Eek I’m so thrilled to receive a copy of The Secrets Of Dragonfly Lodge by the lovely @rachel.hore.
I’m a huge fan of her books and have been so excited to read more from her. This book sounds fantastic and I’m really looking forward to reading it soon. I’m also on the blog tour in July so watch out for my review!
Huge thanks to @bookminxsjv and @simonschusteruk for my copy as well as the sweets! They do taste like Eton Mess which is amazing 😍
Out 31st July 2025. Swipe to see the synopsis.
What are your favourite sweets?
Book Synopsis:
Secrets from the past, unravelling in the present…
Uncovering secrets that span generations, Rachel Hore delivers intriguing, involving and emotive narrative reading group fiction like few other writers can.
Nancy Foster has harboured a devastating secret that shattered her professional and personal life. On meeting her, journalist Stef Lansdown realizes that she has the power to restore Nancy’s reputation and to heal the wounds, if only Nancy will trust her. But someone else wants to get to the bottom of the story first, someone who doesn’t want it to be told.
Set in the beautiful environs of the Norfolk Broads in 2010, and in London in the ’40s and ‘50s, when life for career-driven women was so different, The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge is Sunday Times multi-million copy bestselling author Rachel Hore’s utterly compelling new novel, interweaving the past and the present.
About The Author:
A warm welcome to my page. I’m the author of thirteen bestselling novels, the most recent of which is The Hidden Years, now available in all the usual formats. My fourteenth novel, The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge, will be published in Summer 2025.
I came to writing quite late, after a career editing fiction at HarperCollins in London. My husband and I had moved out to Norwich with our three young sons and I’d had to give up my job and writing was something that I’d always wanted to try. I originally studied history, so it was wonderful finally to put my knowledge to good use and to write The Dream House, which is partly set in the 1920s in Suffolk and London.
Most of my novels are dual narrative, with a story in the present alternating with one set in the past. I love the freedom that they give me to escape into the past, but also the dramatic ways in which the stories interact. My characters are often trying to solve some mystery about the past and by doing so to resolve some difficulty or puzzle in their own lives.
The books often involve a lot of research and this takes me down all sorts of interesting paths. For The Glass Painter’s Daughter I took an evening class in working with coloured glass. My glass creations were not very amazing, but making them gave me insight into the processes so that my characters’ activities would feel authentic. For A Week in Paris I had to research Paris in World War II and the early 1960s through films and books and by visiting the city – that was a great deal of work for one novel. Last Letter Home involved me touring a lot of country houses with old walled kitchen gardens in search of atmosphere and to explore the different kinds of plants grown there.
Places often inspire my stories. The Memory Garden, my second novel, is set in one of my favourite places in the world – Lamorna Cove in Cornwall – which is accessed through a lovely hidden valley. A Place of Secrets is set in a remote part of North Norfolk near Holt, where past and present seem to meet. Southwold in Suffolk, a characterful old-fashioned seaside resort with a harbour and a lighthouse, has been a much loved destination for our family holidays and has made an appearance in fictional guise in several of my novels, including The Silent Tide and The Love Child.
Until recently I taught Publishing and Creative Writing part-time at the University of East Anglia, but now I’m a full-time writer, which felt like a bit step. My boys are all grown up now and finding their way in the world, but we still see a lot of them. My husband David is a writer, too (he writes as D.J. Taylor), so we understand each other’s working lives.
I find I have to have a regular routine with my writing, not least to keep the book in my head. My aim is to sit down at 9am every morning and write till lunchtime, then again the afternoon, but there is often something ready to interrupt this, not least our Labrador girl Zelda, so I go with the flow.
I hope that you are able to find my books easily and enjoy them – I am always happy to hear from readers!
Happy reading!
Rachel Hore
Over The Rainbow Blog 