Horatia's Secret: New Edition

I found Horatia's Secret to be full of accurate period detail and interesting characters. It isn't just Horatia guarding a secret and the author evokes so well the inner turmoil of deciding if, when and to whom to reveal it.

This first novel from Lily Style is a charming and very engaging read. The characters of all ages are brought very vividly to life and the reader empathises with their difficulties and suffering. The author is able to write, what is often, a sad and tragic story with a wonderful lightness of touch and a great deal of humour.I felt transported back to earlier times by the excellent period details and lively conversation of the characters.I very much hope we will see more from this accomplished and skilful storyteller.

This is an enchanting story, well researched and full of detail. Although the author's style of using multiple narrators can make it a bit difficult to get into at the beginning - if you persevere, you will find that the characters hook you in and the story carries you along... till you are left wanting to read the sequel...

The author has woven an imaginative and compelling story around the relationship between Lady Emma Hamilton and her daughter Horatia. It transpires that Nelson and Emma’s efforts to conceal the fact that Horatia was their daughter blighted her life.The consequences of keeping the secret that Emma was her mother are revealed in this story of an imagined meeting in a seaside town in Devon where Horatia, her cousin, a family friend and several grandchildren gathered to spend a few days together.This engaging and plausible story highlights the sadness Horatia suffered throughout her life. A sadness created by the deliberately obscured details of her birth.

I usually avoid historical stories but really did enjoy this book. The characters were so well described that I could imagine them moving and talking vividly. My favourite was Ethel! Also it was interesting to know how people lived differently depending on what class they were from. I am so looking forward to the next book.

Horatio Nelson is of course universally hailed as the hero of Trafalgar. His name is also, more scurrilously,linked forever with Emma, Lady Hamilton. The author of this fascinating novel is the third great granddaughter of Horatia, the offspring of that liaison.With the benefit of access to a wealth of family papers the author has produced a most readable account of Horatia and the personal angst that was her life's burden.The dialogue and characters are delightfully engaging. The story is told sensitively and convincingly, with fiction used to join up the dots of historical fact. Each chapter begins with a snippet of historical record which adds context to the narrative. The story flows well, being at times poignant, and other times humorous. A good read for all, but especially for those interested in fact-based Georgian and Victorian historical fiction and the heroes and anti -heroes.

Horatia's Secret is a remarkable feat of imagination by an author in complete control of her material. Lily Style draws on extensive research of her Nelson/Hamilton family ancestors and pieces together a compelling narrative from scant documentation and inventive dialogue. In addition, she subtly introduces comparisons between the lives of the middle and even upper middle classes residing in the country with carriages and household staff with those of the working classes obliged to live in unhygienic town centres, in overcrowded unfit accommodation and at risk of typhoid infection, engaged in a constant struggle to scrape together a poor living. After Nelson's death, Emma Hamilton falls from the high life to find herself among the lower classes, a victim of an hypocritical entrenched class system in England, Government parsimony and betrayal by Lord Nelson's older brother.The organisation of the material is ingenious. Lily Style moves smoothly among a panorama of real people who reveal to the reader their own secrets and fear of stigma, whilst she cleverly emphasises the strain Horatia is still under, after sixty years, to keep her childhood promise to her mother in the face of one of the worst-kept secrets in history.

Interesting characters, thoroughly researched, all in all an absorbing and fascinating read