Reading the Rainbow: The Beloved Girls by Harriet Evans

By Steph Warren - Bookshine blog on 30 Sep 2024

Welcome to the ninth of my 'Reading the Rainbow' posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2023 book advent - each cover representing a different colour - and review them for you!

September is BLUE and the book is The Beloved Girls by Harriet Evans.

Read on to find out more...

Blurb: Two young girls. One hot, long, sultry summer. And a rambling old English manor house where nothing is as it seems . . .

A successful London barrister, Catherine Christophe, goes missing the day before her wedding anniversary. The clue to her disappearance, it seems, lies buried thirty years in the past.

Somerset, 1989. Janey Lestrange arrives to stay for the summer at the grand old house of the Hunter family. But something is wrong behind the beautiful façades of Vanes. Janey's childhood friend, Kitty Hunter, her brother and their eccentric parents - once so welcoming - do not seem to want her there.
It is only as the night of an ancient and mysterious family ritual looms closer that Janey comes to realise they need her . . .

Decades later, the tragic events of that unforgettable summer still cast the darkest shadow. Can the truth about what happened that night ever be brought into the light?

Review: I've previously read and reviewed The Stargazers by this author, but had already purchased this book first, based solely on the cover!

Much like that previous read, this book is heavily and oppressively atmospheric, weighted and scented with dark secrets from the characters' pasts that are causing traumatic impact on their adult lives.

Again, the story is structured so we begin with modern-day Catherine Christophe, jumping at shadows and fighting off panic attacks, before delving back into the childhood dramas between practically-orphaned Jane Lestrange and the kind-of-cousins-but-not-by-blood Hunter family that she is sent to stay with. Then further back, to Jane's father and how he met Sylvia - celebrated fabric designer and shellshocked mother of the Hunter siblings - as a distressed child trapped at the centre of a bitter custody battle.

Darkness and trauma slowly unpeels to reveal even darker and more traumatic roots beneath, while angry bees hover ominously over characters' every move and a creepily-adapted folk song provides an almost horror-movie backing track to what is always threatening... the sting hidden beneath the slow, cloyingly sweet honey disguise.

That all said, I admit that I made two predictions within the first few pages of meeting Catherine in 2018 and both proved to be accurate once the tangled threads were finally laid out straight. I think you can get a feel for recurring themes when reading a number of books that have a similar style and theme, and I have a few literarily haunting, coming-of-age, family-secret stories under my belt at this point!

But regardless of the final destination, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey the author took me on to get there and the capturing of taut, twisted family dynamics and the struggle to break from damaging cycles of tradition and history.

So, I will continue to read this author with interest (and admire her stunning book covers!).

'Here,' said Kitty, quietly. She held out her hand, a tight fist. 'It's for you. Please will you come back.' It wasn't a question.
Slowly, she unfurled her hand. There lay a soft, dark-gold, dead honeybee. Its black wings were folded up, its stripes soft, the black segmented legs in angular shapes. The sting was slightly bent.
She tipped it into my open palm. 'Don't worry, it won't sting.' Her small voice hissed in my ear. 'It just means now that when you see one, it'll remind you of here. And of here. So you'll never forget us.'

- Harriet Evans, The Beloved Girls

Purchase link: The Beloved Girls on Amazon

About the author:

Hello there! I'm actually two authors, the first is Harriet Evans the author of thirteen novels, two of them are Richard and Judy book club selections, several have been Top Ten Bestsellers, one won the Good Housekeeping Book of the year prize, but the accolade I'm most proud of is the lady on Twitter who wrote last month that she thought my books were real 'knicker grippers'. I suppose that's all you can hope for isn't it?! But I'm also, as of June 2024, Harriet F Townson, author of 1930s detective fiction! Please check out D is for Death which is under my new separate identity. It's very exciting, having two identities, I can tell you.

I have written since I was a child, first on books I stapled together with paper then notebooks then a laptop that crashed and lost all of the novel I was writing in secret back in 2002. (So now I back my work up properly). Inbetween those I did Classical Studies at university which means I know all about Greek Gods and can win pub quizzes, worked in publishing as a very bad secretary in the 90s in London, eg I left Hugh Laurie waiting in reception for 20 mins & once messed up making a cup of tea for Harry Enfield, but I was also the Penguin Books fire marshal for one glorious year, had my photo in the back of a Jamie Oliver cookbook and shook hands with Lauren Bacall. For several years I was an editor working with lots of lovely authors like Penny Vincenzi, Eva Rice, Veronica Henry, Marian Keyes, Jane Green and Adele Parks but I always wanted to write. My first novel, Going Home, came out in 2005 and my latest, The Stargazers, was published in paperback in 2024. In 2019 I moved out of London, to Bath, city of the greatest lady novelist of all, Jane Austen. I love living here so much. (Also I love the fact you just randomly walk past people dressed in bonnets all the time and I'm never sure if they're extras from Bridgerton or just loving Regency life.) I have two daughters and live within walking distance of a Marks and Spencer, I'm very happy.

My first novels were more about relationships and people in London and had more chicklit themes and the later ones are darker and more about families and secrets and houses and the past. I have so many stories in my head all the time and I adore knowing that my job means that I can carry on telling them.

I am currently writing a trilogy about a British family from 1950s to the present day, as Harriet Evans, but I am also thrilled to have a second identity, from June 2024, as Harriet F Townson, author of mystery novels. D IS FOR DEATH is out on 6th June and is set in London in 1935. It's about a young woman called Dora Wildwood who escapes a terrible engagement and runs away to London, where she finds a body in the London Library. It is enormous fun and a departure from my other books but because I write them under another name Amazon cannot link them, but you can! so please let me know if you buy one. In the meantime, love and thanks and happy reading, Harrie xx