Ms. de Gramont has written a clever tale to explain the disappearance of Agatha Christie for 11 days in 1926. After her husband, Archie, asks Agatha for a divorce so he can marry his lover, Nan, Agatha is distraught. That is all we know until Agatha is found 11 days later. This twist on the story is interesting.
Nan and Archie become involved. However, Nan's true love is Finbarr, and she was pregnant by him at age 19. She goes to see Fin but he is sick with influenza, and his father takes her to an Irish convent where she can have her child. The nun takes her baby, Genevieve, for adoption against Nan's will.
Agatha wants to stop the divorce, and runs off. She meets up with Insp. Chilton in a manor house when he comes to investigate her disappearance. Nan is at the same location. Two deaths occur at the hotel in the town, and people believe the wife died of a broken heart after her husband died.
Seems the story of all the characters is intertwined. This is a neat little mystery with an interesting theory of what actually happened to Agatha Christie. Enjoyable.

Delightful twist on the well known Christie mystery; well-developed. I'd love to see a screen adaption of this work.

I enjoyed the audio book as it was very well done. I would liked to hear more of Nan’s story but overall it had good plot development interesting characters that were multi dimensional. The timeline shifts kept the story moving forward but gave the background necessary to understand the characters motivation and history.

I feel like this could have been a better novel if not hinged on Agatha Christie's name. I guess I built it up too much in my head, but I struggled to finish this as it wasn't at all what I thought it would be.

THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR by Nina De Gramont started quite interesting. I quickly disliked Nan—the other woman set on breaking up the Christies’ marriage. However, as a mother, I could not help but empathize with her plight regarding her past—which is heartbreaking.

Where the narrative skewed for me was in the repetition and the ongoing scenes specific to Agatha’s disappearance—the reader learns the truth early on, so everything that follows feels too drawn out and anti-climatic, resulting in a DNF for me at 82%.

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press, for providing me with an ebook of THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR at the request of an honest review.

While I was reading this book, I really enjoyed the beginning. I feel like the author had a really good concept that could have been executed a lot different. I lost interest while reading about 30% into the book and had to pick up the audiobook when it was released. Unfortunately, listening to the audiobook did not keep my attention and I felt like the characters fell really flat. It really confused me with the plot line and I felt like it really didn't make a whole lot of sense.

This was a nice break from some other reading I've done recently. I don't know who exactly I could recommend this book to. I don't like an unresolved ending, and this left too many holes for me.

An interesting premise but ultimately very meh for me. Everything felt a little far fetched, unbelievable and nicely tied up. Not a difficult read and perhaps one that would be great at an airport for a pleasant read on the plane but just not really for me. I don't think I really cared about Nan, the mistress, and would have preferred to hear Agatha's story more. No matter the back story, Nan just wasn't that much of a sympathetic character for me.

Absolutely loved this well-researched take on Agatha Chrstie's life and enigmatic missing period. This was an unexpected take and I loved the way the author imagined things and portrayed the time period and gave a lot of facts about the author's life.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

I have to be totally honest; I knew absolutely nothing about Agatha Christie prior to reading this book. I take that back; I knew she was a well-renowned author, but that was about it. Her disappearance was news to me. I think it would have definitely helped to have had knowledge of this event and what occurred going in. I found myself searching the internet for articles and information on it as well as Christie's life so that I could follow the story along better.

I liked the mix of historical fiction with mystery. I'm always a fan of reading books during this time period, and the story of the disappearing of Christie is incredibly interesting. Of course, the cover is gorgeous.

I will definitely read more from de Gramont in the future!!

VERDICT: 4 STARS

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for a copy of this one in exchange for an honest review!

This book is outside of my usual reading comfort zone - I am not much for historical fiction. But throw in murder, mystery, and Agatha Christie, and I'm totally in. This was an interesting imagining of what might have occurred in the 11 days that Agatha Christie went missing, and I really enjoyed it. I would likely read other titles from this author. If you are an Agatha Christie fan, this is a must-read.

I have read, I think, all of the books dealing with Agatha Christie's disappearance, studied all the theories, and even watched movies about it. I must admit, this is one of the strangest ideas yet. However, it is fascinating and told from a completely different point of view--that of Archie Christie's mistress. The book goes back and forth between the two women (Nan and Agatha) and back and forth through time, which sometimes can get a little confusing, but if the reader sticks with it, he/she will be rewarded with a novel theory of those missing days. Hopefully at some time, like the mystery of Anastasia and Amelia Earhart, someone will crack the mystery of the missing days of Agatha Christie...

The story is told as Historical fiction as a woman leaves for eleven days after being told by her husband that he wants a divorce. Full of intrigue and mystery that will want you to finish this book once you start.

This book was ultimately a DNF for me. I wanted so badly to like it and I was really looking forward to reading it but it just didn't do it for me. I love historical fiction, and familiar enough with Agatha Christie's story and this book seemed promising. I think the idea to write the book from the other woman's perspective is really interesting . In fact I cared about Nina's story more than about Agatha's disappearance. I probably would've just read a novel about Nina's life. Which is fine except that it kind of defeats the purpose of the book. I'm the end I just really didn't feel drawn to any of the characters and didn't really care about the mystery at the centre of the book.

Agatha Christie is facing the break down of her marriage as a new and younger woman enters her and her husband, Archie's, lives. The novel accounts for the real-life disappearance of Christie during a short period of time in the late 1920s.

I thought the premise of this book was so intriguing and de Gramont does a wonderful job describing the thoughts and feelings of the various characters in this novel. I was not expecting that back story of Nan and the connections to the Christie's - it had me researching information from this time period to learn more about Christie's actual disappearance. The author was able to weave so many different stories together quite well and I was so interested to know how everything connected in the end.

An addictive read I couldn't stop reading. The author breathes new life into this very mysterious event in Agatha Christie's life. The characters leap from the page. The emotional narration guts the reader, but in a good. I can't recommend this book enough!

My Rating: 5++ stars

Since I love all things Agatha Christie, it should come as no surprise that I loved this book so much. THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR is a must-read. Nina de Gramont wove together a story that was compelling and positively addictive. From beginning to end, I couldn't get enough.

Don't misunderstand, this is a strong 3 and not a tepid one, but I really needed more Agatha and less Nan. Also...I didn't really need to be sympathetic to this somewhat ancillary character. I didn't care for most of her decisions and I wasn't there for her story anyway, so.

I have been fascinated by Agatha Christie and her eleven days of disappearance since I heard about The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont. Though I ended up reading my favorite author, Marie Benedict’s rendition of the events in The Mystery of Mrs. Christie first (see review here), I expected Gramont’s book to add more dimension and its own unique take on the events that we don’t truly know transpired.

When I first started reading The Christie Affair, I compared it a lot to what I knew from The Mystery of Mrs. Christie. However, since both are speculative fiction about the famous mystery writer, Agatha Christie, there were a number of creative liberties taken by the authors and I had to work on disassociating what I thought I knew to what was happening in the book. While Agatha and Archie remain the same, I noticed that the name of their child is different (or maybe it is just what they call her) and in this version, Archie’s mistress, Nan, has a lot of the centre stage.

While Agatha is definitely a hook for readers to pick up the novel, The Christie Affair is an educational read about society, the view on pregnancy of unmarried Cathotic women, the effects of the war and much more. Nan is originally from Ireland and as I got to know her past life, it was impossible not to feel for her.

Falling in love with a soldier named Finbarr and then being separated from him on his return from the war, Nan is sent to the Magdalene Laundries when she finds out she is pregnant with his child. Having seen her sister be devastated by similar circumstances, Nan is bent on making a better life for herself and has the support of her mother to do so. However, the Magdalene Laundries are a horror in themselves with the priest sexually assualting pregnant girls and the residents working all day. They never get to keep their children and most importantly, they have to do good to be given the ‘privilege’ of tending to the babies born there. These chapters were a heartbreaking read and set the stage for a revenge/murder plot that I had not anticipated. The Laundries are also where Nan’s daughter is adopted and where begins Nan’s journey to reconnect with her.

Nan is driven to find her daughter and when she realizes who she is, she creeps into the lives of the Christies. There are a number of moral dilemmas that come up but to Nan, having lost Finbarr, her child is the only person that matters. How the plot unfolds and reveals these truths in conjugation with Agatha’s disappearance is brilliant writing and my skepticism about reading the mistress’ perspective went right out of the window. I understood Nan’s motivations and as expected from any mystery whether her truths are actually truths depends on perspective.

Moving on from Nan back to Agatha for a bit: I loved this Agatha. I found her to be a more vocal and vibrant version than The Mystery of Mrs Christie. She has learned some things about her marriage and her child that she has to reconcile with what she knows to be true while keeping in mind the people that she is interacting with – Archie and Nan have their own beliefs and interpretations and I felt that Agatha’s decisions at the end of the day balanced what she wanted and what was best for everyone.

It is clear that Archie has mistreated her and she needs to get out of an unhappy marriage. I liked that she had an instant spark with Chilton, the detective investigating her disappearance, and how the two of them had a bit of a cat and mouse chase going on. But as smart individuals with specialization in mysteries (solving vs writing), they made a great pair. The author also did a wonderful job in building each of the side characters, be it Chilton, Finbarr or the women and clergy at the institution.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. This review is posted on my website, Armed with A Book.

When the world’s most famous mystery disappears for eleven days it’s fair to say there is many curiosities about her disappearance. Agatha Christie’s husband has been cheating with Nan. Nan has a history that is totally unexpected.
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This story gives a lot of backstory about Christie’s personal relationships and the mystery surrounding her life.
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Thank you #StMartinsPress and #NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review