Vanessa LaFaye Press Reviews
`Exquisite' Veronica Henry, author of The Forever House and A Family Recipe
`A warm return to some of Dickens' greatest characters - delivered with care, confidence and a vibrant heart, but most of all, with love.' Jason Hewitt
`An absolute gem of a story... vivid and emotional on so many levels. It deserves to be in everyone's Christmas stocking.' Juliet West, author of Before the Fall
`A charming, finely detailed and beautifully written jaunt through Dickens' London - a tale of heartbreak, love, kindness, and avarice. With Lafaye at her finest it's seamlessly finished by Mascull; this book is a total, total joy.'
Fionnuala Kearney, author of You, Me and Other People
`A moving companion piece to the classic A Christmas Carol, with all the traditional echoes of the Dickensian festive season woven through, and with tragedy and joy in equal measure. A delight.'
Essie Fox, author of The Somnambulist
`A very poignant story, given that Vanessa (a friend of mine) didn't manage to finish this novel before she died. Becca Mascull skilfully finished it for her, and I'm so glad she did. It imagines the story of Clara Marley - the sister of Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Lafaye and Mascull vividly conjure up Dickensian London, complete with the poor, the rich, and the greedy. A wonderful novel for Christmas.' Clare Fuller, author of Our Endless Numbered Days and Bitter Orange
`An exquisite little jewel of a book in which heartbreak and hope twist around each other like the stripes of a Christmas candy cane. Brava Vanessa Lafaye and Rebecca Mascull.' Tammy Cohen, author of When She Was Bad and They All Fall Down
`A perfect gem of a book: a luminous depiction of Dickensian England, filled with a profound humanity that is uniquely its own.' Louisa Treger
About Vanessa LaFaye
Vanessa LaFaye grew up in Tampa, Florida, but but made the UK her home from 1987. She worked for academic publisher Wiley in Oxford, commissioning online resources. She detailed the impact of living with cancer in her popular blog Living While Dying, which was picked up in a number of media outlets such as the Daily Mail. She wrote two acclaimed historical novels, Summertime published in 2015 and First Light two years later, both published by Orion, with another recently acquired by HQ. She died in February 2018 aged 54.
More About Vanessa LaFaye
