Poet’s Cottage (Josephine Pennicott, Macmillan)

A picturesque Tasmanian coastal town provides the setting for this novel about family and secrets. Sadie Jeffreys and her teenage daughter Betty move to the fictitious town of Pencubitt when Sadie inherits Poet’s Cottage from her late mother. The infamous cottage has a dark past: Sadie’s grandmother Pearl Tatlow, a glamourous and free-spirited children’s author, was murdered there in the 1930s. Motivated to uncover the truth behind Pearl’s death for her own book, Sadie soon begins to uncover more than she bargained for. This Midsomer Murders-esqe novel alternates between the present day and the 1930s (with Pearl’s friend Birdie Pinkerton as the narrator). Author Josephine Pennicott does a good job of lining up the possible suspects in Pearl’s murder and the reader is encouraged to doubt each of their motives equally. The novel works best, however, in the chapters that recreate Pearl’s world in the 1930s—the reader is transported back to a time of different social standards and attitudes towards individuality, creativity and sexuality. Pennicott has won a number of awards for her crime fiction and her latest offering will appeal to readers of that genre as well as those who enjoy commercial fiction.

Eloise Keating has awarded Poet’s Cottage three and a half stars out of five. Eloise is a journalist with the Weekly Book Newsletter and Bookseller+Publisher magazine

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews