The Blurb
Notting Hill, London. One May evening, seventeen-year-old Maggie Parker’s mother walks out of their front door and doesn’t return . . .
With her little brother in tow, desperate to find her mother, Maggie is drawn into a labyrinthine world of antiques and shadowy figures, far from the grand stucco terraces. There she befriends another young person living on their wits. But can he help solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance?
Twenty-one years later, in a Parisian apartment, Maggie’s phone rings and her hard-won grown-up life shatters. While in London, the new owner of the Parker’s old Notting Hill house is excavating a basement, unaware of what might lie beneath, and the clock starts ticking on buried secrets.
My Review
Let’s just admire the beautiful cover before we get down to the business of reviewing The Midnight Hour.
It all starts with a woman, Maggie, a novelist sat in her Paris apartment in 2019. The phone rings and suddenly her world is turned upside down.
The diggers are in the back garden of her old house in London, cue panic and fear. Why we ask ourselves?
And off Chase takes us, back to 1998 to that same house, to a seventeen year old girl navigating the loss of a father, and feeling the responsibility to care for younger brother, Kit whilst their mother, a famous model works. When she doesn’t return one night it’s up to Maggie to make the decisions, does she call the police or does she wait it out in the hope their mother will return?
What a dilemma Chase gave this young woman, but also what a great way to introduce us to Wolfe, hero to Kit, and maybe something else to Maggie.
Short lived happiness soon descended into darkness, abrupt endings and questions left unanswered.
Chase deftly switched between past and present. Murky characters lingered in the periphery of Maggie’s vision, angst at what the diggers may find, but also a need to reason with the past, to come to terms with who she was and what others meant to her.
It was Kit that had my heart, from that young boy who adored Wolfe to a grown man, dappling in antiques just like Wolfe, to his desperate search to find him.
As the novel reaches its conclusion Chase brought it all beautifully together as the past caught up with them, as secrets long locked away unravelled.
It was a mix of emotions for Maggie and Kit. Maggie angry, a sense of betrayal and Kit finally had that sense of who he was, where he belonged.
I admired Chases’s skill in making me feel a mixture of emotions. There was empathy, anger, frustration, happiness and a sense of hope, and as I turned the final page a sadness at leaving these wonderful characters.
I would like to thank Michael Joseph for a copy of The Midnight Hour to read and review and inviting My Bookish Blogspot to participate in the blogtour.
About the author
Eve Chase writes page-turning mysteries set in beautiful places, thick with secrets. Her novels include The Birdcage, The Glass House. The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde and Black Rabbit Hall. The Glass House was a Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy Bookclub pick, and she has previously won the Saint-Maur en Poche prize in Paris for Best Foreign Fiction and been longlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award. Her work has been translated into twenty languages. The Midnight Hour is her fifth novel. Married with three children, she lives in Oxford.
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