Title: MAGPIE LANE
Expected publication: 2 April 2020
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!
Let me introduce you to my second 5-star read for 2020 – TA DA!
Book Description:
When the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master
vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee,
for answers.
As Dee looks back over her time in the Master's Lodging - an
eerie and ancient house - a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional
family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his
beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little
girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother.
But is Dee telling the whole story? Is her growing
friendship with the eccentric house historian, Linklater, any cause for
concern? And most of all, why was Felicity silent?
Roaming Oxford's secret passages and hidden
graveyards, Magpie Lane explores the true meaning of family - and
what it is to be denied one.
What attracted me to this book:
MAGPIE LANE was like my own personal formula for reading bliss. A nanny in
an old spooky English manor house in Oxford. Family secrets. A disturbed child
who may or may not have some connection to the weird noises and shadows
flitting about in the house at night. Characters who ALL have something to
hide. All the very things I just LOVE in a mystery!
My musings:
Dee is a middle-aged woman with some secrets in her past
that have seen her live a life looking after other people’s children. She has stayed
with many different families and cared for children of all ages and
backgrounds, but none has ever got under her skin the same way Felicity has,
this pale, mute and unhappy daughter of Oxford’s latest Don.
I immediately loved Dee, from the very moment she shares her
self-deprecating humour:
“It may be my functional approach to fashion, but people seem to assume that I’m in charge.”
The picture was painted. A somewhat plain but keenly
intelligent middle-aged woman wearing drab clothes to roam the grey streets of
a wintry Oxford, wielding an umbrella. I soon realised that I, too, had
misjudged her, because Dee was not only smart, but also fiercely loyal to her
latest little charge. Not an easy job when you are pitted against Felicity’s
father, the arrogant Nick, and her trendy Danish stepmother Mariah.
It wasn’t long until the plot thickened. Nick and Mariah
have a dark secret they are determined to keep hidden. Felicity is traumatised.
The house, too, has secrets it divulges only at night, in its moving shadows,
its silent whispers, its doors that open and close at random, and the spooky
little priest hole in the attic where a rotten smell seems to linger. Even
Oxford itself, described as: "...a place of dust motes, vaults and arm-span
alleys, of angle-poised lamps and dimmer switches, of creaking floorboards and
whispers in oak-panelled libraries.” You can see why this was totally
irresistible for me! If you are not a fan of the supernatural, don’t despair,
because Atkin is always willing to give a perfectly rational explanation for
all the things that spooked hell out of me.
Let’s also talk briefly about the unique POV the story is
told in. Dee, the nanny, is being interviewed by police who are trying to
establish the whereabouts of Felicity, Dee’s young charge, who has disappeared
from the house whilst Dee was in London and the girl was in the care of her
stepmother. As Dee tells the story of how she came to be the nanny, the full
picture slowly emerges in flashbacks and confessions until .... well, that’s
something you have to find out for yourself.
I really can’t divulge any more without giving things away,
so let me just say that this book was a perfect for me. If you like an
atmospheric setting, a creepy mystery and characters that are as mysterious as
the setting itself, then you can’t go wrong with this one. Good spooky
mysteries are hard to find, and it doesn’t get any better than this. I look
forward to reading all the author’s previous books now!
Summary:
In summary, I loved everything about this book. It read like
it had been written specifically for me, with all the ingredients that make for perfect
reading bliss. If you, too, are a fan of atmospheric, spooky thrillers with
whispers in the night and characters who all harbour dark secrets, then this
book should definitely be on your radar!
Thank
you to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment