A well-described portrait of an English family piecing together and evaluating their lives after the patriarch of the family dies. The home plays a major role in this novel, as both a setting and a construction around which the many lives revolve. Not only does this book help us to connect with the characters in this family (and those in their periphery) but it helps the reader reflect on history and hard truths, as well as considering our future. Thoroughly enjoyed this book!!

I adore this type of book: semi-estranged family members come together over a few short days and unearth lots of secrets and drama and confusion. In this iteration, the patriarch of a huge estate in the English countryside has just died, and everyone has come home for the funeral. Frannie is the oldest daughter and has inherited the estate, and she is barely keeping it together: she's struggling with parenting her precocious daughter Rowan and managing an estate that is in financial disrepair. Isa hated her father and hasn't been home in years, and Milo i Grace, the matriarch, endured her husband's philandering throughout their marriage and has become numb to everything around her. Then Isa invites a guest that no one is prepared for, and things get complicated.

This book asks a lot of interesting questions about what people's responsibilities to the world are and what it means to do something morally good. While the siblings' father was alive, he and Frannie devised a plan to re-wild the estate and its lands and bring back nature, and they have a vision of a long nature corridor across England that would restore the lands and create more carbon, fighting climate change. But Frannie is challenged by others who ask her who this really benefits, if this is the best use of her generational wealth, and if restoring the English countryside is anything other than a vanity project. Throughout the story, she begins to question her previously unshakeable faith that what she and her father had done was something to admire. It's really interesting, and I appreciated that the characters all had different reactions and served as different sides of the debate.

The family dynamics in this book are also sketched extremely well. Frannie, Isa, and Milo were all raised in the same household, but they essentially had different fathers, which reveals so much about their individual personalities, how mercurial their father was, and the interplay between nature and nurture. They are so prickly with each other, but there's also a deep comfort and warmth between them somehow. I enjoyed getting each of their perspectives - it added so much. I really enjoyed this book and will be thinking about it for a while.

The land itself is also a character, which was lovely. We get most of that from Rowan, Frannie's daughter, who knows so much about nature and spends her days deeply connected with everything around her.

<spoiler> I thought that the twist was kind of stupid. To be clear, I think it is unequivocally good to shed light on what our ancestors have done and be accountable for the root of our money and such. But I found it pretty unbelievable that no one in the family knew that their great-grandfather (or great-great grandfather? Either way) had connections to the slave trade. That seems like something that would be unearthed way earlier, especially if Frannie had undertaken to transform the estate. And they didn't look into the origins of the name Albion when they chose it or do any due diligence. It just felt kind of contrived. I know it was a vehicle to push the family - especially Frannie - to confront the limitations of their politics and the damage their estate and wealth had caused, but it fell a little flat for me. </spoiler>

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

I fell into this book and didn't come up for air until I reached the last page. Each character was well-created, simultaneously sympathetic and unsympathetic in their own ways just like real people. The central "mystery" of the story, embodied by the presence of the character Claudia, was not what I expected, and as that mystery unfurled I was transfixed. An absolute stunner of a book, really and truly.

I really have to be in the mood for a rich people behaving badly story - but this was perfect for when that time struck! The characters especially really felt realistic and flawed.

The Brooks family of Sussex is gathering at home on their 1000 acre estate to prepare to bury their father Phillip (quite the cad).
Three adult children Frannie, Milo, and Isa..
Frannie being the one who will inherit it all.. she is the oldest and had been working with her father on rewilding the land.
Their mother just wants to move out of the huge 20 bedroom crumbling mansion into a cottage on the land.
Phillip treated her badly all the years of the marriage until he got sick and needed her.
There are a couple very endearing male characters who have lived and worked the land in this story also.
This is a novel with themes of inheritance, trauma, and nature, and human nature and fascinating characters.

I previously enjoyed this author’s book The Ballroom.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the ARC!

Anna Hope's 'Albion' is a masterfully crafted, slow-burning novel that delves into the intricate dynamics of a family grappling with legacy, identity, and the weight of history. Set over five days in a decaying Sussex estate, the story unfolds as the Brooke family gathers to mourn the death of patriarch Philip Brooke, a man whose influence loomed large over their lives.

The narrative centers on Philip's three children: Frannie, the eldest, who envisions rewinding the estate as a sanctuary against climate catastrophe; Milo, a newly sober visionary aiming to transform the land into a psychedelic retreat for the elite; and Isa, the youngest, seeking solace and clarity amidst personal turmoil. The arrival of Clara, a woman from America bearing secrets that challenge the family's understanding of their heritage, adds a layer of complexity to the unfolding drama.

Hope's prose is both lyrical and incisive, capturing the essence of the English countryside while probing deep into themes of colonial legacy, environmental responsibility, and familial obligation. The estate itself becomes a character, symbolizing both the grandeur of the past and the uncertainties of the future.

While the novel's pacing is deliberate, it allows for a profound exploration of its characters' inner lives and the moral quandaries they face. The climax, a tension-filled family dinner, serves as a poignant culmination of the simmering conflicts and revelations.

Yeah, this one was for me. It’s a character-driven character study, revolving around a family coming together after the death of the patriarch, Philip, who still looms large over everyone. Frannie is the eldest daughter, devoted to her father even in his passing and committed to his vision of rewilding the gigantic estate his family has owned for centuries. Milo, Philip’s son, is a wanderer and a fuck-up, with grand ideas of turning part of the family land into a “retreat” of sorts for the ultra-wealthy to do a lot of drugs and rebuild the ruling class in England. Isa, the youngest, isn’t much concerned about the estate or her siblings, but with finding her first love who still lives on the family estate and who she believes is the reason her marriage is failing. Grace is Philip’s wife, coming to terms with aging and a life spent unhappily, with a partner who gave her nothing of himself. Clara is the newcomer, claiming to be a daughter of Philip’s that he never acknowledged, conceived when he left the family years ago and spent years in the states. The setting of this is perfect, a gigantic countryside estate, and Hope does such a great job with descriptive imagery of both the nature surrounding the main house, and the main house itself, a Greek revival monstrosity that has housed generations of this unhappy family. This is a family with opposing motivations and different life views, and the characters feel like fleshed-out representations of the dying breed of English aristocracy, to me, an American idiot. There’s conversations about environmental degradation and class divides and familial legacy and so much more. Definitely a new favorite read of the year for me.

Not quite what I was expecting from the Blurbs, Albion was an insightful read centered on one landed family in current day England. While the sibling struggle with their grief and the fallout of their father's death and eccentric life, they try to determine how to continue to sustainably manage the family estate and keep the land in their family. When a potential fourth heir appears, the centuries old source of the family's wealth is brought to life and muddies each of their plans and dreams.

'Albion' by Anna Hope begins like many novels written before it, about a grand English country estate facing dire straits-- its long-standing patriarch is dead, the money is running out, and the successors are all a bit messed up in their own way. My entire time reading, I was waiting for some upside, whether it be in the characters, the pacing of the plot, and coming to the whole point of this novel. While there were some moments in which I felt for various characters, Grace and Frannie being perhaps the most full-formed, most of these characters felt more like poorly sketched out archetypes of people I do believe exist in our world. So, basically, there were a lot of surface-level f*ck-ups and perhaps that's what Hope was going for (?). Regardless, it didn't make for a particularly enjoyable reading experience. I think the most pain came in the final 25% in which everything this book was leading up to, but gave hardly any indication of, was all revealed in a span of 10-15 pages from the mouth of the most cliche messenger.
I had no issues with Hope's diction nor syntax because otherwise her use of the English language was pretty conventional and the concepts she imbibed into her characters were, like I said, cliche and archetypal. I understand the message she was conveying, but I don't think 'Albion' delivered it in the most clever way.

Anna Hope's writing is lovely, and I went into this very excited. I liked the setting of the large country home in England, but all of the land information kind of lost me. Combined with the mostly unlikeable characters, this was a miss for me. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

Set within the grand, crumbling walls of an eighteenth-century English estate, the novel opens with a funeral and spirals outward into a rich tapestry of memory, ideology, and personal reckoning.

At the center is the late Philip Brooke, a patriarch whose absence casts as long a shadow as his presence once did. His children return home not only to bury him but to claim—whether through nostalgia, ideology, or ambition—what they believe he left them. Frannie, the earnest conservationist, imagines a rewilded utopia; Milo, equal parts visionary and charlatan, dreams of an elite eco-escape soaked in psychedelics; and Isa, the youngest, wants to locate her own emotional truth amid the ruins of love and identity. Then there’s Clara, an American outsider with a past threatening to upend them all—a narrative catalyst whose arrival turns private grief into public reckoning.

Hope’s prose is elegant and incisive, effortlessly moving between interiority and grand themes: the inheritance of land and trauma, the blind spots of privilege, and the deep fractures between siblings shaped by the same soil but vastly different desires. The novel’s landscape—lush, storied, and on the brink of both decay and transformation—mirrors the family itself.

What makes Albion so powerful is its refusal to romanticize the past or tidy the future. It’s a climate novel, yes, but also a searing exploration of how the personal and political entangle—how dreams, no matter how noble or delusional, cannot be divorced from the histories they emerge from.

Bold, contemporary, and deeply humane, this is a triumph of storytelling—at once intimate and expansive, tender and unflinching. It confronts both the ghosts of the past and the dreams that may not survive the future.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Albion is a beautifully woven novel that explores the quiet power of memory, grief, and connection across generations. Anna Hope's lyrical prose brings both the characters and the landscape to life, creating a story that feels deeply intimate yet universally resonant. This book lingers long after the final page, leaving you reflecting on the ties that bind us to place and to each other.

A sneakily solid read. Family drama encased in masterful writing. Took a few chapters for me to find my footing but I ended up fully immersed in the lives of these privileged, damaged siblings.

Look for this beautiful book in June! Thank you @harpercollins for the galley.

Frannie, Milo and Isabella- despite (or because of) having grown up on an English countryside estate that’s been in their family for seven generations, these grown siblings find themselves grappling to make sense of their individual relationships with their recently deceased father. Distant and cold until the end of his life, Phillip bequeathed his entire estate to his oldest daughter with whom he shared a vision for the health of the land and the planet. But Frannie’s not sure she’s up to the challenge. Enter Clara, the American daughter of Phillip’s long-time affair…and step-sibling of his children? Either way, Clara feels it her duty to disclose her findings on this family’s dark past.