The river can take you home. But the river can also drag you under…
‘It’s something she learned years ago – the hard way – and that she knows she will never forget: even the sweetest fruit will fall and rot into the earth, eventually. No matter how deep you bury the pain, the bones of it will rise up to haunt you … like the echoes of a summer’s night, like the river flowing relentlessly on its course.’
Margot Sorrell didn’t want to go home. She had spent all her adult life trying not to look behind. But a text from her sister Lucy brought her back to Somerset. ‘I need you.’
As Margot, Lucy and their eldest sister, Eve, reunite in the house they grew up in beside the river, the secrets they keep from each other, and from themselves, refuse to stay hidden. A wedding brings them together but long-simmering resentments threaten to tear the family apart. No one could imagine the way this gathering would change them all forever. And through the sorrow they are forced to confront, there is a chance that healing will also come. But only if the truth is told.
Published 19th March 2019 by Orion (UK)
~ Review ~
As soon as I heard about The River Home, I wanted to read it. I’d read Secrets Of The Tides by Hannah Richell a few years ago and really enjoyed it, and stories that involve a large family home and dark secrets are absolutely my thing. I was most definitely in!
The River Home delivers on all counts for me. It’s got that wonderful, quintessentially English country home, a cast of interesting characters and a series of dark, deeply hidden secrets bubbling beneath the surface and ready to explode.
Hannah Richell’s writing is captivating and compelling. Very early on I was transported into this novel and the pages turned effortlessly. The three sisters, Eve, Lucy and Margot have distinct and individual personalities which made them very easy to relate to and become invested in, while their larger than life mother, Kit brims with eccentricity.
The book switches between the present, where Lucy is getting married in incredible haste and bringing the estranged family back together for the first time in years, and the past which reveals the events that lead to the fractures between them. I wasn’t expecting the turn it took, and felt incredibly moved at times by this story.
I flew through this book, finding large chunks of time passed easily while I was absorbed in this emotional and moving story. It’s a complex story of the betrayals and miscommunication that can tear a family apart, with the inspiring message that it’s never too late to put the pieces back together.
Many thanks to the publisher for my gifted copy
