I liked, but didn't love, this book. I adored the relationship between Mrs Baker and Astrid, and the depictions of their life in the windmill. I found parts of the story unbearably sad. I wanted there to be more to the big mystery at the heart of the book than there was, and I'm not sure what the letters from the previous bohemian owner of the windmill actually brought to the story. I was hoping for more of a thriller but this was very much a slow burner. Three and a half stars.

Astrid was an actress with a promising career until an incident in a Scottish hunting lodge ruined that. She is now in her 80’s, living with her elderly companion Mrs Baker in a dilapidated cottage next to a windmill when she hears a memoir is being written that could reveal more secrets about her past.
This book is full of comedy and fascinating characters, but the slow pace of the story did cause me to struggle with it.

I’ve enjoyed some of the authors previous novels and was looking forward to reading Windmill Hill with its beautiful cover. It took me a long time to get through this novel, although it’s well written it was a very slow paced read and I found the humour and eccentricities of the main character forced and so the narrative did not flow for me.
There are lots of good reviews for this so please do read those, it just wasn’t one for me.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

This is a difficult one for me. I don’t want to give a bad review because this wasn’t a bad book.
But sadly, it just wasn’t for me, as there were too many turn-off elements for me.
Having read Lucy Atkinson before, I really wasn’t expecting this style of writing. And unfortunately, I’m really not a fan of ‘humorous writing’, especially when it feels a bit too try-hard.
There were several times in the book when I was very close to putting this on the ‘DNF’ pile - mainly because Atkinson employed too many of my pet peeves about humorous fiction.
The references to the ‘awful incident’ and the scandal at the hunting lodge were very reminiscent of Stella Gibbons ‘something terrible in the wood shed’ in Cold Comfort Farm. The overt eccentricity of Astrid’s character; Tony Blair the stuffed ferret; the thieves known as The Slipper Gang … just a bit too laboured for me.
Well, at least there weren’t silly names for the characters (which really is my number one pet peeve). But, oh wait! Three quarters of the way in and there’s a mention of a ‘Clarissa Pelham-Hole’. Urgh! I’m curmudgeonly, I know, but the employment of ridiculous names just really does my nut in!

So yet again, this is definitely an “it’s not you, it’s me” review.
There were some lovely and quite poignant moments and I really loved the ending. But overall, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Sorry!

This was a slow burner and it took a while for me to get into it. Very much a character driven book . It has an element of historical to it for those who love that genre.

Lucy Atkins is at her best when observing day to day life in the English country side and this book will transport you to the windmill in question and the inhabitants of the locality. I found the plot a little slow to start but it's an absorbing read

Astrid lives in a semi-derelict windmill with her dashunds, all named after brands of gin, and with Mrs Baker, who came to a quick clean and never left. This was a brilliant exploration of relationships, marriages good and bad, stardom, memory, kindness and things left unsaid. I also learned a lot about the workings of a windmill. Fabulous writing, witty, completely absorbing and with wonderful descriptions of the landscape and environment. I loved it and highly recommend.

Although I loved Atkins previous novel’ Magpie Lane, Windmill Hill just wasn’t for me. This is entirely a matter of personal preference: the book is beautifully written but to enjoy it, I feel you really need to also enjoy the characters of Astrid and Mrs Baker, and I didn’t.

A beautiful story that kep turning page, Strong and well rounded characters, excellent storytelling
Highly recommended
Many’s thanks to the publisher, all opinions are mine

It took me a while to get into this but when it got going it captivated me. I loved the female characters and their narratives.
Astrid's ex husband Magnus is dying, and is planning a memoir. Astrid has a secret she wants to keep and goes rushing to see him to try to talk to him to find just how much his tell-all entails!
Astrid lives in a windmill with her friend Mrs Baker, who has secrets of her own. Both women have been treated very badly by the men in their lives.
It's a great read, it's not as dark as I was expecting. It's quirky, funny in parts and whilst it was slow to start, it is well worth sticking with.

Fabulous characters ,a whole lot of past trauma and a lot of love
The trauma is not painted so grimly it’s hard to read ,I tend to avoid them, this is just moving and touches on the sins of men and the battles us women face
It’s about bonds we make and the comfort we find in our fellow female friends
How we take each other in and support one another to face and recover form challenges
It’s about the weakness of men and their power and the way that is abused
It’s also about forgiveness ,repenting and new beginning's
This author doesn’t dissapoint
This may be strangely less dark in some ways than her previous novels and is lighter at times
It is though dark and has a shocking example of exploitation I have ever read ,i literally was like woooh what is that about and had to research it as was so astounded
It’s a good novel ,it took me awhile to get into it and at times was confused but i stuck with it and I’m glad I did
I felt v v v close to the women characters and ithe windmill was wonderful to imagine and a character in its own right.
The windmill finally moves again as the lead characters find their closures and their next chapters

I probably felt equally amused and annoyed by the end of this book. The flitting about of thought and therefore story was too much for me. It’s a gentle enough ramble but lacked something to get me enthralled.

This is a terrific character driven novel, one where an old windmill in Sussex feels like a character in its own right.

Astrid owns the windmill and she lives with Mrs Baker, three dachshunds and a whole wealth of hurt about the event that happened in the 70s that put paid to Astrid's career on the stage. Now all these years later her ex-husband Magnus Fellowes is writing a memoir and Astrid is determined to keep her name out of anything printed.

One of Astrid's plans to make money over the years was to fully transcribe and write a book about the windmill's owner in the 1920s, Constance Battiscombe so we are treated to her tale also.

I think Lucy Atkins is a brilliant author and this book deserves the time to fully enjoy this unique read.

I felt swept away whilst reading. I loved the idyllic settings and quirky characters. Elegantly told with a huge enjoyment factor. Lucy never disappoints me!

As ever with Lucy Atkins this is a gem built up layer upon layer. Plot, location,characters and pacing are all deployed to excellent, most enjoyable, effect.

From the beginning, where a tantalising diagram fills the reader in on the layout between the cottage and the windmill itself - joined by an underground tunnel (what could possibly go right?) Ms Atkins sets us on course for a complex and engrossing tale involving a cast of carefully drawn characters and the way their lives are intertwined
down the years.

I particularly liked the way memory was used, characters' thoughts drifting in and out through the narration to add resonance.

The location alone scream Netflix to me!

EXCERPT: There had been the sound of tyres on the chalk path one summer's evening, and a tentative knock on the door. A tall, thin young man stood on the threshold, wearing a black suit that was several sizes too large for him. 'I've brought the hearse,' he said.
It felt like a continuity error. 'Am I dead?' she asked. She saw the hearse, parked in the courtyard.
It took them a while to work out that he'd come to the wrong windmill - he was supposed to be collecting a body from another mill twelve miles away. As omens went, it had felt pretty heavy-handed and for a while Astrid had lived with a sense of dread. This had, of course, turned out to be entirely misplaced, because here she was at eighty-two, alive and well. Or maybe not well, exactly, but certainly N.D.Y.

ABOUT 'WINDMILL HILL': In the 1970s, a single night in a remote hunting lodge with a Hollywood director and his leading lady causes an international scandal that wrecks Astrid's glittering stage career and rips apart her marriage.

Her ex-husband, the charismatic Scottish actor Magnus Fellowes, finds global fame, while Astrid retreats to a Sussex windmill. Now 82, she lives there still, with a troupe of dachshunds and her loyal friend, Mrs Baker, who came to clean over twenty years ago, and never left. But Mrs Baker has a troubled past too - one that's caught up with them. There has been an 'Awful Incident' at the windmill; police are sniffing around. Then Astrid hears that Magnus, now on his death bed, is writing a tell-all memoir. Furious, she sets off for Scotland, determined to stop him, at all costs.

MY THOUGHTS: Windmill Hill is a book to be lingered over, a bit like a fine red wine. Take your time and appreciate it.

Astrid is the most fascinating character that I have come across in a long time. She possesses a chaotic mind and feels no different, inside, at eighty-two than she did at thirty-two. It's just her aging body that slows her down - different parts of her body behaving like tantruming toddlers. I love her thought processes, or perhaps her lack of them. She flits from one thought, one subject to the next with no apparent, to the reader, connection. Strangely, libraries fill Astrid with gloom - they are a harsh reminder of all that she will never know.

Mrs Baker is the perfect foil. She is as steady and solid and practical as Astrid is a flibbertigibbet. Astrid's companion for over two decades, she says she only stayed because she felt sorry for Astrid. But Mrs Baker, too, has a secret in her past. Mrs Baker isn't Mrs Baker.

Although the plot dives off on tangents and jumps about in both timeline and subject randomly and quite without warning, it works and rather wonderfully.

Other than the mysteries contained within, revealed tantalisingly slowly, Windmill Hill is a story of love. A love that may have been ignored, buried and denied, but which has never died.

Windmill Hill is both entertaining and strangely soothing. I chuckled and wept, probably in equal amounts. This is deserving of a second read, and probably more than that. I look forward to reading it again many times in the future. A definite keeper.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#WindmillHill #NetGalley

I: @lucyatkinswriter @quercusbooks

T: @lucyatkins @QuercusBooks

#contemporaryfiction #domesticdrama #historicalfiction #love #mystery

Before becoming an author, Lucy worked for Amnesty International (UK), and then the Times Literary Supplement. She studied English at Oxford University and was a Fulbright Scholar to the USA for a Masters in English & American literature. She has lived in Boston, Seattle and Philadelphia, and is now based in Oxford with her family.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Quercus Books via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Windmill Hill by Lucy Atkins for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

I like to judge a book by it’s first line and this one is a corker ‘Hendricks had eaten her hearing aids and her wrist was on fire. those were Astrid’s two most pressing problems.’
82 year old Astrid has retreated to a derelict South Downs windmill with her dachshunds, who are all named after brands of gin, following an international scandal in Hollywood that ruined her glittering stage career and her marriage.
She lives with her friend, Mrs Baker, who came to clean 20 years ago and never left.
Beautifully written, with witty observations of enduring friendship - what a duo, friends till the end,
Thanks @lucyatkinswriter, @quercusbooks & @netgalley for the eARC

Windmill Hill is the story of Astrid, an octogenarian former actress who owns a dilapidated windmill in Sussex. She lives in the cottage adjoining the mill with her friend Eileen and three miniature wire-haired dachshunds, trying to make her small pension stretch as far as possible.

The story is told in quite a non-linear way, with plenty of flashbacks to important and/or traumatic events in Astrid’s life, spliced together with correspondence to and from the windmill’s former owner Lady Constance. I got quite confused in places, but it all made sense in the end. I got to know and love Astrid, Eileen, Nina and the dogs and had to keep reading to find out what had happened and how it would resolve.

An enjoyable read.

**TRIGGER WARNING** Domestic Abuse.

In the 1970s. a single night in a remote hunting lodge with a Hollywood director and his leading lady causes an international scandal that wrecks Astrids glittering stage career and rips apart her marriage. Her ex-husband, the charismatic Scottish actor Magnus Fellowes, finds global fame, while Astrid retreats to a Sussex windmill. Now 82, she lives there still, with a troupe of dachshunds and her loyal friend, Mrs baker, who came to clean over twenty-years-ago and never left. But Mrs Baker had a troubled life too - one that's caught up with them. There has been an 'Awful Incident' at the windmill; police are sniffing around. Then Astrid hears that Magnus, now on his deathbed, is writing a tell-all memoir. Furious, she sets off for Scotland, determined stop him, at all costs.

This story has a dual timeline, the present day, and the early 1920s when Constance Battiscombe owned the windmill. I really liked Astrid and Mrs Baker who were quite quirky characters. and their hilarious conversations. Both women have suffered bad treatment from the men in their lives. The pace is on the slow side but there is enough going on to hold your attention and stop it from wandering. I loved the way this book ended.

I would like to thank #Netgalley #QuercusBooks and the author #LucyAtkins for my ARC of #WindmillHill in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars.
Magnus Fellowes is writing his tell-all memoir. At least his son is overseeing it as he is on his deathbed. One of the stories he is hinting at telling is one that happened back in the 70s and concerned his ex-wife Astrid Miller. Astrid now lives in a windmill, with her housekeeper Mrs Baker, and three dachshunds. A windmill that has a chequered past with the previous owner, Lady Constance Battiscombe, who lived there in the 20s.
Are you still with me? It's all a bit convoluted to be honest. But please do stick with it, the book, not my review, as it is rich in quality, and will eventually all come together.
To say that Astrid is worried about the memoir and its potential revelations is an understatement and so the crux of the book concerns her endeavours to find out what Magnus is intending to tell.
But outwith all that, this is a very character driven story. We are privy to the wonders of the two eccentric elderly women and their day-today lives, and that of their menagerie. I include the stuffed stoat here too! We also learn more of the Windmill's past - and yes, you can consider that to be a character too as it is integral to pretty much everything. The past, concerning Constance, is told in the form of letters, peppered throughout the narrative, adding spice and other flavouring to the whole story. And then there's the "incident" and how they must keep that secret...
And if all that and the scandal wasn't enough, I also learned a lot about windmills. And that I found to be very interesting indeed. As already mentioned the mill itself is front and centre in the story and deserves to shine. And, more importantly, the inns and outs of how it all works was woven so seamlessly into the story itself that it never felt distracting.
All in all a good solid read that I thoroughly recommend. A worthy addition to an already impressive back catalogue. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.