Short chapters and tight plot invoke a cold dreak in the reader from the very beginning.

A rich historical thriller...Combines striking historical detail with a compelling mystery...Atmospheric

The description of nineteenth-century Chicago is dramatic ... Excellent

Gripping and atmospheric

Pacy

Praise for The Boy That Never Was

I shot through this in one sitting. Like Gone Girl . . . It's the most gripping thing I've read for ages

Stunning

A truly remarkable novel. The Boy That Never Was is a pitch-perfect balance of driving plot and honest, complex human emotion. Written in a captivating, lyrical style and brilliantly structured, the story grips your heart from the first pages and simply never lets go

Beautifully written, tense and twisty tale

Gripping from its dramatic opening chapter, this tense, unpredictable novel blends a thriller with an intimate family story to produce a most compelling read

The delight for the reader is many, not least spotting the cross-over between the two stories, and the changes in those characters that feature in both. The language is lyrical and yet accessible, the plot intricate but satisfying. There is romance, period detail, and dark secrets. This book has TV adaptation written all over it! A great book-club read with loads to discuss

I would recommend it to anyone who wants an intriguing mystery that will keep them reading all night!

A wonderful novel. I loved the atmospheric setting and the way the mystery is built up, switching back and forth through time

I loved The Girl in the Photograph but I adore The Shadow Hour more, it has the perfect balance of tragedy and intrigue and all the story lines are woven together expertly. You don't want to miss this

A detailed, textured mystery

There is no doubt that Kate Riordan is a marvellous storyteller with a fantastically plotted book

Another beautifully told story form Kate Riordan *****

You are drawn in and held there, as the story unfolds, a beautiful literary touch within a novel that is quite the page turner

An absorbing and atmospheric read. I enjoyed his one so much that I have already started reading her previous novel

The author has such a wonderful way with words...beautifully written and very atmospheric

An atmospheric and tense tale of two families bound by the secrets held within Fenix House, a stately home where the past seems to collide with the present

The language is lyrical and yet accessible, the plot intricate but satisfying. There is romance, period detail, and dark secrets. This book has TV adaptation written all over it! A great book-club read with loads to discuss

What a beautiful and evocative writer she is! I adored the richness of her descriptions, the faint sense of menace just below the surface, and the huge skill with which she wove in clues, questions and little fragments of information. It was a thoroughly absorbing

This subtle, off-kilter foray into John le Carré territory—a chilling, thoughtful, deeply romantic drama about the collateral damage suffered by those on the periphery of world events—displays Dunmore's gifts as one of today’s most elegant and versatile storytellers.

Exposure is a beautifully written novel that really showcases this author’s talents.

Exposure is a great spy thriller with an emotional side to it ... it gives you great character's and a beautiful setting. Lily Carrington is one of the best character's I have read about in a book in a long while.

A wonderfully descriptive tale of three rich characters and serves as a great way of bringing the private fears and realities of the Cold War period to life and this novel is a story of that time, as much as anything else.

Exposure is about the drive to protect one’s family and the devastating consequences of abruptly finding oneself on the wrong side.

Exposure is a brilliantly plotted novel, it’s enormously compelling and I gulped it down. Dunmore builds the tension slowly, the atmosphere of fear and creeping shadows is chillingly well done.

Just as thrilling and just as unputdownable as any Le Carré

A compelling read

A surprising and fulfilling read

Exciting, with a touch of Graham Greene

Few novelists can rival Dunmore

With a poet’s intensity for minutia and symbolism and an always hungry precision for the right word, she creates a real and thoroughly vivid world, a living place, grim and claustrophobic, full in small ways of menace.

Reading Helen Dunmore is like uncovering an old, intimate secret. Her historical detail is flawless. Her narrative focus is never so much on the big public bluster as it is on the private fragility of the human heart - and her latest novel might be her finest yet.

Clever and moving