3.5 ✨

I was very pleased to see there was a new Anna Hopebook, and immediately picked this one up.
Set in the most fraught of times, a family funeral.
It has a fairly small cast, in terms of the family, and a few estate workers, but there's plenty of high emotions running.
I enjoyed the talk of the rewilding.
A few surprises for me and the characters on the way, but amongst that were what felt like genuine moments of connection.

The Brooke siblings return to the familial estate for the funeral of the patriarch, Philip, who appears to be a fairly odious and entitled man.

The story addresses the complexity of the family relationships to each other, and to the two men who work the estate and the daughter of the woman that Philip left them for for a number of years. Each of the characters, whilst initially seeming quite one dimensional - Grace, the mother is emotionally unavailable, Frannie, the eldest daughter is seemingly defined by her sense of responsibility to the estate and rewinding project, etc. but they each, through a carefully winding story arc develop into intriguing individuals each carrying their own scars from their father’s behaviour.

There is a wonderful constant theme of the rewilding of the family estate driven by Philip and Frannie, showing even the worst people are not all bad!

I enjoyed this gentle story that ably carried weighty themes.