A very cleverly written book. The plot gets more complicated as the book continues. Vivienne and Olivia both have their reasons for what they have done. The story unfolds in alternating chapters. A riveting obviously well researched read.

I really enjoyed this book. It is told from the perspective of the 2 main characters, Olivia and Vivian. Olivia is a historian who has just written a book based on the diary of a Victorian woman who became a doctor, and who has confessed in the diary that she murdered her husband. The diary was brought to her attention by Vivian, who then helps her with further research for the book. The story is really intriguing, and had me guessing right to the end. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.

Lucy Atkins brings us a brilliant psychological thriller in The Night Visitor. The writing is outstanding with fantastic characterization. The story follows two very different women: Olivia who lives in London as a very successful TV presenter and historian, and Vivian who is a 60 year old housekeeper. Vivian found the diary Olivia has based her book off of becoming her unofficial research assistant. When the book gets published, Olivia may realize there is more to Vivian than meets the eye. Filled with twists and an intelligent plot, fans of psychological thrillers should not hesitate to check out The Night Visitor.

A book that captured me from the first page where we meet Olivia Sweetman making her way to address all two hundred guests gathered at The Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons in London. All those people are amongst the jars of organs to celebrate the publication of historian Olivia Sweetman’s book, Annabel, a study of a Victorian woman who became one of the first surgeons, a woman who also had a sensational personal life too, captured within Annabel in her own words.
After the celebrations the book switches to the run up to the publication of the book, eventually as far back as when Olivia first saw Annabel’s diary in Ileford Manor in Sussex in the hands of Vivian, the housekeeper cum research assistant that Olivia would come to depend on as she juggled her television appearances as a celebratory historian, her marriage to David, busy writing and researching his own book, and her three children Dom, Paul and Jess.
I adored every word of this book, there is always something absolutely irresistible in a book about a book after all, but The Night Visitor has taken this kernel and added the most memorable characters, a plot that is underpinned by meticulous timing so that I became bound up in Olivia’s fight for her reputation long before I understood why she was needing to fight in the first place.
Adding to the history we also hear about beetles, more specifically the dung-beetles that Olivia Sweetman’s father studied, hence that eye-catching cover.
‘Your eye for detail, your doggedness, you’re just remarkable,’ she said, looking into my eyes. Hers really are a striking colour. At that moment they reminded me of a beetle called, Necrophilia formosa, whose iridescent carapace is somewhere between violet and royal blue and which feeds on beautiful flowers that reek powerfully of rotting fish.
So we have Olivia the modern woman juggling life and making her mark studying a woman who was forging ahead in a man’s world in the Victorian times, and we have Vivian, who outshines them both with her strangeness, her adherence to strict routines, her sharp mind which is at odds with her position as a housekeeper but most of all a character who is oh so very believable. When reading the chapters narrated by Vivian, we hear from the two women in turn throughout the book, I was strongly reminded of some of the wonderful creations of Ruth Rendell who created equally dislikeable but fascinating characters.
Olivia has Vivian in her life as a necessary evil, she looks down on the woman who she depends on to give her access to Annabel’s diary, to do the tiring leg-work during the research into this woman’s life and while she is grateful for all her hard-work, her doggedness and attention to detail, once the book is edited, she finds her relentless appeals to write another book difficult to shut down. This struggle between the needy and the needed while trying to maintain the smooth politeness that society demands that makes the entire story so believable.
Whilst the plotting is superb it is definitely the characters that lead this novel and even the bit parts are wonderfully drawn giving you a real sense of the describer and described in broad brush strokes
I do remember how grim I felt as I sat behind Maureen’s desk, unreasonably infuriated by her ‘Smile! It’s gin o’clock!’ sticker on the till and her ‘Keep Calm, It’s Only a Royal Baby’ coaster. I was fighting the urge to rip both objects up and put them in the bin. I have known Maureen since childhood, we were in the same class at primary school and she has always irritated me. She is intrusive, bossy and rather dim.
The Night Visitor will hopefully not haunt me in the way that she haunted Vivian, but these characters, the intricate storyline full of fascinating detail will stay with me for a long time to come. I can safely predict this will be one of my books of 2017.
I’d like to say a huge thank you to Quercus who provided me with a copy of The Night Visitor. This review is my unbiased thanks to them.

Absolutely thrilling and exciting psychological thriller. Great charactization. I couldn't put it down.

The Night Visitor starts out innocently enough, Olivia is at her book launch. She has written a book based on a diary from Annabel Burley who studied at the London School of Medicine in Victorian times. During her speech she fails to mention her researcher and owner of the diary Vivian and it's then we begin to realise all is not as it seems with this relationship.

Told in alternating chapters between Olivia and Vivian, it took me a little while to get a handle on the story but it was oh so riveting. Chilling, memorising, odd and obsessive are words that popped up in the book and it was all of these things flowing through the undercurrent of the story. My first Lucy Atkins book and it won't be my last.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for a copy to read and review.

A dark creepy pyschological thriller, The Night Visitor had me immersed from the first page.
The characters of Olivia and Vivian were intruiging and so compelling to read about. Vivian is chilling and the author gives a sinister insight into a damaged mind.

Lucy Atkins is able to capture the emotions of these two women with very clever writing.
I read this in a matter of days, as I just had to find out more about these two women and how their stories would turn out
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a psychological thriller which is fleshed out with deep characters, wonderful locations and a believable unique story.

Thank you!

Absolutely loved this book, a real page turner and I didn't want to come to the end.

This book had layers upon layers of secrets and lies, some obvious, some very cleverly hidden until the appropriate moments. We first meet Prof Olivia Sweetman at the launch of her new book. The story within this potential bestseller is based on a diary belonging to Lady Annabel Burley, that was found by Vivian Tester, a housekeeper connected to her family. But all is not smooth at the launch. Something is worrying Olivia, she has reservations about the book. As the story unfolds, told by both Olivia and Vivian we start to uncover those secrets. Drip fed initially but then towards the end of the book, as the action ramps up, we start to see the bigger picture and boy what a picture the author paints.
The story itself is rather convoluted at times and you really do have to have your wits about you when reading it. I found it easy to get caught up in certain things during the narrative and ignored a few of the cleverly woven in pertinent information which, when explained later, had me kicking myself for not realising earlier.
Both characters are strong women, both very different and not just because they come from different backgrounds. They are also very similar, but I am not going to qualify this here. Reading this book was like peeling the layers from each of the characters, delving through their secrets and lies to get to the core truths. It's hard to know who to trust at times and I have to say that I didn't really warm to either of them as people. That said, I thought them both very clever in the ways that they managed to manipulate others and situations for their own goals. I definitely connected with both early on, even if is wasn't in a positive way. One thing I did love about Olivia was her explanation of what it means to be a "celebrity" in this day and age, especially with respect to the media and reality TV.
Within the convoluted narrative, there were several things that just didn't sit right with me. Again, sadly due to the fear of spoilers, I can't qualify them here either. Even given the duplicitous nature of both characters, there were some things that I found incongruent with their characters as well as a couple of things that I thought were out of their skillsets to achieve. I also found that some parts of the book were a bit too busy. Zipping about a little too much and then, at other times, the story seemed to drag a bit. I guess for me, pacing was a bit all over the place but that could very well be a me thing rather than a book thing. When we did get towards the end, it all seemed to ramp up a bit too much and it was almost like it ended in a bit of a rush. Not a bad thing in itself but, due to the fact that some things remaining unresolved, I didn't leave the book with the satisfied feeling that I like to have. I felt a we bit flat. I am not against unresolved endings by the way, and the unresolved things in this book are relatively minor, I just felt overwhelmed by the final chapters which overshadowed my enjoyment of the whole a little.
I have to add one thing more here. Having read this book I do now have a much greater knowledge of beetles. Ironically enough, the day after I finished this book, there was an Attenborough program on TV about insects which, with the insights I had from this book, I found all the more fascinating!
This is my first book by this author although I do have a couple of her other books on my watch list. My experience with this book would not put me off giving these a chance in the hopefully not too distant future.

My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

This review is written with thanks to Quercus Books and Netgalley for my copy of The Night Visitor.
Olivia Sweetman is a well known historian and TV presenter. Her latest project is a best selling book based on the diary of a Victorian nurse, which she has researched with the help of Vivian Tester. Olivia and Vivian both have secrets which threaten to halt the launch of the book, but how far will Olivia go to protect the reputation she has worked hard for?
The Night Visitor is written from the perspectives of Olivia and Vivian. Olivia's perspective is told in the third person and Vivian's perspective is told in the first person. Though a simple device, this allows Atkins to create two distinctive voices for the women. It was Vivian, in particular, that I found had an air of mystery about her, and I enjoyed her habit of referring to past events without explicitly revealing what had happened. As the relationship between Olivia and Vivian develops, the tension increases and the clear sense of unease between them kept me intrigued.
There are several different strands to this novel, and Atkins has researched each one very thoroughly. I was fascinated by the lives of the Victorian women about whom Olivia wrote, and similarly interested by the studies of beetles which Olivia's father pioneered. Now I want to go away and read Annabel! The immaculate detail surrounding each subject gave The Night Visitor an extra layer which added authenticity to the plot and characters.
As The Night Visitor reaches its climax, there are plenty of twists and turns, and each one hit me like a tonne of bricks as I pieced each strand of the novel together, There is plenty of shock factor, and the open ending is one of many reasons why I will still be thinking about Olivia and Vivian in days to come.

I have met and seen so many people wanting for fame and not handling it… And i do know there are so many people blind by it that they will make a lot of things to keep their (fake) reputation.
This book is a great thriller with a hint of truth and will get you reading page by page quickly.
A great plot from an author I didn’t knew and will now follow more about her.
Brilliant!

great read and easy to follow story line. look forward to reading more books from this author.

The Night Visitor is the best yet by Lucy Atkins. It's a complex, dark and totally satisfying chiller thriller and I raced through it in one sitting.

The narrative switches between the two main characters, Olivia and Vivian. From the opening pages, we know that successful author/ academic Olivia has something to hide. Her current success is based on deceit and she's terrified she'll lose her reputation. We soon learn that the obsessive Vivian, a former housekeeper is also someone with dark secrets. The lives of the two become inextricably linked and layer by layer, truths are revealed.

The plotting is superb; I never knew which way the story was going. Lucy Atkins writes so well; she plays with the reader in a story filled with symbolism some of which only becomes clear as the story unfolds. What inventive writing to reference various insects throughout! It's truly creepy. The story is powerful and often disturbing. It raises the pulse rate and the final section absolutely races away. The main characters are superb and this is a truly intelligent and thought provoking exploration of deceit, obsession and manipulation. Blown away by this one and can't wait for more from Lucy Atkins.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

Professor Olivia Sweetman has what seems to be a perfect life.
She has a high-flying career as a TV presenter and historian, a talented husband, three children, homes in London and Sussex and she’s heading off for a holiday in the South of France with old friends and their families.
But, of course, all is not as it seems. How boring would that be?
No, what we want are secrets and lies simmering beneath the surface, deceits that threaten to overturn lives and characters whose flaws make them less likeable but all the more believable. And that’s what Oxford author Lucy Atkins serves up in The Night Visitor, alongside a good portion of tension and growing dread.
There are shades of Zoe Heller’s Notes On A Scandal as the central relationship in the novel centres around the harrassed but glamorous Olivia’s relationship with Vivian Tester, a socially awkward 60-year-old housekeeper of a Sussex Manor.
The narrative shifts between the story being told from Olivia’s perspective and Vivian’s diary entries. As the psychological thrills mount, there are plenty of lines to read between as far as both of the women are concerned.
One of the book’s strengths is that Atkins doesn’t feel the need to secure all ends and lets the reader reach their own conclusions.
We meet Olivia at the launch party for her new book, already being hailed as best-seller.
It was written with the help of Vivian who found the Victorian diary it is based on and acted as her research assistant.
But as Olivia stands before the crowd, worriedly scanning the room for a sight of Vivian, she can barely pretend to smile because of a hidden truth that could shatter her life.
The Night Visitor is gripping from the beginning – intending to read for half an hour before breakfast, I lost the best part of a day to it, devouring it in one sitting.
The Night Visitor by Lucy Atkins, Querus Books, £12.99

This is a very well written psychological thriller. The two main characters, a high profile celebrity historian and her somewhat downtrodden 'research assistant' are fantastic. An unsettling and engrossing read.

The Night Visitor is an excellent read, a psychological thriller that is different in that the plot revolves around two women: Professor Olivia, Sweetman a successful TV presenter and historian with a high flying career, and Vivian Tester, a reclusive housekeeper who hs an obsession with beetles and is plagued by a mysterious night visitor. Vivian finds a Victorian diary on which Olivia's latest book is based and becomes Olivia's unofficial research assistant but by the time the book is publicly launched Olivia realises that Vivian is not all she seems.

The reason I gave The Night Visitor four stars and not five is because of two minor issues: I felt that the cutting of Olivia's daughter's hair during the family's French holiday wasn't well explained and was rather weak as a plot point for the break up of the holiday. The hair and scissors disappeared and were never found. I also felt that the night visitor, when revealed, didn't have the importance that led to it being the title of the book.

Having said that the two main characters were very well drawn and one could feel sympathy with both, especially Olivia who despite her weaknesses doesn't deserve to lose the life she has built up for herself as a result of Vivian's actions. Vivian herself is a really horrid woman who reminded me of Barbara, the manipulative teacher in Zoe Heller's 'Notes on a Scandal. The Night Visitor is a great story of betrayal and revenge and
if you loved Notes on A Scandal and I See You, you will love The Night Visitor. It is sure to be a huge success, deservedly, and is one of my recommended books for 2017.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Quercus for the opportunity to read and review The Night Visitor

During the course of devouring "The Night Visitor" by Lucy Atkins, I:
• I ignored my family;
• I neglected work;
• I covertly read through a school concert;
• I stayed up through the night to finish it.

The novel hit all my sweet spots: mystery, feminism, history, science, family matters, slightly unhinged characters. (I'm not sure what all those things say about me, so let's move swiftly on.)

The novel alternates between two perspectives: Olivia, a popular historian who's just written a best seller, and her research assistant, Vivian. The book opens at the launch party of Olivia's book, where she puts on a brave face even though all is not well. The rest of the tale explains why that is so, flitting between Sussex, London and the South of France.

It's a compelling tale and told well. Multiple mysteries unfold, which is mainly the reason for my obsession while reading it, as I wanted to get to the end to have it all explained to me, and to see if my theories about them were correct (some were, some were not.)

Recommended to anyone who enjoyed "Girl on the Train," "Notes on a Scandal," or anyone who wants to learn more about dung beetles. That's a compliment.

A review copy was provided to me by NetGalley and Quercus in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

Professor Olivia Sweetman has far too many balls in the air - an achademic career, the imminent release of her first book, a fledgeling TV career, three children one of whom is a teenage boy rapidly heading off the rails and a husband who is never there. Throw into the mix an au pair that she doesn't like much but is relying on and Olivia is barely holding onto her life. Then there is Vivian. A socially inept, very clever woman approaching retirement age. She does the research for Olivia's book but stays in the background. She is, however, keen to collaborate on a new book about the chocolate cream poisoner. Olivia is not.

Olivia is not that unusual a woman. Many women juggle demanding careers as well as family life. However, for Olivia it is all starting to fall apart. Olivia seems to be a reasonably ordinary woman that you'd meet at a party and think she seemed very nice. Vivian is odd. She is very socially awkward and likes to lead quite a solitary and routine life. She is also highly intelligent. Eccentric is an ideal word for Vivian. Whether she is on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum or struggling from a childhood trauma is anyone's guess.

This book is primarily about these two women but there are other bit parts who play significant roles. The characterisation is excellent and there is no doubt in my mind that there are lots of women just like Olivia in the world - maybe not so many like Vivian!

The plot is well structured. The story twists and turns until it reaches an inevitable climax. I have to say that the ending was brilliant and was a crowning glory to a book that I struggled to put down. The ending has left me wondering what happened next...........

I loved this book and found it quick and easy to read.

Hard book to get into. Didn't take much time with it.

Vivian - discuss. That's pretty much all I feel I want to write - there would after all be so much to discuss. She adds such a weight of foreboding malevolence to the book, it's like the oppressive humidity before a really good storm.

Centred around the collaboration of a historical book entitled Annabel, on which Vivian is research assistant to Professor and TV star Olivia Sweetman, The Night Visitor has echoes of gothic literature littering throughout. There is the slow revelation of the mystery surrounding Annabel which unfolds like the petals of a flower, each adding another layer to the relationship between Olivia and Vivian. It is evident that Vivian is hiding something, but I was never sure of the true nature of her deception and hidden truths until the end.

Whilst I did appreciate some of the personality traits that Olivia possessed, she did give me the sense that she was manipulating her relationship with Vivian in order to get what she wanted or needed. I did ultimately feel sorry for her and she dealt with things much better than I could ever have done. The question of what happened in France added another layer to the distrust between the two characters.

The writing is of course, blissful to read; Atkins writes with an assured voice that carried me along with her until the end. The suspense really does bring with it a sense of disquiet, and the overwhelming secrets that each of them bring to the table just adds to this tension. The Night Visitor will ensnare you from the first page - it is deliciously creepy and unnerving - I loved it.