The Asylum is published today, but I was lucky enough to read it several weeks ago. It hooked me from beginning to end.

The author, Karen Coles, really has achieved something extraordinary here. Her main protagonist, Maud, is incarcerated in an asylum and put through all sorts of gruelling ‘treatments’ including being force-fed and not being allowed outside. An institution that is supposed to treat mental illness ends up exacerbating it – and Maud becomes prone to violence, slipping between fantasy and reality.

It is not easy to depict madness without alienating the reader, but Coles navigates this brilliantly – not once did I feel confused by what was going on inside Maud’s head yet the questions over what exactly had happened to this young woman kept on mounting.

Enter one pioneering Doctor Dimmond who is carrying out research into the new treatment of hypnosis. At every turn his superior, the malevolent Womack (with his waxed moustache), tries to thwart the treatment, but on Dimmond presses. We also slip back in time to atmospheric scenes, heavy with tension, where we get to experience just who Maud was before she became a patient.

It is not all doom and gloom though – in the present, Maud can be funny and spirited, while in the past we learn that she was once a woman who dared to be different. If this was her downfall in this patriarchal society then, could it also be her salvation? A haunting heart-breaker of a novel — can someone turn it into a Netflix series please?

An unputdownable novel. It centres around four strong characters who really lift off the page – Liz, Jess, Charlotte and Mel. They have all been friends since they were part of the same ante-natal group prior to having their firstborns. When paediatrician Liz treats Jess’ third child for a serious head injury, Liz has no choice but to pick up the phone to social services. Jess insists it was an accident, but not all is as it seems and a police investigation ensues.

I had a strong suspicion about part of the story, but that made this novel even more compelling for me as I waited for the truth to come out. And then came a shock that I really wasn’t expecting. This is a well-observed and feverish read – brilliantly written – yet another winner for the massively talented Sarah Vaughan.

Little Disasters is available to buy at online bookshops including HIVE and Amazon.

Book Review: Nobody’s Wife by Laura Pearson

I adored this story about two close sisters, Emily and Josephine, and the infidelity that threatens to tear them apart. On the face of it, Emily appears to be happy with novelist husband Michael, but when Jack, Josephine’s new boyfriend, enters their lives, everything seems set to fall apart. Emily and Jack begin a love affair, taking risks that had me on the edge of my seat, wondering whether this was the moment they would be found out. The foreshadowing is marvellous, the passion intense and the tension just builds and builds. Michael is a gorgeous character and I felt so cross with Emily and Jack for betraying him. Jack, on the other hand, is rather dislikable – selfish and pretentious – but for me this just added to the reasons to keep on reading. And boy did I read quickly – in a matter of hours – that’s a measure of how much I enjoyed this exhilarating book. Although devastating things happen, the tone is light and it is so easy to read. I liked that there are no neat endings here – the book is fluid and the writing beautiful. Nobody’s Wife is a complete contrast to Pearson’s debut, but every bit as good.

Nobody’s Wife is published by Agora Books on 28th March 2019.

Review by Fiona Mitchell, author of The Swap, published on 18th April 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton.

Three Hours transports you to a sprawling, cosseted private school on the Somerset coast which is under siege by masked gunmen. But this is no ordinary thriller. The writer hops into the heads of the many different characters – allowing us to navigate the wonderful relationship between Syrian refugee brothers Rafi and Basi; brave school girl Hannah; heartfelt headmaster Mr Marr; Beth, one of the parents awaiting news of her son who is still inside the school, and many others. Multiple points of view might have diluted the depth of the story, but Lupton mines each of her characters’ thoughts so deeply that we feel what they’re feeling. The writing is first-class with sentences that are almost poetic in their beauty. The pupils that are stuck inside the theatre – the most impenetrable part of the school, and therefore the safest – carry on performing their production of Macbeth, so that Shakespeare’s lines about power and psychopathy haunt the narrative.

The counter-terrorism investigation on the outside gathers force – Lupton’s research must have been meticulous. Indeed this fiction is so firmly rooted in reality that it is supremely disturbing. I find it interesting that Lupton has set her story in a liberal, fee-paying school with a massive budget – a school where people expect their children to be safe, yet the unthinkable still happens. Because it really can happen anywhere, to anyone – there will always be chinks that let the darkness in. Lupton explores just what it would take to be radicalised: the relentless racist messages thrown out by the press – the story is even intercut with Tweets from Trump and a vile diatribe by a former newspaper columnist – brainwashing by extreme groups and much more. While reading this book you will undoubtedly want to have a closer look at your child’s iPad and phone to see just what they have been looking at lately.

Three Hours is about hate crime, but what rings out from its pages – what is likely to stay with you long after you’ve read that magnificent last line – is love. I wanted to read Three Hours slowly to savour every beautiful word, yet it is so compelling that I couldn’t put it down. This one is destined for the best-sellers list, I reckon, and rightly so. It is phenomenal.

Three Hours is published by Viking on 17th October 2019.

Review by Fiona Mitchell, author of The Swap, published on 18th April 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton.

Holding picture by Sensei Minimal on Unsplash

This book brought me so much joy. Strikingly funny, well-observed, and addictive, it is peopled with superbly drawn characters. I read it in about two days (and when I wasn’t reading it, I was wittering on about how much I was loving it).

It’s Christmas and a family are in quarantine as daughter Olivia, a medic, returns from a stint treating a deadly and highly contagious epidemic in Liberia. Most of the family members she’s with are guarding secrets and when an unwelcome visitor arrives, the already strained atmosphere reaches boiling point.

How I savoured this book and was sorry to finish it. The fact that it’s about an entitled upper class family may put some readers off, but the Birch’s country manor house, Weyfield Hall, dished up some delicious escapism as did their luxury Camden pad. Emma was the most privileged of the characters, but she was so funny and sympathetic that I fell head over heels in love with her. All of the characters made me smile though – Phoebe, George, Jesse et al. I simply couldn’t get enough of them.

The book is pacey and oh, that ending – to say more about it would involve spoilers, but it was totally unpredictable.

I loved everything about Seven Days of Us – the writing has real quality to it. It is the perfect festive read and is one of the best books I’ve read in months. An unstinting five stars.

Review by Fiona Mitchell, author of The Swap, published on 18th April 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton.