Pages and Pages

I love Italy and anything to do with its history and culture and I think this is what led me to read this book. The author, Mark Mills is a graduate of Camridge University and has himself lived in Italy. His first and only other novel The Whaleboat House won the Crime Writer's Association Award for Best Novel by a debut author in 2004; another one to add to my TBR list! The Savage Garden is set in Tuscany in 1958; the protagonist Adam Strickland, a Cambridge scholar is sent to the Villa Docci in order to use its memorial garden as the subject of his impending thesis. As Adam unravels the secrets hidden within the garden he also discovers that the current members of the Docci family have things to hide. There are two separate stories of love, jealousy, revenge and murder separated by 400 years which lead Adam into the Docci family's tangled web. I was totally gripped by this book, it is a great murder mystery but it also offers so much more. Mills has created Villa Docci and its...

I loved this book, I think it is my favourite of the year so far! I love books set in country houses with eccentric families and mysteries and long-kept secrets; this book has all of that. Facing the Light centres round the Walsh family with Leonora as the matriarch; the extended family are coming together for the weekend to celebrate the milestone of her 75th Birthday. Leonora is the daughter of Ethan Walsh the celebrated artist whose work hangs throughout Willow Court. She has two daughters, Gwen and Rilla; their children then make up the extended family circle. Leonora's childhood was blighted by the death of her mother as Rilla's life has been overshadowed by the death of her young son at Willow Court. Throughout the book secrets and mysteries are unravelled and characters perceptions of their family members are greatly challenged. Adele Geras has created a family of very different and eccentric characters who are all entirely believeable but not all necessarily likeable. I...