Cover Image: Part of the Family

Part of the Family

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Member Reviews

As a reader of suspense and thrillers I was looking forward to reading and reviewing The Most Difficult Thing by Charlotte Philby from the description sent for a preview pre press release.copy.

Thank you to the author, HarperCollins and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.

The story is based around four central characters - Anna, David, Harry and Maria

The Prologue has Anna about the leave her twin daughters Stella and Rose to start a new life without them,

Then the book starts with Anna, Meg and David being friends from university and staying as friends after their lives take different paths. Anna and Meg having an internship at a newspaper and David working his way up the career ladder in the City.

Another character enters the story in the form of “Harry” a reporter at the same newspaper that Anna and Meg had their internship with, but Anna had never seen him in the office, but is introduced to Anna when he arrives at a pub where Anna, Meg and David are drinking.

Harry is then unceremoniously sacked. This leads Anna to try to find out the reason why as Harry is a renown reporter. Anna is living a life of deceit and lies, even in her story of growing up and her earlier life before university.

Anna was a twin and after the death of her 6 year old brother, her mum and dad spiral into blaming her for his death after not watching him as she was asked whilst her mum goes off to do some paper work for her dad at the office and leaving her feeling unloved and no longer wanted.

Anna falls for Harry, but Meg is constantly telling her that it’s David who loves her and whilst Anna is in a relationship with Harry, Meg suddenly leaves their flat share with no explanation leaving Anna bereft and questioning what she had done to make Meg leave.

The story then really starts to unfold when Harry asks Anna to start sleeping with David as well as himself in exchange for information on David’s family company run by his dad Clive. A company that on the outside looks wonderful but underneath there is deceit and corruption and children and adults are dying in Africa from being poisoned by toxic waste.

Harry seems to have Anna wrapped around his little finger, leaving her for days, weeks with no contact and leading to Anna becoming eratic and unsure of what she is doing.

When she goes to Greece with David to meet Clive, Harry asks her to spy on Clive and to obtain information about the company and report back. Whilst there Anna is introduced to Maria an old friend of David’s since childhood and then the story is based around Anna and Maria telling their story, but who is telling the truth?

Anna becomes pregnant a few months into her relationship with David, but she is still sleeping with Harry. She is still spying on David and trying to gain information about Clive when one day there is a laptop on in the bedroom which leads her to question was it there earlier in the day? She has a look and is disturbed by what she is reading and copies the information into a secret email account for her and Harry to connect by.

After the twins are born, Maria is asked to come over to England to help with the twins as Anna is not coping since a traumatic birth. But is it the birth? Is it that she is having to spy on David? Or is it because she was a twin and now has twin girls and she cannot connect with them due to her own childhood?

As the story was unfolding, I was finding myself wanting to read more and more and not wanting to put my Kindle down. The ending was a good twist, but as others have said in their review, why the sudden end? Whose eyes were looking through the letter box? MI16, Maria, Clive, David, Harry? ....... or is Meg who she says she is? Did she go along with Harry and his plan? You never find out.

I must point out two errors that I found in my copy
1) When Anna was in the Maldives she gets a glass of water, but finishes drinking from a cup
2) When Anna and Clarissa go to lunch, they decide to eat at the bar, and then the papers are spread over a table whilst they eat.

I was torn between 4 or 5 stars and decided on 4, but only because I was surprised at the abrupt ending and left wondering was Anna murdered?

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“The most difficult thing”
Way better than I expected & kept me on my toes! I do definitely recommend it. Brilliant throughout with characters you could really identify with and lots of twists & denouements but the ending.......not happy! You’ll have to buy the next one

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The Most Difficult Thing by Charlotte Philby, granddaughter of the infamous Kim, is part spy thriller and part domestic drama and is mainly told from the POV of Anna, whose life encompasses uni student (where she meets David) to friend, girlfriend, spy, mother and wife in that order. The other POV is Maria, David's Greek childhood friend, who is later employed as a nanny for Anna & David's twins. I struggled with the structure of the plot, which for me rather messily swung between so many different timelines, and the choice of using Anna and Maria as they were so alike. I didn’t like any of the characters and felt little or no empathy with them. Weird title and weird ending - sorry not for me. Thanks to HarperCollins for the ARC.

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A mixed review from me. It opens with what seems like a tale of a marriage going south, but given the author is Kim Philby's granddaughter it's unsurprising perhaps that it turns out to have a strong espionage component. Ultimately I felt the motivations of the characters never properly rang true and too many threads were left unfinished, so was unsatisfied given I had been glued to it. The writing was good; the plot just didn't do it for me.

I received a NetGalley copy provided in return for an honest review.

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Are the characters on self-destruct, hiding bigger secrets or victims in someone else's lies? Or all three? Clever book, captivatingly told and which will surprise you throughout as more truths - if indeed they are truths - are revealed..

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The most difficult thing about this novel is understanding what on earth is going on. There are twists and turns all over the place. It switches from past to present without warning and the whole spy story is ridiculous. Anna is an unstable character who vomits and faints all over the place - how she manages to hold a successful carreer is unbelievable. She is all about her "girls" but has actually had nothing whatsoever to do with their upbringing. David loves her and seems to hate her. Maria adds her own version of events to muddy the waters further. Harry and Meg, Anna's mother and even Felicity of the park bench pop in and out of the story. All is revealed in the end with a series of contradictory letters which explain (!?) what has happened. And the ending - what the ****???? The basic story is not good enough for all this intrigue.

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Unput-downable (is that a word?)
One just had to keep reading to discover who was who and what they were doing. That wasn't easy. Anna, Maria, David and the peculiar Harry, all had something to hide, all involved, apparently, in spying or criminal worlds. Anna was perhaps the chief character, and I wasnt sure whether to feel sorry for her or whether to find her unbelievably selfish.
I did have to go back several times to be sure I hadnt missed something. The timelines were sometimes difficult.
And the ending....???
Thanks to NetGally for a review copy.

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‘The Most Difficult Thing’ is told through the female voices of Anna, mother of twin girls and married to David, a very wealthy partner in his father Clive’s firm, and Maria, Greek childhood friend of David, who is acting as nanny and housekeeper to the recently married couple. Both women are hoping to bring down Clive’s corrupt empire, yet only one is actually working for the British Secret Services. Anna is recruited by former lover Harry whilst Maria has been scouted by Felicity (who also approaches Anna at one point), and that makes all the difference.
The opening of the novel is intriguing as we follow Anna’s departure – it seems for ever – from the family London home as she travels to Greece on a secret mission. Already we understand that her domestic situation is strange: she will be abandoning her three-year-old girls and her husband and turning her back on her luxurious life-style and prestigious job as a magazine editor. Why?
The structure of Charlotte Philby’s first novel is sophisticated and effective, at times mimicking the way in which memories work, prompted by a word, an artefact, or a look. The reader is taken back and forth in time, sometimes decades, sometimes a mere few hours, as we learn about the women’s histories, motivations and ethics.
Overall, I found the novel to be a patchy read. The mid-section is over-long and some of the details of Clive’s business arrangements are unnecessarily protracted for a novel which focuses mostly on domestic duplicity. Anna and Maria’s narrative voices differ little, even though their actions tell us that they have almost nothing in common. Perhaps the weakest elements of the story are Anna’s acceptance of the suggestion that she should encourage David and that, even after three years, she finds it difficult to nurture her children, although well aware of her father-in-law’s ruthless approach to life.
My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, The Borough Press for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

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My thanks to NetGalley and publisher HarperCollins UK-The Borough Press, for the e-copy.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how to approach this review. In the beginning (as the saying goes) I was so totally drawn into the first chapters, so intrigued as to the background story leading up to a situation where a mother of twin girls was, for some reason, having to say goodbye to her children for what had to be the last time. Well, we do find out - eventually -, but not before navigating an extremely convoluted style of narration, alternately written between the wife, Anna, and the family's nanny, Maria. Now, don't get me wrong - I have absolutely loved a lot of books with individual first-person writing where the past slowly builds up to the present, but this really was confusing at times.
Basically, amidst all the toing and froing, this is a story about corporate spying and additional brushes with MI6. A story about a mega-rich conglomerate head, Clive, his equally rich son David, and investigations into their alleged dumping of toxic waste in Africa.
At times it came across as psychologically threatening and suspenseful, but most of the time I felt the characters were very thin - very one-dimensional, the plot overly-complicated, with an ending which just wasn't fair at all on anyone who had troubled themselves to read the whole book - let alone start re-reading it backwards to make some sense of it.

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I enjoyed this book, and found the story satisfyingly complex, with great twists. However the characters didn't really come alive for me, and I found it hard to care what happened to any of them. Perhaps the author tried too hard to be clever (which she certainly succeeded with) at the expense of good characterisation. I would read another book by this author.

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Well, an awkward book to read.I felt it confusing and inaccurate .
I finished the book in order to understand what was happening to Anna , Maria ,David and Harry. The end was unsatisfying and repetitive just a hurried piece of work that just ran out of steam.

The plot was unbelievable and it hoped that the reader would continue with the book by an act of faith in that things could get better.

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Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Don't make the mistake of trying to join the dots and work out the ending because you're still left guessing even when you've finished reading it ! Well worth a read.

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Thanks to netgalley for the chance to read in exchange for an honest review.

This wasn’t an easy read and to be honest I found it a bit confusing in places. I understood Anna’s recruitment to spy on her Father-in-Law, but didn’t understand Maria’s role. I didn’t understand David’s role - was he innocent and duped or in in it? Who did Harry work for? And whilst these questions were all cleared up in the last few chapters the ending frustrated me. Who looked at Anna through the letter box? They’d obviously come to kill her but who was it? David? Harry? Clive? I didn’t particularly like any of the characters, they were all hiding secrets and being deceitful but I did feel that they were well written and believable. A story of espionage and betrayal that is intelligently told but needs the reader to work with it.

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A complex fusion of psychological and spy thriller with domestic suspense makes ‘The Most Difficult Thing’ an intriguing, poignant, riveting read.

Anna is leaving her children, her husband, her successful career because she has no choice, but does she? Told from Anna and later Maria’s points of view, the story moves between the present and the past exploring how Anna finds herself with such a terrible choice.

Anna is an unreliable protagonist, emotionally damaged from a tragic accident in her past, and her parents’ reaction to it, she seeks anonymity at university, changing her name, family background and meeting Meg and David. Her choices are always questionable once she leaves university. Ripe for manipulation, and craving acceptance and love, her life is tangled in a web of deceit and dangerous secrets that threaten her life and her sanity.

Maria is out for revenge and finds the opportunity for it in a fatalistic way.

The story is detailed, with many timeline changes. The menacing ethos of the plot is disturbing, the evil of rich, politically connected individuals, uses the protagonists as pawns in a chess game. The sense of hopelessness and loss is profound, but there is enlightenment in unexpected places and a glimmer of a chance of justice for the victims.

There are many twists in this story, some expected, some not. Particularly in the closing chapters, the story is challenging, you need to concentrate, otherwise, you will miss the clues to discover the true state of events. The book ends with a question, about Anna’s future, which could go either way.

I received a copy of this book from Harper Collins UK - The Borough Press via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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I liked the idea of The Most Difficult Thing but found the book, itself, didn't quite hook me. This book reminded me strongly of The Little Drummer Girl, as I couldn't warm to the female lead there either. There were also hints of The Night Manager (which I didn't read but did watch the BBC adaptation), in the exotic locations and the novice suddenly becoming able in spy craft. Though decidedly different, it came across as vague, in a guise to deceive smartly, but just confused instead. Anna struck me as shallow and didn't seem to have ample motivation to do the things she did. It seemed unlikely and not believable. I'm not saying this isn't a worthy thriller but, for me, it just didn't gel.

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When Anna went to university she reinvented herself to escape her reputation and her Northern background. She shared accommodation with Meg and they formed close friendships with another Uni pal, David and Harry a journalist. From the outset Anna was fascinated by Harry even though it was obvious David was interested her. After Uni Meg manages to get intern posts for herself and Anna on a magazine and all is well for the four friends. One day, Meg just ups and leaves with no explanation leaving Anna upset and confused. David (the son of a millionaire) is on hand to help Anna and she moves in with him, meanwhile still seeing Harry but their relationship is a secret as requested by Harry.

As the story develops we learn that Harry who is an investigative journalist is working on a case investigating David’s millionaire father who is suspected of dumping toxic waste. He coaxes Anna to spy on David’s father and reveals that he is working for a government agency. Anna, besotted complies. The action takes place in London, Greece and the Maldives and when Anna delivers twins in a traumatic episode David’s Greek childhood friend, Maria is there to save the day and act as the children’s nanny. The plot is narrated through Anna and Maria’s perspective and revolves around espionage, domestic relationships and betrayal.

One word for this, magnificent! I found my focus was on Anna and David and I had difficulty understanding how she could maintain her feelings for Harry and risk all for him: and I found David’s shift in emotions baffling – was he not the hero? Or was he? Loved the twist with the will and then right in the last couple of pages an even bigger twist. Oh well done Ms Philby! Mind you, I am somewhat confused as to who was at the door…

Loved it, loved it, loved it. Really cannot recommend it enough.

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

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A strange read. I wasn't sure who Anna was working for and what was real, she seemed a very shallow character. We see her preparing to leave her three year old twins, and it looks like she has a maternal relationship with them, but on reading the book it seems she spent no time with them. And who Maria is working for? Who is the mysterious Harry? Everything seems just that bit too facile. I did enjoy the book, but the ending left me scratching my head. Who was at the door and what actually happened? #netgalley #mostdifficultthing

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It's difficult to nail this securely to a particular genre. It's a tale of lies and betrayal, of love and loss, it's billed as espionage but Le Carré or Fleming it certainly isn't.

Anna, David and Meg have been friends since university. The mysterious Harry had been a star reporter and Anna is in his thrall when she begins sharing a flat with David, a millionaire's son, initially as a purely practical arrangement.
It turns out the arrangement suits Harry's purposes well as he claims to be a Government spy who is currently working on exposing the illegal activities of David's father, Clive, and his company and he recruits Anna to help him.

Anna's relationship with David becomes more intimate, first casually but gradually deepens, however, Harry is the true love and the situation with David is ambiguous at best.

I understand that Charlotte Philby is trying to nuance the motivations of those who end up in espionage and see how it might work for a woman. To demonstrate how a series of individual choices can set a person's path in a direction they might not have chosen at the start. I found myself regularly doubting the likelihood of any of this but this is where the granddaughter of Kim Philby holds the ace. At the same time I struggled to empathise and it was a pretty slow read. The regular switches back and forth in time and the changes of narrator between Anna and David's childhood friend Maria are clever and are and interesting way to allow the story to unfold but I found the timeline difficult to follow and the voices of Anna and Maria were too similar.

It's well conceived, I believe it's well crafted, it's getting good reviews, it's a promising debut by a writer who is uniquely qualified but I'm not sure I'm the right reader!
ARC courtesy Netgalley

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The Most Difficult Thing by Charlotte Philby sounds great. A domestic spy thriller and all the ingredients seem to be there. But somehow, the mix doesn’t quite deliver. I found the central character incredibly self obsessed and therefore quite difficult to engage with. She walks out on a life of plenty and the action moves to Greece. Then I found the narrative rather confusing and couldn’t work out if it was poor storytelling, or if I wasn’t concentrating. If the latter, then clearly the book has failed in some way because it couldn’t hold my attention.

I ended up skim reading the second half and although it packs a final punch, it’s rather a tortuous route to get there. Overall, a disappointment.

My thanks to the publisher for an early r3view copy via Netgalley.

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The author comes with an interesting background as former journalist for the Independent and also the granddaughter of the UK’s most famous communist double agent, Kim Philby, also with high praise from Louise Candlish on the blurb for this book
It took, for me, a long time to read and am not quite sure now finished it why what happened happened!!
Quite confusing in parts and with one of the most unlikeable, self centred main characters,Anna, I have met in a book the story seems to trundle on at a lethargic speed with an unbelievable ‘spy’ story that I just couldn’t relate to
The promise is there and all the mainstays of a good tale but somehow it just never resonated with me and there were too many flaws in it and when the ‘action’ does happen its all rather benign
The ending left it open with more unanswered than answered questions!!
Got to say the descriptive writing of things unrelated to the actual bones of the book ie scene settings and atmospheres, feelings etc were excellent and probably kept me reading the book rather than the actual story
I would definitely read the 2nd book by the author when its out as I am sure a great book is there, just not for me, this time

4/10 2 Stars

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