One Truth Revealed (English Village #2)

Robena
Grant
Genre: 
Contemporary

Lina Bright is a successful woman who is about to undergo artificial insemination. She was adopted by a wealthy couple as an infant, but she is determined to learn more about her birth parents. She visits her biological mother in the English village of Oldcastle, where she hopes to discover her father's identity. En route to the village she meets Drew Compton, Oxford Professor and scion of Oldcastle’s local gentry. Attraction flares between them, but Lina wants to keep her reason for going to Oldcastle a secret. She fabricates a plan of building a school in the village to camouflage her visits to her mother. However, Drew’s mother becomes suspicious of Lina’s reasons for visiting and throws a spanner into the budding relationship between Drew and Lina.

Ms. Grant has the English village scene and life down pat, with settings reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s “Miss Marple” series. Readers will be invested in the characters and feel sympathy for them, for example Lina’s mother Annie, because of what she had to give up. The juxtaposition between the city slicker types and those who rule over country life (like Drew’s mother) is very clear, and one cannot help but think, 'come on, it’s the 21st century!” and hope that the stuck-up characters will get their comeuppance. There were some parts of the novel where the action between characters did not quite bring the story forward. There were also scenes that seemed abrupt in terms of the display of emotion — there was no gradual progression from tearful to angry to composed. However, if the author’s intention was to show how some of the British stiff upper crust react to a situation, this certainly showed it.

MP Ceja