A story of three women in time worlds apart all with a part to play in a secret which will only be resolved by one woman in the present day.
A truly atmospheric story which will capture you from the very first page and leave you wanting more long after you have finished.
It is the first book I have read by Iris Costello but it certainly won’t be the last.
It is one of those books that you won’t forget in a hurry, can’t recommend it enough.

The three timelines and different women compliment each other perfectly until the disparate threads of this moving and absorbing book become a twisted and enmeshed whole. I loved the differences in the three women whose losses are palpable. I felt grief and fear and rage pour off the page. There is a strong feeling of place and of historical relevance.

I had worked out the link fairly early on but knowing this did not diminish my enjoyment. The one twist in the tale was a surprise.

Historical fiction at its finest. A truly beautifully written tale that captures you from page one and draws you in, I adored it and was still thinking about it long after I’d finished, I will be looking out for more in this genre.

Historical fiction is a genre that I return to time and time again, and I really loved the sound of #TheStoryCollector when I spotted it on #NetGalley. The story revolves around three women – Edie, Kitty and Miriam – on their own timelines. Told between the cobbled streets of wartime London, a German WWI camp and the cliffs of Cornwall, England, this book beautifully weaves – and unravels – the stories of these three protagonists who are bound by a long-held secret as the First World War erupts.

For me, this novel felt a tiny bit up and down, here and there. The plot itself is certainly gripping, but there’s a lot going on, as you’d expect from a triple-narrative book. Edie is an artist who has recently moved to a little Cornish cottage that her family inherited. She discovers a tarot deck which, admittedly, is what initially kept me reading! Then, we have Kitty, a German baker and tarot-reader who is forced to conceal her name and identity, among other factors. Finally, there’s Miriam, a nurse in a Prisoner of War camp in Germany.

A strong point of ‘The Story Collector’ is that the characters are beautifully well-developed and you become really invested in their stories. It feels real, hauntingly so. The three strands are equally balanced, too, I thought. Often I’ll take to one part of a multi-narrative more easily than others, but I felt quite invested in each of them. However, I think there’s something funny going on with the pacing as the complexities of the intertwining backgrounds move forwards. The middle part felt gripping but slow at the same time.

Overall, ‘The Story Collector’ moves to a satisfying and compelling ending. It isn’t often that novels with three narratives achieve this, but Costello played it out wonderfully. I truly enjoyed this one!

Iris Costello has written a very powerful story set over three timelines and from different POVs.
London 1915
Katerina Drechsler is living in the "Little Germany" area of London, her father had left his native Germany to set up a once thriving bakery but when the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German navy England became a very dangerous place for Germans. For her safety and with the help of her friend, Gillian, Katerina moved area, became Kitty Dexter, and proceeded to set up a bakery to feed the poor and needy, the suffragette movement was in it's infancy, how long could Kitty hide in plain site, what if it was discovered that her beloved brother Otto was fighting for the German army, could her beloved Tarot cards give her an answer ?
Germany 1918
Miriam Zeigler, a university student, had to leave her studies to help the German war effort, she was to become a nurse at the Danholm POW camp. A request from her old professor had Miriam assisting with his research, he had a passion for languages and dialects and having so many English prisoners in one place, each with their own accents was too good a chance to miss, he would capture their voices for his study. Miriam didn't like the raucous prisoners with their lewd comments but she was drawn to the mute prisoner who was the butt of their jokes, little did she know.........
Cornwall present day.
Edie was happily living as an artist, East End born and bred until that fateful day that her beloved husband, David, was taken from her, she needed peace and quiet to recover and where better than at her father's cottage in the small village of Hatton. With the help of her neighbour, Alexander, Edie managed to rebuild her life, the items that Edie found hidden in a hole in the wall of the cottage were to link together all the stories and the lives of the people.
I would give this book 4.5 rounded up, I did find it a bit confusing sometimes because there was such a large cast, I found myself having to look back to remind me who they were, having said that, I really enjoyed the book, well written and well researched.
Thank you to Net Gallery for this ARC, my review is entirely voluntary.

This is my first book by Iris Costello, and she's definitely an author I will return to. The Story Collector follows three women, two women living through the realities of the First World War and one in the present day rebuilding her life through grief and loss. Through the book, you get some hints at the intertwining of these stories and how they apply to eachother, but there's a thread of mystery that twists through it all.

The historical fiction element is heart rending, as it centres German experiences, through Katerina who has grown up in London but is German and runs a German bakery and Miriam, a nurse at a German POW camp. Edie's modern day story is also similarly difficult, as she is a grieving woman rebuilding her life in a new shape. There is some mystery surrounding her loss, and what happened doesn't get cleared up until close to the end. In this way, it actually feels like you're experiencing the grief alongside Edie, as she feels unable to remember or relive anything associated with it.

Overall, the characters are relatable and likeable, and the mystery quite gripping. One to look out for if you're a fan of historical fiction or mysteries.

This was a beautiful well written story it follows the lives of 3 women from world war 1 to the present day with a secret that connects them all I would definitely recommend this book

This was a very good read. A historical fiction drama, loosely based on the authors interest in tarot and a documentary she saw about a wartime linguistic study, about three women set in three timelines. In the present artist Edie has moved to Cornwall after the sudden death of her husband. In 1918 Miriam is working in a British prisoner of war camp as a nurse and assistant to a linguist when she meets a mute British prisoner who she feels a connection to. German immigrant Katerina who now calls herself Kitty is running a bakery in 1915 London and reading tarot cards for the local women. But can she keep her identity secret? A well written and compelling story with a lot of characters but I found it relatively easy to follow.

Briefly, after moving to Cornwall, to a cottage that has been in her family since WWI, Edie decides to do some renovations and behind a piece of plasterboard finds a box containing tarot cards, a strange tube and a photograph. Strange things start to happen in the cottage and Edie hears things that concern her. Wondering if the box she found belonged to her forebears she decides to investigate the objects in the box.

Three very different but all very interesting and emotional stories. About halfway in you start to see how the stories of the three women start to meld but there is still so much more to know. Lots of twists and turns and dark and emotional storylines particularly in the two wartime stories. So many secrets and so much heartache. A very enjoyable and entertaining read.

The story of three women connected through time from WWI London and Germany to present day Cornwall. I don't often read books connected with way but felt this was handled well. The theme of tarot cards running through the stories was a clever way to connect the women, as well as recording their stories.

What a wonderful book with a bit of mystery and so interesting. It is a dual timeline story.

We have the present time and the years at the time of the first War. Edie ends up in a cottage in Cornwall where her ancestors lived. She discovers a box with a photo and tarot cards. We have Katerina who lives in London for a time. Then Miriam who is working at a concentration camp helping a Professor to get recordings of the different dialects of the British.

The stories weave well together andI kept wanting to read on to find out what happens. The three woman were very strong characters and worked well in the book.

Would recommend this book and would like to read more of this author.

Not sure what happened with this one. I was drawn in at the start but then struggled to stay engaged for the last half. I found it quite tricky to keep track of the different characters around Kitty and think it was because of this.

Many thanks to #NetGalley and #Penguin for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A brilliantly written story set primarily against the backdrop of World War 1 which flits between 3 different veiwpoints. I thought the experiences of living as a German person in London at this time were sensitively and accurately described, and is certainly an aspect of the war that is not mentioned very often. It wasn't clear how the 3 stories connected , really right up until the end, and this I thought was very cleverly done. The inclusion of tarot reading was a nice touch also, adding a sense of the mystical to the story. I would thoroughly recommend.

**Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read an advanced e-copy of this book. All opinions are my own **

A beautiful story with wonderful characters scanning between 1915, 1918 and the present day, from wartime London to the cliffs of Cornwall, three women bound by one secret, a spellbinding read

A wonderful story about three ladies who are connected in some way which doesn’t become clear until the end. Three storylines set in different times. A connection and a secret. What’s not to like?
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This story centers around three women and three timelines. There's Edie in the present day, Kitty (or Katerina) in 1915 and Miriam in 1918. All three women are connected but only time will tell how.
Edie is an artist and moves to Cornwall, to a cottage her father inherited. when she undergoes a traumatic event in her life. Kitty runs a bakery and she also reads tarot cards as she has 'the gift'. Baking has been passed down through the family. Miriam is a nurse in a Prisoner of War Camp in Germany and also works with a linguistics professor on an experiment in the camp.
There was an awful lot going on in this book and at times I was overwhelmed. There is also a huge cast of characters and it was hard to keep track of them all at times.
I couldn't take to Kitty, she wasn't appealing at all and Miriam's story was a bit strange. I liked Edie and the descriptions of Cornwall were lovely.
It was a bit long and the ending was a bit implausible at times but when I first started reading, it really drew me in and I needed to keep reading to see what the outcome would be.
Overall it was a good story and the author obviously put in a lot of research and these are the reasons I gave it four stars.

Thanks to Penguin General UK, Viking, and NetGalley for an early copy of this book.

A story of three women woven between London, 1915, amid the wartime chaos, Germany 1918 in a prisoner-of-war camp and present day Cornwall. There’s a link between the three women which is revealed by the end of the story which connects them together, a long lost secret.
A hard-to-put down book, with the history of WW1, votes for women all intertwined into the present day’s uncovering of a secret box, found when renovating an old cottage.

The Story Collector by Iris Costello tells the interconnected stories of three different women, Katerina, Miriam and Edie. Edie's story is set in the current day where she has relocated to Cornwall following the recent tragic death of her husband. While there she finds an old box containing a deck of tarot cards and a strange wax cylinder. These items are linked to Katerina, the daughter of a German immigrant who was living in London's East End and running the family bakery when world war 1 broke out, and Miriam a young German student who worked at a German prisoner of war camp as part of a linguistics study. Over the course of the book the stories of each of these women unfolds and we gradually see how they are linked together in unexpected ways.
Overall this was a pleasant read, though I found that I was much more interested in Katerina's story than those of the other women, though I did not really see what the tarot reading aspect really added to the story as a whole. On reading the author's notes at the end of the book I see that she was loosely inspired by a real person, but for me her experiences as an immigrant were much more compelling. I also thought the ending of a book was something of a let down, not in how the stories of the three women were linked but because of another character whose actions just strained credulity beyond breaking point, but I cannot say more without spoiling the ending of the book.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher ,all opinions are my own.

This is the story of three women and a secret.
Katerina lives in London in 1915, running a bakery but hiding a secret.
Miriam lives in Germany 1918 and is working in a POW camp and finds herself drawn to a mute British Soldier.
Edie is in the present day living in Cornwall. She finds a box and unearths an old secret.

I don't even know where to start with this review. I finished this book with goosebumps and tears silently falling down my face. It is such a beautiful, tragic story with the most uplifting of happy endings.
The book is a first person story telling, giving us 3 different POV's, from Kitty in the early days of WW1 battling her identity amidst the riots of London, to Miriam, a few years ahead working in a Prisoner of War camp, finding herself falling in love with the enemy, and finally, Edie, Present Day, unravelling the stories of these German women from her inherited cottage in Cornwall.

The first half of the book sets us up with a bit of backstory about the 3 women, but, the way the 3 lives begin to intertwine and connect to each other after the first half of the book is so well done. There are twists and turns at the end of every chapter.

I spent most of the book understanding how Kitty & Edie may have been connected, but Miriam's place in the story remained a puzzle for me until near the end when all the pieces fall in to place. I absolutely loved the way the stories of these 3 women were pulled together, in such a beautiful, uplifting ending.

This book is so full of emotions, from raw pain and loss to hope and happiness. It has love, loss, found family and community.
I particularly enjoyed the way tarot is incorporated throughout the story, and how it brings Kitty & Edie together hundreds of years apart.
This will forever remain as one of those books I wish I could read for the first time.

Thank you to NetGalley & the Publisher Penguin General (UK) for this e-ARC.

What a beautiful story!! My first historical fiction this year, very well-written and interesting with 3 main different points of view, ranging from 1915 to today. I found the parts set in the past more interesting than the present parts. I also didn’t really enjoy the tarot cards and spooky parts, I agree with other readers that these could have been left out. As the chapters jump from one character to the other it can get a little confusing but it’s all linked eventually, you’ll see!
Thank you NetGalley and Penguin for the advance copy.