435 pages Publisher Bookouture Publication date
July 10, 2026
ABOUT THE BOOK
A photograph of three young sisters. A forgotten pearl necklace that sends her tumbling through time…
Present day: single mother Elsa Dean is shocked when she inherits a sprawling three-storey house from her estranged uncle. Elsa hasn’t seen the golden stone façade in over a decade. Then an antique pearl necklace and a black and white photograph hidden behind a secret door in the attic sweeps her back into the past. Elsa sees her aunts, the three Merriwell sisters, each make their own terrible choice that will change their family forever…
1959: When sixteen-year-old Edie Merriwell finds herself pregnant just as her beloved mother dies suddenly, she has no-one to turn to. All she has left is her mother’s last gift: a tiny seed pearl on a delicate silver chain. She never takes it off. Her sisters could never understand. And her father is courting a new wife suspiciously quickly. Within a year, gossip about the Merriwell family will reach fever pitch, and none of the sisters will ever live in the beautiful house again.
History repeats itself at this house of pearls and lies. What really happened to Edie and her baby? Elsa has been keeping her own secrets too. Will she be brave enough to confront her tangled history and lay the ghosts of the house to rest for good?
MY THOUGHTS
I love an author whose books grab your attention and hers certainly do and keeps it right through the very last word.
If a book can be heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once this book delivers in spades.
The book is so realistic that I could easily picture the past and current time it took place very easily.
A single mom and her daughter’s bad luck turns around quickly when she inherits a well to do home in an affluent area that she hadn’t been in the home in years.
Going through the possessions she finds and old photograph and a necklace and they trigger her time traveling back in time and finding out secrets of family members that she would have never known about. The family has lots of secrets and there was a lot of drama in this family.
As each layer takes us back to the past, we see the pieces begin to become pieced together and the more I read the more I became engrossed. I read this over 400 pages book in less than a day.
My heart just aches for the injustice done and how things were more readily acceptable back in the day.
Some pretty big secrets revealed that really took me by surprise.
Excellent historical fiction. I’ll definitely be returning to this author.
I was given a complimentary copy of this book.
All opinions expressed are my own.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Ali decided she wanted to be a writer early on and wrote her first novel when she was at primary school. She did an English degree and spent her early twenties working in various jobs in journalism, including as a reporter for the showbusiness newspaper The Stage. She started writing fiction in earnest after getting married, moving out of London to the Oxfordshire market town of Abingdon and starting a family. She has two children, a daughter and a son who is autistic and was diagnosed when he was four years old.
Ali is fascinated by families, their myths and secrets, and the forces that hold them together, split them up and (sometimes) bring them back together again. She always travels with tissues and a book and has been known to cry over a good story, but is also a big fan of the hopeful ending.
For updates and pictures, follow Ali on Twitter (@AlisonLMercer) or Instagram (@alimercerwriter), or on her Facebook page (AliMercerwriter).
