I admit I didn’t read the description of this book too carefully and therefore I was surprised that Agatha Christie and her disappearance wasn’t the prime purpose of this book. It centres on Nan, her husband’s mistress (Theresa Neele IRL) and she is the narrator.

And this is where I struggled, She’s an omniscient narrator giving descriptions of events where she wasn’t present. It had the effect of distancing me from the prose, But by the end, I rather liked the idea of her imagining events, rewriting history to suit her because they’d all been through so much with two wars and personal tragedy. After everything we’ve been through over the last two years, I can wholeheartedly subscribe to the longing for happy endings.

What de Gramont does extremely well is to evoke the era and to describe the tragedies that befall Nan and Finbarr. The brutality of war and its effect on relationships and personalities are explored so well between the two couples, even if some of the plot is a stretch.

The problem with setting a novel around an event that actually happened to a very famous person is that readers are searching for authenticity. But if you can let go of this and embrace Nan’s narrative, become lost in her story (without relating it to Theresa Neele), then this is a very satisfying read.

I received an early copy of this book from NetGalley and the publishers for my independent honest review.
This is already a highly marketed and anticipated read for 2022. Unfortunately this may not have done the author any favours as I really didn't think it delivered what it is marketed to be.
I was very excited to receive this early copy as I was very interested to learn more about the time she went missing for eleven days, causing a huge media sensation. Whilst I understand a work of fiction is going to be mainly based on supposition and an element of artistic licence, I was expecting the plot to be more mystery based and less about the thoughts of his mistress Nan. In this, Nan is the narrator and for me therefore makes this more about her story than Agatha's. There is no doubt this author can write,however because it wasn't what I was expecting, it prevented me from fully engaging with.
I do recommend you try it, whilst bearing in mind what it really is about.

"I wonder now if Agatha had a plan. A writer, after all, she would have carefully considerd every line of prose she wrote and every possibility to spring from her next movement. When I picture her at her desk, I don't see a woman in a fugue state or person on the verge of amnesia. I see the kind of determination you only recognize if you've felt it yourself."

It's December 1926 and author Agatha Christie learns of her husband, Colonel Archie Christine's, affair with a secretary at work, Nan O'Dea (based on real life Nancy Neele). Agatha decides to escape for a while, leaves their house one evening and disappears. This is a fictional tale of what could have happened to Agatha during her two weeks away told from primarily Nan's perspective. For me, it held great promise. What could have happened to Agatha and why?

I am a fan of Agatha Christie, so looked forward to reading this, but I struggled with it. The timelines and narratives moved about a lot and I found them confusing; the characters didn't draw me in and; the focus was Nan, when I wanted it to be Agatha. Nan's back story was interesting, but I felt could have been told more compactly and been less of a focus of the plot, and some of the plot elements felt like too much of a leap. Once I understood Nan's purpose, the story did come together, but it felt long and drawn out and left me re-reading lines to ensure I'd understood what had happened. There was mystery and drama nearer the end, but it was too little too late and left me disappointed. I haven't read any of the author's other books, so don't know how typical this is of her writing and whether the subject matter, of book title, gave me inaccurate expectations.

Thank you to Mantle Press and Net Galley for my advanced digital copy of this book, which unfortunately wasn't for me.

If you ignore the expectations that come from a book based on the disappearance of Agatha Christie, and take the book as what it actually is - a woman's reaction to her husband's affair, the dark secrets held by the mistress, a murder that is seemingly unrelated, and a love story changed by the war - then this is a fantastic book. It's incredibly well researched, the writing is great, and it really does give the feel of a Christie book. The excerpts from Nan's past feed in well to the story, and you understand her actions more and more. I did feel that I would have preferred these parts to be shorter though, as I found myself wanting to get back into the present and the characters within it. There were elements I did not see coming, and I really enjoyed the slow unraveling of the mysteries. I finished the book feeling satisfied.

This was initially a difficult book for me to review, because I think the summaries available at the time I requested it didn't quite highlight how much of the focus was on Nan O'Dea and her thoughts. Yes, it's the disappearance of Agatha Christie from the point of view of her husband's mistress - but there was far more focus on her and her life before the Christies than I expected. It left me disappointed (through no fault of the author or her book!), as the disappearance of Agatha Christie was kind of left in the background for me. As other reviewers have said, I didn't want Nan's story, I wanted Agatha's from the perspective of someone who knew her and knew what happened. The summary now available on Goodreads makes that a lot clearer I feel, and I wish I had seen this before I read it as my expectations would have been exactly what I got!

I loved this book and could believe it was true so easily. Nina de Gramont has captured the essence of the period so well, the despotic treatment of women from all classes, the war and the effects on the men that went to war as well as the women left behind. It gives great details of what happened to those who were known as fallen women and at the end of the story there are lots of references to read more about all the topics discussed in this book. I felt that Agatha would have been proud to know that this author equalled her in writing such a story that covered love, loss, mystery, revenge and murder. Does it all seem plausible yes it did and I really wanted at the end for it to be true but needless to say that this is just a superb novel. The plots were so well woven and the characters so easy to understand and love or dislike in some cases. There are many sad parts as well as many highly charged emotional parts.
A fantastic author and I look forward to reading more by this very talented author.

You don't have to be a fan of Agatha Christie to enjoy this must-read - you can just dive right in! This book has everything I love: romance, betrayal, loss, lies, secrets and nail-biting tension sizzling through the pages!

I was attracted to this title because I enjoy mysteries that are based around some of the golden age mystery writers. The book is based on a period in Agatha Christie’s life when her marriage was breaking up and she disappeared for 11 days causing a huge media sensation with all sorts of theories around what had happened to her. It was like an incident in one of her own mysteries. The author reimagines this disappearance through the eyes of Christie’s mistress, not an immediately likeable character. I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to spoil the book for others but for the first third of the novel I wasn’t sure that I would be able to engage with the narrator, Nancy Neele, but then suddenly everything seemed to change and she became much more sympathetic and I. Really enjoyed the book from then to the conclusion. There are a number of twists and surprises which I’m sure other readers will relish.
One point I would make is that the book really needs correction of errors. There is some word usage which is just incorrect and these are repeated. For example consternated - which is new to me and could have readily been replaced with an acceptable and common word. There were a handful of these.

Just like everyone else, I was excited to read the Christie Affair. Anyone who reads voraciously, would be curious to know what happened to Agatha Christie during those missing ten days around the break up of her marriage.

However, as good as this book is, it has definitely been marketed wrong. This holds no truths about the author’s disappearance. This is really about the fictional mistress, Nan O’ Dea, who broke the marriage up. Not only is the mistress fictional but so is Christie’s child. If you don’t know this to begin with, you are led to believe the story is true when it is all fabricated.

I also wasn’t keen on everything being viewed through Nan’s eyes because there was a lot of the story that she wouldn’t be privy too. It would have worked so much better if these parts were in third person.

It is so difficult to be sympathetic at first to Nan’s character, but as the story comes to a close, your dislike for her wanes. The mystery weaved through the story was actually very good.

I’ve no doubt about the author’s skill in writing a story, but I did feel this wasn’t her story to tell. If you are looking for a more factual approach to Christie’s disappearance, I’m led to believe that there ate other books available.

With a title like The Christie Affair, you would expect there to be a mystery at the heart of this novel. But while there are several mysteries woven into the plot (including a murder), there is very little detective work required: each secret is rather painlessly revealed, and in each case everyone is nice and reasonable when the truth is out.

It doesn't help that with countless changes in point of view and leaps through time, Nan becomes an almost omniscient first-person narrator. It seems a shame to read a novel featuring Agatha Christie without any sense of engaging with the golden age genre.

What de Gramont does do well is historical context, and I particularly enjoyed her representation of war and trauma, and the double-bind of womanhood in the interwar years. It's not the most nuanced exploration, but it is heartfelt: in many ways, every character is a victim of their own class and circumstances.

The Christie Affair is a nice piece of historical fiction, with some interesting themes and proficient prose, but it's let down by its lack of adventure.

Ok, just because I’m not the biggest Agatha Christie fan in the world (shock! horror!) doesn’t mean I can’t be nosy about her, and I find her life and her disappearance so fascinating. It’s clear that she remains (even in death) the only person to know why she really left for those 11 days, and rumours have been spreading every since.

It’s a fascinating outlook by using the mistress as the narrator. ‘The other woman’ is often depicted as the bad person and the untrustworthy one, so it instantly brings up the question as to whether we can believe what the narrator says. It’s full of red herrings, twists and turns, friendships, relationships, and hardships.

I know this is meant to be a book about Agatha Christie, but I ended up wanting to know more about the other characters just as much: Agatha’s husband Archie, his mistress Nan, the characters we meet in Ireland (the nice and the not-so-nice), and those we meet later on in the book, the ones more involved in finding Agatha. They all have their own wonderful stories and characterisations.

It would be interesting to find out exactly how much of the plot is fiction, and how much is fact, albeit with some artistic licence. We skip time periods, visiting flashbacks and swapping narrators and viewpoints, we see inside the minds of just about everyone, and the stories are so entwined in such a perfect way, it seems unnatural that they wouldn’t be linked.

I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so involved, such an exhilarating story - past and present. It’s a book full of Agatha Christie mystery itself. It’s a love story, a detective story, a mystery; a story about revenge and relationships, and just what we’re prepared to do for those we love.

And whilst it is not a series left open ended, it is written in such a way that leaves the reader satisfied that all loose ends have been neatly tied, but allows them to make their own decision as to who is trustworthy and believable, who is innocent or guilty, who is who they say they are, and finally, what was Agatha really doing for those 11 days?

"Very few of us are what we seem'' Agatha Christie.

This book was beyond what I was expecting. It was a little bit 'unreliable narrator', a spot of 'murder mystery', a mix of love affairs and a tale of motherhood. It's so hard to review this and not give away the entire plot but needless to saymy internet search engine is going crazy right now for 'Agatha Christie disappearance'.  The parallels between Agatha and Nan are sometimes flabbergasting but I adore their relationship more than any other throughout the story. This is a book which answers so many questions, but raises so many more. Adore.

Thank you @netgalley and @panmacmillan for the eARC of this in return for an honest review. The Christie Affair is out on January 20th 2022.

Agatha Christie really did go missing for eleven days in 1926. This is a novel and work of fiction that puts a story around the real life disappearance and does it exceedingly well. The Christie Affair is a well written and intriguing. It is written from the perspective of her husband's mistress after the event, which works. The answers to the puzzle are slowly revealed and nothing is quite as it seems.

Using the facts that are known and the writing style of the time, the author provides us with an excellent back story and explanation for the disappearance and discovery that had me hooked. It also provided an insight into Britain and Ireland after WW1, the way that women were seen and treated, and class inequalities. I really enjoyed it and recommend it. It would make a fabulous book club read, I can imagine mine having a great discussion about this lovely book - there is so much to get our teeth into.

Thank you to #NetGalley, the author Nina de Gramont (I can't believe she isn't English - she has a really good insight into the culture of the time) and her publishers for the opportunity to read and review #TheChristieAffair

This gives a different view on the actual, real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie - it is told from the side of the mistress of Christiie's husband. I thought I was going to be reading a mystery, Agatha Christie-esque, but this is general fiction, a tale of the twenties and is none for worse for that. It is a tale with a heart and good characters (whether they are true to life or not), a good read

Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned whodunnit? And Agatha Christie is the undisputed Queen of Crime. Her own life is just as puzzling as some of the mysteries that she created.

In 1926, following her husband’s request for a divorce, she disappears. 11 days later she is found with no memory of what has happened to her.

What a fantastic opening for a fiction writer! What happened to Agatha Christie? Where did she go? Who was she with?

Nina de Gramont imagines just that.

Telling the story from the point of view of Nan O’Dea, a complex young woman. Nan is both clever and vulnerable, calculating and manipulative and a victim. Nan’s story is revealed in parallel to Agatha’s. And despite the huge disparities between the two women in terms of family, social class and educate, they have a surprising amount in common.

This book is about human suffering and there are some heart-wrenching stories that reflect the brutality of the First World War and life for working class women.

A book featuring Christie would not be complete with out a crime. And there is a while subplot as well.

Overall, this was a great read. It wasnt quite what I was expecting and definitely seemed more like Nan’s story rather than Christie’s.

Thank you to Netgalley for my gifted copy.

Back in 1926 the celebrated author Agatha Christie went missing for several days. This is a fictionalised version of what may have happened to her. Well written and very enjoyable

I was looking forward to reading this novel after reading the hype, but unfortunately it sis not hold my attention in the way that an Agatha Christie novel would. It seemed a bit disjointed and the plot almost non existent. Not for me I am afraid.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pan McMillan for the advance copy.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book, having been an Agatha Christie fan for many years. Her mysterious disappearance gave a perfect opportunity for the author to come up with an interesting story for the reason behind it, and I thought it worked in the main.

The idea of telling the story from the point of view of the mistress of Agatha's husband was an interesting one. At times it did feel a bit confusing, jumping around to events that she imagined were taking place - clearly the author couldn't describe events that Nan wasn't present at without her character using her imagination, but it felt a bit disjointed at points.

On the whole I enjoyed the book. It is important to remember it is a work of fiction as no one knows what exactly happened to Agatha in those missing days, but as a story it was an interesting read.

The mystery surrounding the 11 days in which Agatha Christie disappeared has always been one of history's biggest mysteries, however de Gramont's novel provides an excellent explanation to these missing days. I think it is excellent the way in which both elements of mystery novels and romance novels, tying in together to produce a delightful and magical novel which keeps readers guessing throughout.

The Christie Affair by Nina da Gramont is a gripping historical mystery inspired by the eleven-day disappearance of the most famous and prolific crime writer of all time - Agatha Christie. We still don't know precisely what drove Christie to vanish, just as her career was blooming. But Nina da Gramont has taken the few facts that are known and she's weaved a story that's believable and shocking. It centres around Archie Christie's mistress, Nan, and the result is a page-turning historical novel.

This takes the well-known mystery disappearance of Agatha Christie and runs with it, imagining a whole back story that bears little relationship to what is known of the affair, which Agatha Christie herself never opened up about during her life. I couldn’t get a handle on how the known characters in the case - such as Christie’s husband’s mistress, and Christie’s daughter, are fictionalised into different characters with different names and backgrounds. The mixing of fact and fiction just didn’t work for me.