Sally Hepworth Archives

Book review: Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth

January 4, 20262 min read

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth is another I missed getting during the year for review, so I only read it belatedly during my brief Christmas sojourn. 81-year-old Elsie is a bit like a character out of a Fredrick Backman book. Sassy and grouchy to all except her long-time friend Daphne and Pete, a neighbour. We learn she’s lived on Kenny Lane for 60 years and it’s a societal microcosm of sorts and also includes a single mother and her rowdy 7-year-old daughter, and the litigious Joan who’s constantly slipping notes under Elsie’s door complaining about one thing or another. When this book opens the latest note references Elsie’s past which she thought she’d left far behind her.

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Book review: Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

August 31, 20242 min read

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth is probably my favourite book of hers that I’ve read. I have missed a few however as I’m not sure I get review copies from her publisher.

Interestingly an ‘app’ I used for my website requires me to input certain information… like the book’s genre and I found this one hard to classify. It’s not a thriller or crime fiction but has the right amount of mystery or intrigue that I enjoy in a book that isn’t specifically billed [as crime fiction or a thriller]. There’s no ‘suspense’ as such so we’re not on the edge of our seats and worried our protagonists’ lives are at risk, but there’s a deep level of intrigue that keeps you turning the pages… needing to get the bottom of the mystery.

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Book review: The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

January 28, 20194 min read

Sally Hepworth’s books seem to be getting better and better… or more likely, they were always good and perhaps my taste is changing or evolving.

I usually prefer mysteries or thrillers and The Mother-in-Law isn’t quite that. I mean, it is about a death – a potential murder and the lead-up to it… so there’s an element of suspense, but it’s so much more. In many ways it’s a complex study of relationships: those between husband and wife or lovers; between parents and children; between siblings; between colleagues and friends; and (of course) those with our in-laws.

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Book review: The Family Next Door by Sally Hepworth

March 13, 20182 min read

2017’s The Mother’s Promise was my first Sally Hepworth novel. I suspect I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy her books – thinking they were too entrenched in motherhood and meaning (as a non-mother) I wouldn’t relate to them. Or – worse still – they’d remind me of opportunities lost and things I DID NOT HAVE.

I was surprised then, to enjoy the book as much as I did and happily launched into Hepworth’s latest – which includes a smidge of suspense – The Family Next Door.

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Book review: The Mother’s Promise by Sally Hepworth

February 28, 20173 min read

I’ve not read anything by Sally Hepworth before though have heard of her very popular The Secrets of Midwives and last year’s The Things We Keep. I wasn’t sure The Mother’s Promise would be for me given my increasingly cynical nature (which I put down to ageing, rather than becoming bitter, twisted and malcontent in general), but was surprised that it wasn’t overly sentimental or saccharin-y.

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