Our loved ones protect us. 

So what if you woke up one day to find yours gone?  Your mum, your friends, your freedom – all gone.  And the one person you trust may be hiding a terrible secret. 

#Arrietty @Abby13Richards #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours 

Welcome to Arrietty’s life. 

My Review

So what if you woke up one day to find everything you thought you knew was turned on its head. Not once or twice but again and again. You can’t trust anyone. You maybe can’t even trust yourself.

Arrietty is almost impossible to review because everything is a spoiler. Suffice to say that one night at midnight her mum walks out and is never seen again. There is only her father, who won’t tell her what happened, and her little brother Eddie. Eddie is four years old and Arrietty adores him.

The story is told in two timelines – now and two years earlier. There was significant trauma in her life, but we don’t know what it was. We hear from her mum Sofia’s point of view as well as from Arrietty’s.

Then it all changes and we start seeing something totally different. Is Arrietty a reliable narrator? Then it changes again and – oh my goodness – it turns into something so dark and terrifying, I was literally blown away. Good job I don’t have a cliff with a thirty foot drop at the bottom of my garden or I’d be down there. An amazing third book from a bright, new author.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

Abby Davies was born in Macclesfield in 1984. She grew up in Bedfordshire in a seventeenth century cottage near Flitton Moor and started writing ‘thrillers’ when she was seven years old. After reading English Literature at Sheffield University and training to be an English teacher, she wrote novels in her free time.

She was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition in 2018 and longlisted for the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2019. Her debut Mother Loves Me was published by HarperCollins in 2020. The Cult came out in 2021. Arrietty is her third novel.

She lives in Wiltshire with her husband, daughter and two crazy cocker spaniels.