The Beloved Girls - Harriet Evans

 

Sadly, today's review is going to be short, and not so sweet. I picked up The Beloved Girls in the supermarket as I'd forgotten to take my book to school with me (priorities!) and it was marketed as being by a 'top five bestselling author'. Sadly, this fell short of the mark for me! It's not that the writing was bad - I enjoyed it to begin with. However, after 250 pages of almost nothing at all happening, I decided life's just too short!

The historical fiction novel is set in the West Country, in 1989 and the present day. Catherine Hunter, a successful barrister, has gone missing on the day of her wedding anniversary. The answer to her disappearance lies 30 years in the past, at a mysterious country house where a strange ritual involving beehives once took place every year. As a child, Catherine's family rituals had taken place habitually, until a tragic occurrence unfolded.

This sounded like my perfect read - mystery, suspense, history... but sadly I was just so disappointed with it. I wasn't reaching for it and was basically waiting for my next read, which is not a good sign. I decided that I'd given it enough of a chance and that it's okay to DNF a book that you aren't enjoying. No regrets!