The novel opens with Karen and her nine-year-old daughter, Alice, collecting husband and father, Rex, from a ten-year stint behind bars for manslaughter. As they drive home they detour to Highgate and cannot resist a moment of contemplation outside the formerly rambling and dilapidated home that witnessed Rex’s fall from grace. Flashback to the heady summer of 1997 when New Labour rose to power and the world felt full of possibilities for the young graduates at Queen Charlotte’s College and meet gauche seventeen-year-old, Karen Clarke. Fluent in a handful of languages and having passed an unremarkable four-years studying for a degree, even her dad thinks she is old before her time. Seeming to have gone from being sheltered throughout her school education she has blended into the background and found herself thrown together with a group of dreary girls all with their eyes on the bigger picture of marrying well. Yet for Karen her degree is just another qualification to add to her many and she is discombobulated by the enforced change that graduating presents. Undecided on her future she meets twenty-one-year-old drama student, Biba Capel, an effusive and bewitching breath of fresh air into her sterile world.

Well written, but not quite my cup of tea. To be offered to another....in the WishList UK Tag.

For Brunton11.

Arrived safely today. Thank you for the tag!

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would with its twists and turns.

Reserved for either the mail a garden sweepstakes or a RABCK.

Off to the winner of the mail a garden sweeps.

Arrived yesterday. Thank you!

Sadly, I have not been able to get into this book. I shall look for a new home for it.

Sending as a RABCK to ReetPetite. Enjoy!

Thanks for sending this book to me.

A slow start. Got going about half way & turned out to be a gripping story. The house in Highgate was also a 'character'.
Would read more by this author.
Thanks.

From the July 2019 meeting

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