Faith’s first view of their new home of Vale is through grey fog shrouding the island. When on land, they discover their new house is barely serviced with servants, with only two on hand for all of their needs. Faith’s mother Myrtle is mortified.

Faith’s father Reverend Erasmus Sunderly is the reason for the move from their home in London, as he has been personally invited to an important archaeological dig. Faith adores her father, despite his aloofness bordering on coldness to his wife, daughter and young son Howard.

After all, Erasmus has been dubbed a genius in his field as a gentleman scientist in Natural History. Ever since he discovered a fossil of a winged human shoulder, he has been world renowned and the whole family able to bathe in the praise.

Faith herself is voraciously interested in her father’s work, but Victorian society deems it unseemly for women to aspire to such heights. This has moulded Faith into a quiet, compliant daughter who is considered practically invisible.

When an opportunity to look through her father’s papers lands in her lap, she grabs it, learning more about her father than ever before. As a Reverend, he is struggling with a new publication by a man called Charles Darwin. Darwin believes that man came from evolution over millions of years – not God himself.

Erasmus acts strangely soon after arrival to the island, locking himself in the library, now deemed his office and where he must not be disturbed. He has moved all his scientific specimens to a building on the property, forbidding anyone go near it and even setting up gin-traps around the perimeter so no one will enter. What is he hiding?

When Faith learns the truth, she wonders of his sanity. And suddenly he is dead.

Was it suicide? Was it murder?

Faith is tired of being the timid sparrow, dictated by her rank and birth and society’s constraints on her. She is determined to learn more of her father’s secrets and find his murderer before her family loses everything.

The Lie Tree is an astonishing novel with an atmospheric setting, an engaging main character and an incredibly imaginative premise.

The setting of Vale Island is captured early, within a heaviness that seems to hang over the story. First with thick grey fog and then the weight of expectation on main character Faith’s shoulders, for the only reason that she was born a girl. She is to be seen as mild, meek and well mannered as her position in her wealthy family expects. Her dreams of being a Naturalist Scientist like her respected father have never been voiced and she believes never will.

But as in all great writing, a change in circumstances pivots the plot – into danger for Faith wherever she turns. Her transformation in stepping up to the lies told and the lies she must tell is riveting and satisfying as she investigates a murder and decorum is tossed underfoot as she searches for the truth.

One of the most gripping novels I’ve read in ages. I didn’t want to put it down – not only because it was so intriguing, but Hardinge’s writing had me rereading sentences more than once for the pure beauty in them.

Wow!

Author – Frances Hardinge

Age – 12+

Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2016

Winner of the Costa Children’s Book 2016

See more reviews of Frances Hardinge novels (Click on a Cover)

(2015, Victorian, Historical, Family, Murder, Mystery, Crime, Science, Secret, Fantasy, Betrayal, Atmospheric, Costa Award, Island, Society Rules, Investigate, Madness, Insanity, Tree, Lies, Courage)