The Ophelia Girls is a beautiful story of young women and their desires, a generation apart

In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her three teenage friends are staying in her country home obsessing about the Pre-Raphaelites which results in a tragedy when they pretend to be the drowning girl of Shakespeare's Ophelia.

Fast forward to 1979 when Ruth returns to the house after her father's death, together with her young twins and 17-year-old daughter, Maeve, who is in remission from cancer. Stuart, a photographer friend, joins them and asks auburn-haired Maeve to secretly model for him. Maeve is thrilled with the attention Stuart pays her and develops feelings for him.

The prose is intoxicating with its symbolic decadence, teenage desire, and description of the somewhat gothic home. Highly recommended. Many thanks to NetGalley and Mantle/Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read and review The Ophelia Girls.

The Ophelia Girls is a sensual, captivating and intoxicating novel about art, illicit desire and the perils and power of being a young woman. In 1973, Ruth Hawkins had lived in a bucolic country house in Kent, England with her family and spent many a long hot summer frolicking through the countryside nearby with friends as they lived through their pre-Raphaelite phase. Drawn to the cold depths of the nearby river running alongside Ruth’s house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaus. They were lauded as the Ophelia Girls by Ruth’s parents when they discovered the polaroids the group of friends were posing for and were very clearly heavily inspired by pre-Raphaelite paintings and age-old tragic heroines. But by the end of that fateful summer, both love and real tragedy finds them along the banks. Twenty-four years later, a middle-aged Ruth returns to the suffocating, once-grand house she grew up in after the death of her estranged father, the mother of young twins and seventeen-year-old Maeve.

Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth’s childhood friend, who is quietly insinuating himself into their lives and provides Maeve with the attention she longs for. As a prominent and celebrated photographer, he is offered the guest living quarters and Maeve ends up posing for a series of suggestive portraits with Stuart sworn to secrecy. She is recently in remission, unsure of her place in the world now that she is cancer-free, she yearns for a safe place for her family to heal from their trauma and adversity together. Her parents just want her to be an ordinary teenage girl. But what teenage girl is ordinary? This is an alluring, seductive and beautifully rendered portrait of desire set against the backdrop of a rurally situated Gothic tinged estate that the Hawkins family have owned for many decades and that holds many memories for them. Alternating between the two fateful summers, The Ophelia Girls is a suspense-filled exploration of mothers and daughters as well as two daughters a generation apart. Highly recommended.

The Ophelia Girls traces the story of Ruth and her summers with a bunch of girls where she spent the summer and there was this one particular summer that she is reminded of when one of the boys Stuart returns to where Ruth now lives with her husband Alex and her daughter Maeve and the twins.
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Maeve is a 17 year old who has just recovered from cancer as she got a bone marrow transplant where her younger brother was able to donate.
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The story then jumps between the present and the past of Ruth where she would spend her afternoons in the scorching heat near the river where they all loved to pose and act like the character of the Shakespearean play 'Hamlet' who has Ophelia and it is this longing to belong of Ruth's to not stand out traces the story of Maeve on similar emotions when she takes a liking to Stuart and she wants to engulf herself in the warmth she finds with him and become one of the Ophelia girl herself that have been hanging in her house since ages.
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The book also traces the growth of Ruth as a young girl who wishes to express but is scared. The story also explores her relationship with her father.
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In the cases of both Ruth and Maeve, the writer writes about sexuality and what these Ophelia Girls hide behind them and how much are they in power and how much they are not.
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The mother-daughter relationship comes across as very confusing and the figurative used by the author in the narrative might slow you down but I personally enjoyed the nit picking which was sometimes nuanced and sometimes in subtler tones.
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The end is more amusing and highly complicated but it this end that presents in front of you the story of Ophelia and the girls who hung around the river and recreated photos.

When I chose this to read, I was thinking of the Pre-Raphaelites, and knowing there was going to be tragedy I also thought of The Virgin Suicides. Yet when I was reading the story, I kept comparing Stuart, the photographer, to Duncan Grant, the painter of the Bloomsbury Set and Vanessa Bell, where he and Ruth have this reverse bond of longing. The complicated relationships and fluid sexuality echo across these pages and the relationship between Stuart and Maeve, Ruth's daughter, made me feel uncomfortable and challenged me in trying to see the characters' true feelings and motives.
The plot feels like a hot Summer, where we know a storm is coming and we are waiting for it to break with the relief of revelations and truths shared. The one character who is rather sidelined in all of the drama is Alex, Ruth's husband. I would like to have known more about his side of things and how he felt at the end once all at come to light. There is also a new unexpected revelation that comes out of nowhere which just adds to the layers of complication, where I wanted more exploration of the original fallout.
An intense family drama that prods at your morals.

A mother’s secret past and her daughter’s present collide in this richly atmospheric novel in the gothic tradition reminiscent of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.
*Trigger Warnings*
*grooming, adult-minor relationship, drowning, homophobia, cancer, death*
I really enjoyed this book it had an unnerving undertone and is definitely inspired by gothic literature as well as the images of Pre-Raphaelite art where it gets its name.
It is beautifully written to give the chilling scenery and there is lots of foreshadowing that I loved. The dual story line is not something I am familiar with but it very much worked in this book showing the parallels between the lives of the mother and daughter both in the same house during a summer. This is a page turner and although I kind of knew where it was going the ending was still amazing and the revelations still chilling.
I don't think you are meant to like any of the characters in this book particularly, however, I found Maeve annoying at times although again I think that is the point she's a teenager she's immature and sullen and cruel to those around her at times. I also found Alex to be rather a one dimensional character, however, as we read through Maeve's view of her father and Ruth's view of her husband this is unsurprising but it would be nice to have known more about him.
Over all I enjoyed this book and look forward to picking up other books by the author.

This was a difficult book to get into and I found the storyline to be slow moving. Spanning two timelines, 1973 and 1997, the story is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter. An atmospheric read, but I struggled to link with the characters and struggled to get to the end.

Having heard rave reviews for The Animals of Lockwood Manor, I went into The Ophelia Girls with high expectations and I was a little disappointed, a strange and often slow read with an unusual storyline., the writing was dreamy and tension filled dealing with the complexities of relationships and desire. Overall I enjoyed the story, it was well written with beautiful descriptive writing that really draws you in.

4 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

A beautifully written book fluctuating between the teen years of a mother in 1973 and her daughter in the present. In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends obsessed over pre-Raphaelite paintings, and took turns to pretend to be the drowning like Shakespeare's Ophelia before tragedy struck.

In the present day, Ruth returns to the house she grew up in, now as the mother of young twins and a seventeen-year-old Maeve, who is in remission from cancer. Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth’s childhood friend, who insidiously embeds himself into their lives. Young Maeve craves his attention, but it is uncomfortable to read at times. There is an almost hazy, dreamlike landscape evoked, but a dark, brooding undercurrent leaves you feeling unsettled.

The Ophelia Girls  explores the relationships of mothers and daughters, and what it means to be a young girl on the precipice of adulthood and desire.

Thank you to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read in an exchange for an honest review.
#netgalley #janehealey #theopheliagirls #goodreads #TheOpheliaGirls #NetGalley

-- BOOK REVIEW --
The Ophelia Girls by Jane Healey

After reading The Animals at Lockwood Manor with the wonderful #HFBookClub recently I jumped at the chance to read Jane Healey's newest novel, and I have to say I think I enjoyed this one more.

This has a dual timeline; one telling the tale of Ruth and her friends in the summer of 1973, obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings and taking photographs of one another recreating those images, then we continue to follow Ruth in present-day, 1997, now a mother, as she and her family return to her childhood home, and events from the past come back to haunt her.

As I often find with dual narratives I was drawn to one timeline more than the other. However I did find the current day plot, and the unfolding discoveries about the mysteries of the past compelling and that kept me engaged throughout.

In parts, this story felt deeply uncomfortable. Packed with teenage feelings of lust and finding out who you are. This one was very different to Lockwood Manor. Not only in theme, but in storytelling too. The writing however is instantly familiar, with such beautiful prose. I devoured this one in just a couple of days. If you're looking for a quick-paced read perfect for summer, then this is it.

3.5 compelling stars.

Thank you so much to Mantle and Pan Macmillan for sending me a copy of this gorgeous book in exchange for an honest review.

A mother's secret past collides with her daughter's present in this intoxicating novel from Jane Healey, the author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor.

In the summer of 1973, teenage Ruth and her four friends are obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings, and a little bit obsessed with each other. They spend the scorching summer days in the river by Ruth's grand family home, pretending to be the drowning Ophelia and recreating tableaus of other tragic mythical heroines. But by the end of the summer, real tragedy has found them.

Twenty-four years later, Ruth is a wife and mother of three children, and moves her family into her still-grand, but now somewhat dilapidated, childhood home following the death of her father. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Maeve, is officially in remission and having been discharged from hospital can finally start acting like a 'normal' teenager with the whole summer ahead of her. It's just the five of them until Stuart, a handsome photographer and old friend of her parents, comes to stay. And there’s something about Stuart that makes Maeve feel more alive than all of her life-saving treatments put together . . .

As the heat of the summer burns, how long can the family go before long-held secrets threaten to burst their banks and drown them all?

I enjoyed this story, it was well written, had good narrative and good pacing and the characters were well developed and relatable. I read this quickly and would definitely recommend it

In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four new friends form a fascination with the drama and darkness of pre-Raphaelite paintings. Ophelia, in particular, captures their imaginations and they take to submerging themselves in the cold lake water and photographing themselves as the famed drowned female.

In the summer of 1997, Ruth returns to her childhood home, with her family, including eldest child, Meave, in tow. Meave, with her sickly pallor and auburn hair, is the image of Ophelia herself, and figures from Ruth's past also return to remind her of it.

This entire novel evoked such nostalgia for lazy summer days and created such a feeling of delightful yet dark whimsy. These feelings intersected to form a reading experience that was as captivating as it was unsettling.

Healey's penmanship also mirrored the dream-like haze of decadence but also decline that featured in the plot. I was enamoured with this split-chronological tale and eager to learn all the secrets its slow unfurling would expose.

This is a complex book with a multitude of different themes. It’s about motherhood and being a parent to a sick child as well as the experience of being a sick child yourself; about forbidden love and about how little parents and children truly know each other.
Told from two points of view. The first person account comes from Ruth, the mother, with frequent flashbacks to a fateful weekend in the 70’s when she herself was a teenager. The second narrative comes in the form of a close third person, centred on Maeve, Ruth’s daughter and her experience with being on the brink of adulthood. Much of her childhood has been spent battling cancer so in many ways she has missed out on the fun of being a kid. Subsequently at 17 years of age she behaves like a much younger person as she has missed out stages due to being confined to a hospital bed for so long.

Stuart is a childhood friend of Ruth’s. He is a photographer and like the cliche of a photographer, is adept at seducing young women. Maeve becomes infatuated with him which he encourages. I for one always find older men with young women a bit creepy, but in this narrative Maeve is over the age of consent but its still cringy.

The three main characters of Maeve, Ruth and Stuart are all very well developed, all of them with their own special set of flaws and desires. Ruth’s husband on the other hand seems almost one dimensional so much so I can’t remember his name; in many ways this comes off as intentional as a way to show how little he and Ruth understand each other, despite many years of marriage.

My only criticism is that despite all the emotive subject matter it didn’t quite touch me as much as it probably should and the narrative was a little distant.

There is a subtext of forbidden love, or love that is outside the bounds of conventional morality which is something that changes from the 1970’s to the present day. This is quite a sexy book and the author is adept at writing erotic scenes without being overtly pornographic but still being arousing.

The epilogue ending I found very satisfying as it takes place several years after the main story and ties up any loose ends that we might of been wondering about with Maeve fully into adulthood.

A complex and intriguing book with wonderfully flawed characters from young novelist who is one to watch.

(Review scheduled for 15th July 21)

I absolutely devoured The Ophelia Girls, caught up in the atmospheric descriptions of attraction, regret and complex family relationships in the midst of a humid summer heatwave. Jane's writing is layered and nuanced, presenting the complexities of relationships and desire without comment, allowing the reader to reflect on their own responses. The book left me reminiscing over past summers and a huge desire to head to Hampstead Heath for a swim!

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing an eARC of “The Ophelia Girls” by Jane Healey through NetGalley.

Moody, suspenseful and at times filled with some very dreamy prose. A dark and thought provoking read, however I did have some difficulty getting through this book and found it a bit slow at times. Overall a decent and curious read.

I adored The Ophelia Girls. It’s a perfect sultry hot summer of a book, at times deliciously uncomfortable, and at others darkly beautiful. I gulped it down.

Spoilers

There was a lot to like in this book,the brooding atmosphere on both timelines .
The atmospheric weather,a heatwave makes everything more intense.
The fact dynamics ,of how people connect now the roles of sick child/carer have been taken away from them.
I found the relationship between Maeve and her parents friend just creepy,but fascinated by the way he charmed them all.

Ultimately though,it felt like a lot of build up to nothing too shocking.

Enjoyable non the less.

Having loved The Animals of Lockwood Manor for its imagery and almost Gothic tension, I was looking forward to this new one.
Set in the more recent past than Animals which was set during WWII, it is still set around the idea of 'forbidden love' as the reader follows the story of the mother Ruth and her teenage years in 1970's, and then her daughter Maeve in the 1990's as they both struggle with their own sexuality.
What struck me throughout was how well Jane writes about that period of a young girl's life and how their burgeoning sex drive can cause all sorts of confused and complicated emotions and behaviours. It was slightly uncomfortable at times to be taken back so vividly in parts to my own teenage 'angst' yet I also remember those times as my most creative. All the possibilities seem endless and you spend a lot of time day dreaming. But you also struggle with the turmoil of vulnerability, fear and the dawning realisation of the power girls on the verge of womanhood hold.
The theme that runs through the whole book of the relationship between mother and daughter is also interesting. Ruth reflecting back on her teenage experiences through the eyes of a reluctant mother and wife, while Maeve is living it now. Neither understanding the other.
While this isn't a fast-paced book, I really enjoyed the building of tension as I became absorbed by the family dynamics and the mystery behind the characters' pasts that colours their actions.

Some difficult topics well handled but I just couldn’t say I enjoyed this book. I struggled to get to the end. It’s natural to have crushes on other girls in your teens. For boys it’s called ‘hero worship’ and nobody thinks it’s sexual. A little ‘Goddess worship’ is a good thing..

The Ophelia Girls is atmospheric and moody, I was blown away by the beautiful imagery and dreamy prose. Jane Healey's writing absorbs you in both timelines, you can almost feel the heat and smell the sun wilted flowers.

I loved the medium pace of the book, it flowed wonderfully and kept me wanting to read on. There were no big shocks or twists, you know where the story is heading from the beginning but it's no less disturbing for it. The character interactions were so well written, the intensity between them was palpable.

As someone with a close family member who survived childhood cancer (and one who didn't) I found Maeves's feelings on surviving fascinating. You often hear how children who survive serious illness can miss being ill, miss the attention and the comfort that brings. This is definitely noticeable in Maeve and her interactions.

I'd have liked the story to spend a little more time focusing on Camille, she played such a large role in Ruth's life. Her back story is so important to the plot yet it's hardly touched on, it could have been expanded more.

There was a brief point in the book that I wasn't sure I could continue reading, as a mum with a daughter only a few months younger than Maeve, it was hard to read her story. However, I was hooked and desperate to know how it ended, and I wasn't left disappointed. Profound, dark and thought provoking. A solid four stars!

This is my first book I’ve read by Jane Healey and it was beautifully written with a good, unusual plot.
The story is set in two different summer times, 1973 & 1997 which are connected by a mother & teenage daughter’s choices. It’s haunting, powerful, seductive and steeped with family secrets and lies which are difficult to read at times but hinges the story together. I enjoyed reading the epilogue which was a very fitting end.
Big thanks to Jane Healey, Mantle & NetGalley for an eARC of the book in return for my honest review.