The Foundling - Stacey Halls

After absolutely loving The Familiars, and raving on and on about how wonderful it was, I was a little concerned that Stacey Halls wouldn't be able to beat it. Nonetheless, I was super excited for her second novel, and I'm thrilled to announce that she managed to somehow top her debut! The hardback edition is absolutely stunning and I even managed to bag a signed copy at the Tottenham Court Road Waterstones which was an added bonus. I've recently been loving historical fiction and the escapism that comes with it, and love nothing more than getting completely lost in a wonderful story which is far from my own reality.

The Foundling follows the protagonist Bess Bright, who falls pregnant at a young age as a poor single woman in the eighteenth century. Encouraged by her disapproving father, she decides that the best course of action is to take her newborn daughter to London’s Foundling Hospital, where she can be cared for until Bess has saved up enough money to give her a good life. When Bess returns six years later to claim her daughter, she is shocked to discover that the girl has already been claimed - by her. Someone used Bess’s name and address to retrieve the child, only a day after Bess dropped her off. Who has her daughter been living with for the past six years? This one's a real nail-biter!

Stacey Halls has been compared to Hilary Mantel and has such a gift for historical fiction writing - her language is spellbinding, enchanting and magical, and you find yourself enraptured by her rich, syrupy descriptions of people and places. If you’re an avid reader, it can render you a little desensitised to plot twists - you can often predict a shocker before it comes. But this novel continued to throw curve balls, and I was hooked throughout. The novel assumed a dual narrator format (I won't give away who the second narrator is!), with alternate protagonists continuing with the story when the perspective changed, which I thought was a great feature. The first-person narration definitely inspired sympathy in those you had felt extremely angry towards initially, challenging your moral compass. 

After adoring her first two novels, I can’t wait to see what Stacey Halls comes up with next, and read some more historical fiction. If you want a cosy, enthralling novel to curl up with during this stormy weather, definitely make it this one!