A good read with strong descriptions of the implosion of a marriage and what comes after; mixed romance and crime novel. A thoroughly enjoyable story, a lot more realistic than many.
As a doctor in the NHS I was unconvinced by the actions of the medical student; no idea how they would have got that item tested in that way...

A real page turner, love this type of family orientated novel. Will definitely look out for this author in future

Lottie and Quentin find themselves unable to afford a divorce and following the recession without permanent jobs they discover that they can't pay the expensive London mortgage on their house either. Having lived apart for a while they decide to move to a cheap rental in Devon whilst renting out their London house just until the housing market becomes more buoyant.

The problem with that is that they can't stand each other. He hates her angry controlling, and resentful attitude towards him. Lottie's life was turned upside down by his affairs and also his inability to even feel remorse at what he has done. Because of this she cant abide him.

They arrive in Devon with two little girls and her teenage son from a previous relationship. The story is exceptionally well written with beautiful descriptions of Devon being inhospitable and unwelcoming in the cold winter months and then beautiful and idyllic during the warmer months and as their lives and attitudes change towards living in the country and towards each other.

The plot also has a dark side, the cottage they rent has a dark history that intertwines through the storyline and builds to a huge and truly suspenseful event that is both scary and thrilling.

The character development is excellent with not only Lottie and Quentin taking centre stage, but a whole range of other family members and local villagers being important to the plot and also to the storytelling. I believe that a lot of these characters also appear in her other novels, which I will now look out to read.

Highly recommended.

There turned out to be more depth to this novel and to the characters than I was expecting at first. All sorts of themes in the mix, as of course there are in real life, and some truly engaging and sometimes surprising stories of people’s lives, in the country and in the city.

I was particularly taken with Naomi, the long-suffering but pragmatic wife of an irascible poet and mother-in-law to the delightful main character Lottie, and also with Marta, Lottie’s elderly German mother clinging on to the huge home in Hampstead where she raised her family. Plenty of description of the countryside and country life too - Sally is a lovely character, wise and kind, a health visitor so therefore confidante to many, married to a sheep farmer with all that entails. The author is particularly good at showing us the hard grind that goes into producing the food we see on our supermarket shelves, from the raising of livestock to the 24 hour operation of the pie factory.

Individual stories are interwoven around a central mystery of the murdered previous tenant of Lottie and her family’s new home and the various strands come together in a wholly satisfactory way with a solution not only to the murder but also to their own personal dilemmas. Much to my delight there is not too neat an ending and overall it was a joy to read. I’d recommend it heartily.

I requested this book because I had heard of the author (probably from The Times) but never read any of her novels. I enjoyed the book and her quirky take on life in the country. Some of the writing was rather poetic with lovely descriptions of the countryside. The characters were interesting and I will definitely look out for more of this author's work.

My review as posted on Goodreads:

I have not read any books by Amanda Craig before. On the strength of this, I will look out for her earlier and future novels.

At first I thought that this was going to be a rather predictable story. How wrong I was. It kept throwing up surprises right to the end.

I like the characterisation and the aspects of social commentary within the book. I also liked the sense of time and place, both within London and rural Devon.

As a family saga this story develops into an interesting commentary about the differences between urban and rural life in modern England.

I need to be careful not to spoil the plot, but the reason I gave this book 5 stars is the unexpected crime thriller element!

I give thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown Book Group for a copy in exchange for this review.

Family dynamics, town versus country and rich versus poor with an added murder mystery. I enjoyed this much more than I expected to. It's one of those books where you miss the characters the day after you've finished the book. Highly recommended

This is the first novel I have read from this author but it definitely won't be the last. She captured so many details of life within marriage, of children's relationships with their parents and step parents and all with an underlying tension of what is happening in the quiet Devon countryside.

As a Devonian I loved this novel to bits. I used to be a Pru agent on Dartmoor and met people who had never left the moor except to visit Newton Abbot. Totnes being the wild., Wild West.

Exquisitely written with a true understanding of relationships. A joy to read. With a nail biting climax.

“He must have been escaping from something, mustn't he ? Why else do incomers come here?” Here being the edge of Dartmoor, “a region poorer than Romania”, and the two incomers at the heart of this story are a London couple who desperately want to divorce but can't afford it. Their solution is to rent out their London home and decamp to a Devon farmhouse, on the market at a ridiculously low rent. And you won't know why the rent is so low until nearly the end of the book.

There's so much more here than a simple whodunnit or a satire on townies: the cast is rich and varied – Quentin and Lottie come with teenage son Xan (product of a fleeting early fling) and two primary school-age girls. Up the road lives Quentin's minor poet father, dying of cancer, while back in London lives Lottie's German mother. Neighbours on the bleak edge of the moor are Tess, Sally and Ann, three sisters working as a teacher, a health visitor and a Marie Curie nurse. Quentin employs a surly cleaner whose daughter works in the same pie-making factory as Xan, who has fallen for a Polish migrant worker. Meanwhile, the family landlord is an aging rock star who wants to do good for the village by building a Poundbury-style housing estate. One of the attractions of the book is the way all this colourful bunch react with each other - for good or ill.

The other attraction (which may be linked with the decision to publish it on the first anniversary of the Brexit referendum) is the panorama it offers of 21st century rural life. The village economy depends on the local pie-making factory, its slovenly operation and its reliance on migrant workers; the subsistence farmers depend on the halal slaughter of their lambs; the health visitor deals with a pretty depressing bunch of dysfunctional couples, while another sister copes with “the bureaucracy of death” for the dying poet and the third manages the village school and the impact of the young London girls The townies find that rural life is neither idyll nor disaster, especially when mother's illness takes some of them back to London for a while and a contrast. And, of course, there's no mobile or wi-fi coverage.

A third reason for enjoying the book is the casual dropping of some verbal gems - “Most Devonians who do real jobs find Totnes hilarious” (perhaps you need to know Devon to appreciate that), or - “Trust is like a bowl, the easiest thing in the world to break, yet once broken, its shards are sharp as knives, and virtually indestructible.” All told, here's a book you can enjoy on several levels at the same time. Just when you're chuckling at the wry sketches of village quirks, you're brought up short by some sharp reflections on the way we get on with each other, or you are offered a fleeting hint of the mystery behind the low-rent farm. The whole thing's very like a jigsaw – only gradually can you work out how the pieces fit together, until the picture quite suddenly becomes very clear.: and jigsaws can be addictive.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought the characters were brilliant and the book is very well written. I enjoyed reading about all the different characters and life in the country. I could visualise it all which makes it a really good read. It kept me captivated from start to finish. I would definitely recommend this book.

So many characters so many stories warmly blended into a thoroughly good read.

The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig

Actually I made a mistake with this book. I settled down to read this expecting a light-hearted tale relating the trials and tribulations of Quentin and Lottie Bredlin as they desert London and move to Devon in an effort to consolidate their finances and their divorce. I half-expected details of their efforts to settle into a rural community whilst attempting to replicate their lives in the city – dinner parties, community events, etc. However, I think that this book is so much more than that. I certainly didn’t expect a mystery in the shape of an unsolved murder, or a secret in the shape of Dawn.

In fact this has a clever plot, neither trembling with intrigue nor fast-paced with building tension (well, alright a bit near the end relating to Xan) but more of a deliberately paced, seemingly sedate account revealed through the characters. Speaking of which – on reflection each character had a particular contribution to make (by which I mean they were not there just to pad out the text or add veracity but were intrinsic to the plot). Obviously the main characters are Quentin and Lottie together with their 3 children and they are the vehicle through which the plot unfolds. They are ably supported by a cast of characters ranging from the three sisters (a midwife, a Marie Curie nurse and a teacher), the aging rock star and his young wife and family, their housekeeper and her boyfriend, and her daughter; we also have Quintin’s parents and Lottie’s mother; a very diverse set of people all beautifully drawn, all believable.

In addition to all these fascinating strands we learn about the difficulties of being a sheep-farmer; we learn about the production line in a pie factory and the zero-hours contracts of employment for minimum wage which the poor are forced to accept; we are informed about the horrors of slaughtering animals for meat. This is in counterpoint to the fancy lunches, and corporate hospitality of Quintin’s London life-style of the past. Over and above all this we see two women (Lottie and Anne) who reflect on their lives and positions within their marriage and within Society, they are aware that theirs is a supporting role but each are conscious that they not only need, but are entitled to something more.

For me this is not a fantastic book, but it is enjoyable and has much more to offer than at first glance. It is not a book to be dismissed as it is multi-layered and a credit to the author.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest

I really thought this book would not be for me - a story about a couple whose relationship is over but who can't afford to separate due to financial worries & are forced to leave their beloved London to go & live a rural life in Devon. How wrong I was! This is so well written, exploring the emotions & thoughts of the key characters in a very insightful manner. The plot thickens when the recent history of their new home is discovered & it leads to a brilliant climax. I really found this hard to put down & would highly recommend this book

Enjoyed this book and found the further I got into the story, the less I wanted to lay it aside. There are a wealth of characters and there stories are woven together as the book moves forward. I was intrigued by them and found the suspense building as the book came towards it's conclusion. By the last few chapters, I was so hooked I couldn't put the book down and just had to see how it all concluded. Without giving away any spoilers, it was a 'breath-holding'' ending! I would love to find out what happened next.

all the little things lead to big things - it felt like there were lots of little things happening in this book, Xan learning what 'real' life is like, Lottie trying to get her career and life back, Quentin refusing to change, and then the people around them. All of the characters are likable and feel like they add something to the story.
Its a psychological thriller that also feels like an insight into the modern day struggles of family, divorce and money.

Loved this book. Its a good story and is well written with attention to detail and we'll structured.
Set mainly in rural Devon it tells of the ups and downs of a London couple whose marriage is train crashing into divorce. The characters are believable and human. The dilemmas they face are everything from the mundane to the dramatic. There are various sub plots going on involving a range of characters from locals to megastars. I would thoroughly recommend this book and am immediately going to look for Amanda Craigs other books. I can't offer any praise higher than that.

The Lie of the Land, Amanda Craig

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre: General Fiction

Usually novels I read have romance somewhere, but I like to read stories that stretch me a bit, make me think "what if" and some of them, as this one does, come under a General Fiction heading. What if Quentin hadn't had affairs, what if there hadn't been a recession, what if Xan had got into his chosen uni? As for down in Devon, there's any number of What Ifs that would change things hugely. 

I really, really didn't like Quentin for at least the first half of the book. He's like a big kid - its always someone else' fault, he's a man, can't be expected to be faithful, he can't help his straying ways etc. etc..
Ugh, I hate hearing that,  and it made me wonder what Lottie ever saw in him. Xan seems to hate him now, calls him Dud, which made me snigger. Yet from what we read he idolised him until recently, much his two younger hald sisters still do. 

Poor Lottie, they can't even afford a divorce. Quentin is moaning all the while but it seems she's the one making sacrifices, getting things to work, dealing with day to day issues, the kids, the house, the lack of money, while he keeps swanning back to London in pursuit of another job, another story, another woman.
He's acting like one of those awful men who still imagine they're single and what they're doing won't hurt anyone....
When we look deeper into their backstories though its not quite so cut and dried. He still makes me angry, I still think he's appalling as a husband and father, but do understand him and his actions a little better. 

There's a subtle danger in the so called peace of their retreat though, and they find out the countryside has claws, and its not all rural idyll, bohemian joy and rhapsody, but dreary, damp, dark and dangerous...and that danger comes knocking very, very close to home.
Some of it I'd guessed from the story but not all, there's a really tangled web to unravel. 

There are some great characters here, ones that felt so real, as if I could know them.
The descriptions of country life are spot on at times too, work in factories as grim as Humbles does abound, minimum wage, long hours, zero hours contracts, no regard for safety and no job security.
There are few other jobs in the countryside though. Work is mind numblingly boring, life is hard to cope with, and we see just how so many different families are doing that, most people simply struggling day to day, and a select few are thriving. It's not just Lottie and Quentin that are having issues, both work and personal, but others that hide their struggles carefully behind a public face. The old UK Putting a Brave Face on, Stiff Upper Lip and all that.

Its not a story I'd reread, very uncomfortable at times, but one which I enjoyed as a one off, one that made me really think about the characters and situations.
What would I have done if I was Lottie? Not let him back home is my first thought, but then he's a good dad to the girls, was good to Xan when they first got together, and of course she's the memory of that man and the hope he'll come back to her.
Will he though, or are the changes too much?

Stars: four, a fascinating read into what can happen to those affected by financial issues, marital issues, jealousy, unplanned pregnancies, lack of quality/well paid work...

ARC supplied for review purposes by Netgalley and Publishers

WONDERUL READ! Very mysterious and unfolded slowly and in an expertly told manner. I quite enjoyed this one!! 5 stars.

Sadly I found this book quite dull. The story was uneventful for so long I thought nothing was going to happen. I couldn't warm to the characters either. I'm sorry to leave such a negative review but I honestly was bored reading this and had to force myself not to give up.