The Household by Stacey Halls
Blurb
In a quiet house in the countryside outside London, the finishing touches are being made to welcome a group of young women. The house and its location are top secret, its residents unknown to one another, but the girls have one thing in they are fallen. Offering refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute, Urania Cottage is a second chance at life – but how badly do they want it?
Meanwhile, a few miles away in a Piccadilly mansion, millionairess Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the benefactors of Urania Cottage, makes a discovery that leaves her her stalker of 10 years has been released from prison . . .
As the women’s worlds collide in ways they could never have expected, they will discover that freedom always comes at a price . . .
Review
Stacey Halls is one of my favourite authors and is definitely an auto buy author for me so I was very excited when I bought this book. As usual though it got added to my TBR pile and didn’t get read straight away.
The thing I always love about Halls’ books is how well researched her history is and this books makes no exception. This book features Urania Cottage which was a second chance for women who had fallen. Urania Cottage was a refuge for prostitutes, thieves, criminals and the destitute. It gave them new skills and a new chance at life. The cottage was real and just like the book was founded by Charles Dickens and the heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts. However, the thing I love about this book is that Halls features the women in this book and Dickens is only mentioned at certain points. It could have been so easy to make a big feature of such a famous author but thankfully he only gets a very tiny bit part and we get to learn more about the actual women in Urania Cottage and Angela Burdett-Coutts.
There are various women featured in the book whose histories we only learn about as we read through the book. Martha and Emily (who were actual inspirations for people in David Copperfield) and Josephine and Annie. At the other end of the social ladder we get to learn more about Angela Burdett-Coutts which is again based on the true history of Angela Burdett-Coutts. Angela is hugely wealthy and loves to help others, she also loves to travel and host parties. She is a woman of means who should have no worries but sadly she is plagued by a stalker who has stalked her life for the past ten years. As the book goes on these characters’ worlds collide and it is fascinating to see it all unfurl.
I enjoyed this book but I did find it lacked the special something Halls’ previous books had. I found Annie very annoying so I was quite pleased she wasn’t featured massively. The one thing I really liked though was that these women who had totally fallen never lost their strength, their pride and their drive. They remained strong characters throughout. This book also also drove me to do further research of my own into Urania Cottage and Angela Burnett-Coutts. I give this book 4 out of 5 Dragons.
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About the author
Stacey Halls grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire, as the daughter of market traders. She has always been fascinated by the Pendle witches. She studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and moved to London aged 21. She was media editor at The Bookseller and books editor at Stylist.co.uk, and has also written for Psychologies, the Independent and Fabulous magazine, where she now works as Deputy Chief Sub Editor. The Familiars is her first novel.
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