Love thrives in hiding.

Crowded by encroaching dangers, Anneliese confronts a range of hurdles in The Crooked Little Volume 5: a dive into unstopping problems.

As Isabel disdains a figure from her past, the dastardly Charles Anthony keeps making his psychiatrist miserable – to nobody’s avail. Susanna stumbles amidst frayed attempts to get her youth back; toying with an unfazed Christopher. Dazed Isabel once more fears going off the tracks. With odds stacked stubbornly against her, Anneliese shuns sin in an unprecedented downward spiral of events. Undying pining pins her sister to inaction.

Culminations menace characters unable to defy denial in this fifth season of the novelised tv a dose of episodes that keep us on the edge.

My Review

I’d just like to say first that I love all the descriptions of the beautiful dresses. I’m so jealous!

We are now heading towards the 1960s as the twins are hurtling towards their 40th birthdays. Anneliese is still single and reluctantly ‘treating’ Charles Anthony. I put treating in inverted commas because nothing changes. Is he in love with her or her with him? There is a dependency which has nothing to do with romantic love and CA is still having relationships outside marriage, currently with a much younger woman, who also happens to be a patient of Anneliese.

Isabel is still Head of Music at Croham Girls School and is engaged to billionaire Tally. I’m not convinced he is right for her. Richard, on the other hand, has always been my favourite, though goodness knows why. We see him return in Vol 5, but he only makes Isabel’s life more difficult and her decisions harder.

Psychiatrist Susanna/Sara is still monitoring Anneliese, though she is probably the one who needs the counselling. A tragedy pushes her into a relationship with married, father-of-nine, Christopher. She is also obsessed with finding cures for various illnesses like Parkinson’s and CJD, using poor unsuspecting mice. I worried constantly for the mice.

We are reaching a crossroads in the lives of the twins and we wonder where Vol 6 will take us. It’s all change now for both, but will their new lives be more successful than the old? Another fabulous episode in the lives of the sisters.

Many thanks to the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

About the Author

Sophia Lambton became a professional classical music critic at the age of seventeen when she began writing for Musical Opinion, Britain’s oldest music magazine. Since then she has contributed to The Guardian, Bachtrack, musicOMH, BroadwayWorld, BBC Music Magazine and OperaWire, and conducted operatic research around the world for The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography, which was published to coincide with the soprano’s one hundredth birthday in December 2023.

Crepuscular Musings – Lambton’s cultural Substack – provides vivid explorations of tv and cinema together with reviews of operas, concerts and recitals sophialambton.substack.com.

The Crooked Little Pieces is her first literary saga. This is volume 5. She lives in London.