Chez Maximka: The Lost Notebook by Louise Douglas

Sunday, 11 September 2022

The Lost Notebook by Louise Douglas

"She could have done any of a thousand small things that would have changed the course of events and prevented things unfolding as they had. But that was hindsight: no use for anything except exacerbating regret".

The Lost Notebook by Louise Douglas is a tense, suspensful and engrossing mystery, set in the seaside town of Morannez in Brittany.

Mila Shepherd has temporarily moved to France to look after her orphaned niece Ani. Ani's parents, Mila's stepsister Sophie and her husband, were lost at sea. Mila moves into their family home, on the outskirts of Morannez. She is also working in the successful family business, Toussaint's Agency, which specialises in tracking down family members with whom their clients have lost contact over the years, having taken over Sophie's position. This is an interim position, until the new recruit, Carter Jackson, starts the job.

Carter is a blast from the past. Years ago, Sophie and Carter have been lovers, and Mila was holding a torch for her step-sister's love interest. What brings him back to Morannez?

Mila is writing a novel, but has to suspend her creative activities until the agency position is taken over by Carter.

Mila doesn't have children of her own, and finds it hard to look after her teenager niece. "She was frustrated that after all these months, she still couldn't seem to balance her responsibilities towards Ani with the rest of her life. She was no good at being in loco parentis. She was a crap carer".

The relationship between Ani and Mila is strained and awkward. Ani resents Mila's plans to send her to a boarding school in Switzerland. Each time her aunt tries to talk to Ani about her going away to school, she walks away or shuts the conversation down. Both bury their heads in sand, like proverbial ostriches. They are equally difficult, and not easy to like.

One evening, when Ani has a bike accident, Mila meets an elderly woman in a horsebox van, stationed out by the woods. "Depending on your point of view, the old woman was either a charming eccentric, an object of pity or someone feral who would deter the tourists and ought to be chased out of town".

Gosia is keeping a notebook, where she writes down her secrets. "Beside her chair was an enormous book, like a ledger, too full of pictures and pieces of paper to close, with a pen lying in the gulley of its spine. One side of the open book was covered in lines of small, neat, handwriting..."

When Gosia is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Mila is reluctant to accept the official line of police inquiry. Ani immediately jumps to conclusions that Gosia's death is related to the prehistoric curse which has been triggered when the archeological dig outside Morannez started.

It's the height of summer, and the seaside town is flooded with holidaymakers. The historical town by the sea appears to be a perfect setting for the summer vacations.

The idyll is an illusion though. There is a sinister side to the pretty façade. Another untimely death happens at Morannez, when someone at the dig is being subjected to a hate campaign. And again, the police seem to be if not indifferent, then totally clueless.

Observant Mila begins to ask uncomfortable questions. "If Mila was right then someone was acting the role of choreographer, someone connected to the two dead people, someone with a reason to kill".

It seems only she and Carter care enough to dig deeper, trying to uncover the truth about what's really happening. And someone would go to any length to protect the awful truth going back to the tragic past.

Will Mila and Carter uncover what really happened?

Themes of love and loss, bereavement and grief, family relationships and bonds runs through the story, just like in two other books by Louise Douglas that I have read - The Room in the Attic and The Scarlett Dress.

Mila and Ani are coping with grief in their own way. Mila "hears" her dead sister and has conversations with her. Sophie appears as a carefree, ego-centric and irresponsible person. She is a kind of woman you would find rather annoying in real life, and as a manifestation of inner torment she is totally insufferable.

You feel sorry for Mila, who feels compelled to leave her country, boyfriend and suspend her job, to move to France to look after her niece.

The setting is, as always, spot on. It creates an evocative, plaintive background for the sequence of unfolding dramatic events.

Without giving many spoilers, what Gosia tries to unravel, writing her findings in the big notebook, is portrayed in an unflinching, poignant way.

The Lost Notebook is an absorbing, suspensful and riveting story, a tale that is both sinister and incredibly sad. Entirely compelling and full of realistic heart-rending, emotional twists.

This review is part of the blog tour.

Many thanks to Louise Douglas and Rachel's Random Resources for my e-copy of the book!

Purchase Link - https://amzn.to/3HNYxqV

Author Bio –

Louise Douglas is the bestselling and brilliantly reviewed author and an RNA award winner. The Secrets Between Us was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives in the West Country.