Happy Thursday everyone! Just think it’s only 2 days until the weekend, where you’ll have lots of time to read and drink tea.
Following on from Charlotte’s Cursed Child guest post last week, I have another guest post to welcome to the blog and that’s Michelle. As I said in a previous post, I really should be including more guest posts and in the past 2 weeks I’ve brought you 2 – one a week!
About the book…
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 15th January 2015
Pages: 502 Pages
The Blurb
Meet Ebony Diamond: trapeze artist, tiger tamer, Suffragette. Where there is trouble, she is never far away. But now she’s the one in trouble, and she’s up to her neck in it.Enter Frankie George: tomboy, cub reporter, chippy upstart. She’s determined to make her name on the London Evening Gazette, If only someone will give her a chance.
Then Ebony disappears during a performance at the London Coliseum, and Frankie jumps at the chance to find out what happened. How did Ebony vanish, who was she afraid of, and what goes on behind the doors of the mysterious Hourglass Factory?
From the newsrooms of Fleet Street to the Suffragette headquarters. Frankie enters a world of society columnists, corset fetishes and circus freaks on the trail of a murderous villain with a plot more deadly than anyone could have imagined…
Purchase the book: Amazon UK | Book Depository
The Review
It’s the 1 November 1912 and we’re in London. Frankie is cycling along Fleet Street and taking us along with her for the ride. During our journey, we’ll visit the circus, London Prisons, the boudoir of near washed up socialite, Heliopolis, Suffragette headquarters, and of course The Hour Glass Factory.
Although integral to the story I skipped through a few pages of the subplot which revolves around Detective Inspector Frederick Primrose as I found I didn’t find it as engaging and I couldn’t wait to see where the other characters where up to. However, I feel, I must backtrack slightly and admit that rather than being less engaging, this could have been more due to the rawness of the subplot which delves in to the mistreatment of the suffragettes both at the hands of society and the police.
‘I have a wooden gag or a steel one. I should warn you that the steel one will hurt more, so I would advise you choose the wooden one. Please do not force me to use the steel gag. I must warn you that women have had their teeth cracked by forcing medical officers in Holloway to use it and our dental facilities here are limited’
The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester
As the end drew near the twist in the plot nearly threw me headfirst in to the Thames, I would never have seen it coming but of course that doesn’t mean that there weren’t a few subtle clues thrown in on the run up.
Ribchester gives just enough to fuel out imaginations without going overboard on the description. The story flows nicely, to nicely in fact, you could lose hours to this story – if you need to be anywhere, I’d set an alarm to bring you back to the modern day. The characters may have been running around London causing mayhem in 1912 but don’t make the mistake of thinking that you won’t be able to identify with them. Whether it’s Frankie, Ebony, Milly or Twinkle that you take as your favourite, I’m very sure that you’ll enjoy meeting them all.
So what is the Hourglass Factory? Obviously I can’t tell you that… but I can give you the link to the book if you’d like to find out: click here.
Visit Michelle’s Twitter: @michellemaygill
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