A Legacy of Secrets

Lulu Taylor

BEING part of a family noted for its wealth, talent and good looks should surely be a blessing but two women from two different generations know that the legacy also comes with a curse… a curse that could destroy their happiness.

Lulu Taylor (pictured below), queen of a string of classic winter-warming novels like The Winter Children, A Midwinter Promise and The Last Song of Winter, dishes up all those favourite reading ingredients for a gripping and emotion-packed, dual-timeline story which was just made for log-fire reading on long, cold evenings.

Filled with this insightful writer’s acute observations on family relationships, a cast of beautifully drawn characters, and featuring the cruel slings and arrows of life and fate, A Legacy of Secrets is a poignant and enthralling story of secrets, love, determination and female resilience. 

Encompassing the lives of a mother and her daughter, and set against the backdrop of the buttoned-up Fifties and the more open society of the Nineties, Taylor’s evocative story explores the changing perspectives of two women whose lives, loves and destinies are very much shaped by the world in which they become adults.

In the summer of 1952, twins Flick and Brinsley Templeton – landed gentry members of the absurdly rich and glamorous Carrington family through their mother Gloria – are celebrating their landmark 18^th birthday at their grand but rather shabby home, a former priory called Caundle Court.

The business acumen of an eighteenth-century ancestor has blossomed into a banking empire in which generations have played their part and taken their share. And in true family style, Flick is blessed with good looks and ‘bursting with intellect’ but it is her twin brother and heir, Brinsley, who is about to go up to Oxford University while Flick is heading to an Oxford finishing school. Flick is eager to get away from her mother’s suffocating presence, escape stifling class strictures, find a man who loves her for herself, and avoid the family curse which has seen previous generations pursued by drama, addiction and bad fortune. These things poisoned their world, with each generation handing down its problems to the next.

Fast forward to 1991 and we meet Etta, Flick’s daughter, who inherits her own share of the family blessings along with its darkness. Growing up, she is pulled between caring for her beautiful but wounded mother and searching for her own identity. As Etta unravels the threads of Flick’s secrets, she starts to learn the truth about who she really is. But can both Flick and Etta ever truly break free from the shadows of a painful past, and the curse that seems to hang over every generation of their family?

Weaving between the lives of two generations of women decades apart, we are swept across continents and into the peaks and troughs of fortune, witnessing a forbidden love, the trials and tribulations of marriage, divorce and illness, and the ever-changing role of women in society. As the drama unfolds and secrets are revealed, Taylor explores how the repressive societal expectations of Flick’s formative years compare with the greater freedoms of her daughter Etta who is finally able to pursue the path to truth, peace of mind and redemption.

Turbo-powered by emotion, love and angst, and with a final act that will pull at readers’ heartstrings, this winter-warming romance is best enjoyed with a glass (or two!) of seasonal mulled wine!
(Pan, paperback, £9.99)