Annie Ireson
When twenty-seven year old Tamasyn Hargreaves travels to the heart of Northamptonshire to fulfill a deathbed promise to her mother, she soon begins to sense that something surreal and supernatural has drawn her there.
Who are the strange children she keeps bumping into? What secrets are concealed within the contents of a box of memorabilia she is given? Why does she look uncannily like a photograph of Jessie Smith, who gave birth prematurely in 1910 after being raped by a nobleman?
As Tammy reveals shocking secrets about her own family, she soon realises she must resolve the mysteries of the past before she can keep her promise to her mother.
The White Cuckoo is a story of two women whose lives connect through time. Is destiny just the past, rewritten?
From the opening chapter I was hooked into this beautifully written novel. I was right there with adolescent Harry and young Jess in the woods, as she goes into labour, rooting for them to find a way to survive.
The story starts and finishes in 1910 and the period detail brings the era vividly to life, but the modern day setting that makes up the bulk of the story is just as evocative. I liked the intriguing - and rather chilling - supernatural element, and all the characters are well-drawn - especially Tammy. I was absorbed into her life to the point where I didn't want the book to end. Some wonderful lines too ... Her lovely, gentle, wooden Dad, captured in his dark icy orbit of grief and loneliness. She flinched with the weight of knowing that she was his sun. Fantastic.
I really enjoy novels that cover big themes of family secrets, lies and divided loyalties and destiny, and how the past affects the present, and the author has handled them skillfully, pulling all the strands together in a deeply satisfying way.
