- Format: Kindle Edition
- File Size: 3726 KB
- Print Length: 512 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (11 July 2019)
- Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B07JW63GKV
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Synopsis
Arethusa Clayton has always been formidable, used to getting her own way. On her death, she leaves unexpected instructions. Instead of being buried in America, on the wealthy East Coast where she and her late husband raised their two children, Arethusa has decreed that her ashes be scattered in a remote corner of Ireland, on the hills overlooking the sea.
All Arethusa ever told Faye was that she grew up in a poor farming family and left Ireland, alone, to start a new life in America as did so many in those times of hardship and famine. But who were her family in Ireland and where are they now? What was the real reason that she turned away from them? And who is the mysterious benefactor of a significant share of Arethusa’s estate?
Arethusa is gone. There is no one left to tell her story. Faye feels bereft, as if her mother’s whole family has died with her. Leaving her own husband and children behind, she travels to the picturesque village of Ballinakelly, determined to fulfil her mother’s last wish and to find out the reason for Arethusa’s insistence on being laid to rest in this faraway land.
Review
The Secret Hours is the new book from Santa Montefiore, an author who never disappoints with her books. This book is about one of the Deverill women but is not part of Santa Montefiore’s Deverill trilogy so you don’t need to have read these books. The plot moves between 1960’s and the late nineteenth century, and follows Faye Langton and her mother Arethusa Clayton, born a Deverill. When Arethusa, known as Tussy, dies she asks for her ashes to be scattered in Ireland which comes as a shock to to Faye and her brother Logan, who knew nothing of her mother’s past. Faye decides to travel to Ireland to learn more about her mother, a journey where she also finds out more about herself. Set in the beautiful Irish landscape this is a book about love, family and forgiveness.
I haven’t read any of the previous books about the Deverill legacy and it didn’t make any difference to my enjoyment or understanding of the book. The late nineteenth century and the 1960’s were both a time of a patriarchal society, with women’s rights and freedom just beginning to change in the 60’s. Although there are about sixty years between Tussy’s and Faye’s stories, they are both shackled to an extent by societies expectations of them. Tussy, is a tenacious and wilful character, who knows her obligations to marry well, to be a good daughter and wife but she wants her fun first, to live before she gets married for duty. She is very much led by her heart rather than her head which can have consequences.
Faye, like her mother is shackled by society. She has always submitted to her father, brother and husband like a good daughter, sister and wife should, but in going to Ireland she defies her husband and removed from America finds a new sense of freedom in Ireland. Faye gains the strength her mother had as a young woman, and the more she learns about her mother and her Deverill heritage the more she questions her life as a wife, and a woman. I was really rooting for Faye to take control of her life and emerge from her dull life into a more exciting one, like a caterpillar to a butterfly.
Santa Montefiore brings the stunning Irish landscape to life, with Castle Deverill like a fairytale castle in its midst. In setting the book in the 1960’s and late nineteenth. century the is able to address quite a few important issues of the period including poverty, pregnancy out of wedlock, how women’s lives were decided by their fathers and then husbands, racism and forbidden love and how even though there is a over half a century time frame things had not changed much.
As expected from Santa Montefiore, The Secret Hours is an enjoyable and compelling read that I couldn’t put down once started. Tussy and Faye are both wonderful characters, who you can’t help but admire and invest emotion in their respective stories. There is no doubt of Santa Montefiore’s skill as a story teller, and this is another stunning novel and one I highly recommend. Beautiful setting, characters you care about, and an engaging story, a perfect read.
Thank you to Simon and Schuster for an advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review.
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