fake, everything Emma believed to be true starts to collapse. Suddenly she is transported back to a sunny house in the south of France in 1923 and the moment when her life changed forever…
An incredibly emotional and totally compelling historical novel about the relationships that shape us and the secrets we never forget. Fans of My Name is Eva, Fiona Valpy and Rhys Bowen will be completely transported from the very first page.
Things We Don’t Say is available in ebook and paperback now. You can purchase your copy using the link below or through your local indie bookstore.
My Review:
I thought this was an intriguing and emotional read which was hard to put down. It was a great book to distract me from the stresses of homeschooling as I could get lost in another world for a little bit.
As with all of her books the author has created some brilliant characters who I enjoyed following throughout the book The author has clearly done a lot of research and the characters all seemed very realistic. My understanding is that they were based on real people, perhaps the Bloomsbury group, which i found very interesting.
The settings in the book were vividly described so that I could really picture them in my mind’s eye. I liked that the author made them all feel different to each other so I knew when I was in a different location.
Overall I really enjoyed this intriguing read that kept me guessing until the end. I liked that the story moved easily between the two story lines and found I like both parts of the story equally which is unusual for me. The end was brilliant, not at a what I expected. I’ll definitely be reading more from this author in the future.
Huge thanks to Sarah Hardy from Bookouture for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book via Netgalley.
About The Author:
Ella Carey is the international bestselling author of The House by the Lake, From a Paris Balcony, and Paris Time Capsule. A Francophile who has long been fascinated by secret histories set in Europe’s entrancing past, Ella has degrees in music, nineteenth-century women’s fiction, and modern European history. She lives in Australia with her two children and two Italian greyhounds.
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