It’s a liar’s paradise
Wittering Lodge, Stann Creek, Belize
In the dead of night, lying in her father’s jungle lodge, Laelia watches her partner Aid sleeping – her mind racing with everything that’s brought her to this moment.
The heady Caribbean holiday when they first met.
The rum-fueled passion that, day by day, creeps into something darker.
The secrets she discovered in a hidden nook of the lodge, revealing a devastating past.
Above all, she thinks about the impossible decision she must make before dawn.
Does she stay silent and protect their newfound paradise? Or does she confront the lies which run as deep and dark as the lagoon – surfacing a dangerous truth from which there’s no return…
JO MOREY is a graduate of the Faber Academy and the Curtis Brown Breakthrough Mentoring Scheme. The Night Lagoon is her first novel, a literary suspense, for fans of The White Lotus and Where the Crawdads Sing. It was selected as The Sunday Times ‘Book of the Month’, is one of Good Housekeeping’s ’20 Hottest Books of the Summer’ and has been described by US Publishers Weekly as ‘Lush and immersive with a chillingly effective payoff.’
Like her protagonist, Jo wears hearing aids and suffers constant tinnitus. She lives in West Sussex at the foot of the South Downs with her husband, two boys and two Portuguese Water Dogs. Jo is currently working on her next novel, set on the North Island of New Zealand where she used to live.
My thoughts: Belize isn’t somewhere I know anything about, beyond the fact that it was once occupied by the British.
Laelia’s father is an academic specialising in orchids, of which Belize has many species. She and her sister Chloe are visiting him for his birthday, with their partners and children.
When he has a terrible accident and ends up in hospital, she decides to stay and look after his home, prepare it for his return. But as she and her partner Aid settle in with her children, Ella and Dylan and become part of the community, things start to go awry.
Aid has secrets, secrets Laelia needs to learn in order to stay safe. Her father knew some of them and if he ever wakes up, he’ll be able to tell her. But Aid isn’t behaving like his usual self and his past is beginning to intrude into their present.
Gripping and fascinating, with a great protagonist whose disability makes it harder for her to be sure what is true and what she’s heard.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 