Book Review: ‘The Beloved Girls: A Novel’ By Harriet Evans

A dual timeline story about one woman and her mysterious past with a house and bees. It’s 2018 and Catherine lives in London and is a successful lawyer, married to Davide (who is French) and has two kids. She just lost a high profile case with an 18 year old young man who murdered someone. She’s getting ready to go away for a long weekend with her husband when she sees her but it can’t be her because she is most likely dead. This brings up her past and what happened in 1989. She leaves her husband at the train station and heads for the place where she hopes to get some answers…it’s time to go back to Vanes, a manor house where she was one of the beloved girls in a weird bee ceremony that went wrong in 1989 and forever changed the lifes of the Hunter family and herself. To move forward she must confront the past and what happened in that summer. A solid thriller, that was bit long for my tastes. The use of the dual timelines works well here, as we follow along to what happened then and know exactly what happened when it happened. Still you get engaged in the story and want to keep reading on.

You can pick up The Beloved Girls in stores on Tuesday, May 10th from Grand Central.