• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 August #1
  Riordan's story, which involves a mother, Sylvia Durand, returning to her family home La Reverie in the South of France and coming to terms all over again with the death of her daughter, Elodie, who died at 14, is nuanced and frequently surprising.There is trouble in La Reverie, and it isn't just the fires in the area, which are drawing close to the family's villa. As the tension mounts from the unknown threat, the narrative jumps back in forth in time (a chapter set in 1993 is followed by one set in 1969), and, while the time shifts can be disconcerting, they are absolutely essential to the story. The narrative voice is perhaps the most compelling aspect of the story. It's told by Sylvia to her enigmatic daughter—You creep into my bed just after two—giving the story a level of intimacy and raw emotion it might not otherwise have had. An ambitious, challenging, and ultimately deeply rewarding novel. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Kate Riordan is a British writer and journalist. After working on staff at the Guardian and Time Out London, she left London for the Cotswolds in order to concentrate on writing novels. Her historical novel Fiercombe Manor (The Girl in the Photograph in the UK) was published by Harper in 2015.