It’s such a pleasure today to be helping launch the blog tour for the latest book from Louise Douglas, The Summer of Lies, and sharing my publication day review: published today (7th February) by Boldwood Books, it’s now available as an e-book (free via Kindle Unlimited), in paperback and as an audiobook. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for the invitation and support, and to publishers Boldwood for my advance reading e-copy (provided via netgalley).
I’ve told you so many times that I’ve loved every single book Louise has ever written – I won’t run through them all this time, but you’ll find all the reviews if you pop her name into my search bar. I will, though, highly recommend her last book, The Secret of Villa Alba – one of my 2023 Books of the Year, with its wonderful sense of place, oozing with atmosphere, the storytelling simply perfect, plenty of intrigue and moments of drama but with an immense emotional impact too (you’ll find my full review here). Her latest book is, rather unusually, a sequel – although perfectly readable as a standalone – to The Last Notebook, the book that introduced us to Mila and Carter, with the pace and mounting tension of a compelling murder mystery perfectly balanced by her unfailing deftness of touch with the emotional content (you’ll find my full review here). So, time to return to Morranez, and the latest case for Toussaints detective agency – and it’s a return visit I was rather looking forward to…
As wild fires creep a devastating path towards the idyllic town of Morranez, a vulnerable girl goes missing. But was she taken – or was she escaping…
The summer is the hottest yet in the Brittany coastal town of Morranez, but when a new case lands on the desk of the Toussaints detective agency, there can be no time to relax. As wild fires bear down on the town, the alert goes out for a missing girl.
Nineteen-year-old Briony Moorcroft has seemingly been taken from her sleepy Welsh village and brought to France. Her parents are baffled and scared – Briony needs her life-saving medicine or this case will become even more sinister, and with the police dragging their heels, the Moorcrofts are relying on Mila Shephard and Carter Jackson’s sleuthing skills.
Meanwhile there are mysteries troubling Mila’s life too. Two years after the accident that swept her sister Sophie and brother-in-law Charlie away and left their daughter Ani in Mila’s care, new evidence resurfaces that makes Mila doubt everything.
Can Carter and Mila find Briony before it’s too late? And is the truth about Sophie and Charlie finally about to be revealed…
Mila returns regularly to England from her new home in Brittany, where she cares for teenage niece Ani after the death of her step sister Sophie in a boating accident, working for the Toussaints detective agency run by stepmother Ceci. She visits her fiancé in Bristol, their long distance relationship becoming increasingly difficult to sustain – and spends time with her mother, who’s still wallowing in bitterness long after the end of her marriage, and struggling to cope with the former family home that’s disintegrating around her.
On her latest visit, Ceci asks her to visit a family in Wales whose vulnerable 19 year old daughter, Briony, dependent on regular medication for a complex health condition, has apparently been groomed and then kidnapped – they have reason to believe her life is in danger, and it seems both she and her abductor might be in hiding in the area around Morranez. It’s the height of summer, and forest fires are raging – it becomes a race against time to track them down, apprehend her captor, and reunite her with her family.
While the search for Briony drives the narrative, with disturbing and unexpected developments along the way, there’s also the continuing story of Mila’s new life in Brittany – her close relationship with Ani, her working relationship with Carter complicated by memories of their shared past, her grief at the loss of Sophie whose voice is always with her. And the repercussions from that boating accident continue – the body of Sophie’s partner is still missing, and it seems some of the remaining questions might be resolved when a boat, believed to be theirs, is found grounded on rocks in a remote cove nearby.
The whole story is beautifully balanced, both storylines developing in tandem – with a wholly unexpected turn in the search for Briony, and complexity to the storyline that I really wasn’t expecting. And the discovery of the boat adds a real edge of danger and drama – an emotional depth too, so perfectly handled. While one of the threads reaches conclusion – and particularly satisfyingly – the other continues to run, leaving me eager to find out more in the next book which will undoubtedly follow.
This book is so much more than an intriguing mystery – the characterisation is excellent, every individual so well developed, and the emotional content so perfectly captured with those memories of shared childhood regularly rising to the surface, along with recollections of first love and disturbing visions of Sophie’s tragic death. The setting is perfectly drawn too – Mila’s isolated beachfront cottage and her uncomfortable feeling of being watched, the laid-back Breton lifestyle in Morranez itself, and the threat of the spreading fires drawing ever closer. The author’s storytelling is as powerful as ever, and the whole pacing of the story works so well – the tension and emotion steadily rising as the pieces of the story slowly fall into place. And although it’s a sequel, there’s more than enough detail included about what has gone before to make it entirely readable as a standalone – although I think you’ll be as keen as me to read more.
A gripping story, so well told and filled with the unexpected, but with real depth and emotion – I really loved it, and would highly recommend it to others.
About the author
Louise Douglas is the bestselling and brilliantly reviewed author of novels including The Love of my Life and Missing You – a RNA award winner. The Secrets Between Us was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives in the West Country. Louise’s first book for Boldwood, The House by the Sea was published in March 2020, and was the winner of the RNA Jackie Collins Romantic Thriller award.
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Also loved this one, Anne!
Jenni