- Really interesting take on the combination of thrillers and art history. It was a genre blend that I've not read before and I really enjoyed it. There was a clear level of research and understanding without the narrative being too bogged down in the art history side of things.
- Neatly plotted and structured; the different timelines all worked well together and helped fill out the plot as it moved towards its conclusion.
- Juliette's diary entries felt like a separate voice from the rest of the narrative, which was really nice.
- I liked the comments on the place of female artists, particularly in the 20th century. It was interesting to consider how they are so easily reduced to a muse or simply a wife or lover, even when they themselves are an artist. This made Juliette a really special character to me, as many female artists of her time won't have had the opportunity to be able to tell their own stories.
- There were some unanswered questions, particularly about the past of one of the main characters, but this didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.
- Despite being set in Oxford, and both the protagonists being English, I did find it strange that there were so many Americanisms, such as the boot of a car being referred to as a trunk.
- I liked how the different elements of the plot came together at the end, particularly with how the missing maid tied in with Juliette's family.
- I think I would have liked the Ancient Egyptian element to have been explored more, particularly in relation to the Osiris Society, but again, this didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.

Overall, a fresh take on the thriller genre, with well-written characters and a thoroughly enjoyable plot.

This book was right up my street - a complex mystery spanning three timelines. Whilst comparisons to Kate Morton are fair, this novel was not quite as finely tuned as her novels, but an enjoyable read nonetheless. I look forward to seeing that the author does next.

A lost painting entitle d Self-Portrait as Sphinx will be found, but where has it been after it was thought to have been destroyed in a fire that killed Juliette Willoughby and Oskar Erlich in 1838? It is now 1991 and Patrick has just sold another version of this painting when he is accused of murder.

Well paced and well written novel. Great characters whose lives interact over the years. Plenty of plot twists. Will the truth come out before it is too late for Patrick? Enjoy a good read.

Absolutely loved this, the writing was spectactular, i hate to leave too many clues/spoilers in a book but alls i'll say is i would highly recommend you to read this as you certainly will not be disappointed.
The writing style flowed perfectly and the change in timelines was done immaculately, sometimes i personally struggle with a change in timeline but this was done exceptionally.
5 stars all day long

I enjoyed People Like Her, a previous bestseller of the husband-and-wife writing duo Ellery Lloyd. Like that one, The Last Act of Juliette Willoughby is a definite page-turner, with plenty of twists and turns, and smarter than your average thriller.
Thanks in part to a friend’s enthusiasm, I visited Cambridge last year and rued not having done so properly before. I’ve been looking out for books with a college setting since then so this piqued my interest.
I thought it was clever to create totally fictional artists rather than build a story around the fragments known about a real one. I imagine there are parallels here to one or some real artists but if so they went over my head.
The Last Act is a delicious mix of art history, student life, unequal relationships, secrets and lies. It is at once a glimpse of that unknown to me – Cambridge college life – and the known – university in the early 90s. I found it so enjoyable that it was a jolt to come back to the present day. But the pacing is spot-on – halfway through the story there’s a totally unexpected (to me) reveal. And a masterclass in how to flashforward thirty years in just a few sentences.

Superb storytelling using multiple timelines and multiple voices. This novel has everything; feminism, surrealism, university relationships, money, privilege, detective work, missing persons and murder. Absolutely loved it and very different from previous novels.

Thank you NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for this eCopy to review

The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby was a fantastic historical mystery. I was completely drawn in with all the characters, the multiple timelines, all the fears and tensions. The final revelations were a great twist.

Runaway heiress Juliette Willoughby dies with her married lover in an accidental studio fire alongside her Surrealist masterpiece, Self-Portrait as Sphinx in Paris, 1938. So how do 2 art students Caroline and Patrick find it in the 1990s whilst doing their dissertations at Cambridge University?

Modern day sees an incredible auction in Dubai, was Patrick right to risk everything?

the characters were well developed, the mystery was well executed, the use of different times and voices to tell the story was PHENOMENAL, and it was about art history so what’s not to love? absolutely adored this book, i could not put it DOWN. fast paced and incredibly engaging, will definitely be recommending this

thanks net galley & publishers for this ARC <3

Having read The Club by Ellery Lloyd and really enjoying it, I was very happy to receive an ARC from Netgalley for The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby. It is very different in tone and atmosphere to The Club. Set across different timelines which include 1930s France, 1990s Cambridge and modern day Dubai, the novel is concerned with a surrealist painting by Juliette Willoughby that was thought to have been destroyed in a fire in Paris. This is a complex, layered novel - part social commentary with a Saltburn-esque atmosphere, part mystery and part thriller - with a heavy dose of art history. It is very readable and I raced through the final third.

Thanks to #NetGalley and publishers for an #ARC of #TheFinalActofJulietteWilloughby.
4.5 stars.
This book had a little bit of everything, whodunit, romance, history and good storytelling. I really enjoyed reading about Juliette and her painting.

Highly recommend.

it was a strong five star read for me!! laced in mystery and a kind of dark academia feel. art, it’s creation and distribution, takes a central role and the central and recurring object of the self portrait as sphinx reminded me very much of the alcestis from silent patient and how secrets are concealed by each stroke of an artists brush. this story really came full circle, in the most intricate and unexpected ways.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate whomever wrote this book description on a job well done. This is exactly how you hook a reader like me. A nice dose of intrigue without giving anything away, and I knew from the minute I saw this that I wanted to read this book and find out more about Juliette and her family.

'The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby' is somewhat of a slow burner, but it's most definitely worth sticking with it. Most of the story initially takes place in the nineties when two art students, Patrick and Caroline, are working on a project featuring Juliette and her lover, Oscar. In doing so, Caroline discovers Juliette's diary, a pendant, and proof that a painting - that should have burnt to ash along with Juliette in the thirties - was still around many years later.

The Willoughby family are no strangers to Patrick. Their son Harry is one of his best friends. Their fathers are connected as well. But just like so many other wealthy families, the Willoughby clan hides a multitude of dark secrets and dirty scandals that they'd protect with all their might. What was it that Juliette knew and wanted the world to know as well? Her surrealist painting Self-Portrait as Sphinx seems to be trying to tell a story, or are the answers in her journal? Was her death an accident? Was she killed? And how does all of this link up to Patrick being arrested for murder in present day Dubai? So many questions, such an absolute joy trying to figure out the answers.

There is a variety of things going on in this story. There is a certain level of madness and obsession, and the cruelty of men; there is the way women are erased from history; there is this sense of not quite fitting in, which I'm sure many of us can relate to, and there is also the complicated relationships between parents and children. Juliette wasn't the only one with a dark secrets in her past. Caroline too has been impacted by an event in her past, and it is this that spurs her on to find out the truth about Juliette.

I very much enjoyed 'The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby'. Even with the slower start, which is something I've been struggling with lately, there was more than enough on the pages to captivate me and entice me to keep reading. There are plenty of opportunities for the reader to uncover some truths themselves and, as always, I was delighted to answers some of the questions myself before they were revealed to me. When those reveals start coming, you also realise how brilliantly plotted this story is. It is very much an intricate and intriguing puzzle full of mystery and suspense. I don't think you'll regret adding it to your TBR.

The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby was described to me as The Secret History meets Saltburn, which is a pretty heady mix that sets expectations of interrogating the class system, elitism and a bit of bloodshed. This hits all of those points in a dark peek behind the facade of glamour and privilege.

This was a great historical mystery that peeked into the world of the elite and exposed the darkness hidden within. It really goes to some unexpected and horrifying places, particularly in terms of how privilege can be weaponised to obfuscate the truth. In sharp contrast to this, art is presented as subjective but ultimately a method of which to bring the darkness to light and reveal the truth once and for all. Truth is a fable here that people will die for, but also that they’d kill for. It is inherently bound up in questions of wealth and inheritance - pushing the lengths to which people may go to climb up the ladder and also to hold their status there. It is grubby behind the disguise of glossy beauty and glamorous dresses.

All three timelines pull into this and the sort of non linear format of the narratives makes you the detective as well, piecing together scraps from across the timelines to form the larger picture. In this way, it is somewhat of a love letter to art history and the tireless work done to recognise those otherwise ignored or removed from the narrative. These kind of stories are always such a draw to me and I really enjoyed learning more about this through the narrative. It is playful with the reader, leading you often on a merry dance.

In terms of the mystery, it is well executed. There are three but they all sort of tie into the large central mystery - at the same time, they are messily entangled with all sorts of people and relationships and dynamics. The book thrives in moments of character exploration, digging beneath the surface into the troubled waters of humanity lurking beneath. It pulls apart the subject and wants to get to the truth within. It is fairly meta in that question of artisitic integrity, truth and what makes us tick as people. I also have to mention the explosive and incredible final act, which had me glued to the pages.

Buckle up, and get ready to be transported… This latest Ellery Lloyd novel is full of unexpected twists and turns, and a fabulous, toxic world full of unlikeable characters. The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby plunges you into the world of a fading British aristocracy, art and art history. It has shades of The Secret History and several points of view and timelines. All timelines have unexpected reveals, culminating in a thrilling ending.
I adored The Club and People Like Her so I was expecting a fantastic read … and this did not disappoint!

Surrealism is an artform created after WWI, which rose to prominence after the Paris International Exhibition of 1938. Juliette Willoughby exhibited one painting, “Self Portrait as Sphinx”, but withdrew it after one day. A short time later, Juliette and her lover, Oskar – also a surrealist, died when a fire ripped through the Parisienne attic studio where they lived, totally destroying everything. The only record of the painting was the brief description in the catalogue for the Exhibition. In 1991, Caroline Cooper is a student of Art History at Cambridge University, as is her on-off boyfriend Patrick Lambert. Caroline is especially interested in Surrealism, and Patrick is especially interested in Caroline so goes with the flow. For their final dissertations, their appointed supervisor is Alice Long, an elderly, eccentric, expert in the field (too old to be a member of the University staff but it’s Cambridge and that’s the sort of thing that happens). She directs Caroline to the Willoughby Bequest, donated to the University by the Willoughby family and housed, largely unsorted, in the Museum Of Archaeology and Anthropology (it’s Cambridge vide supra). The Bequest is a collection of mostly Egyptological items, but might contain some clues to Juliette’s life before she ran off to Paris with Oskar at the age of eighteen. What she discovers there dictates the course of her career as she rises to become Professor Cooper, an international authority on Surrealism and the authority on Juliette. In 2023, she is called to examine a painting currently in the Dubai Gallery owned and run by Patrick; an impossible painting!
So a mystery story with three histories, Juliette’s, Caroline’s and Patrick’s, told from their three perspectives. Along the way, various other characters feature including other members of the Willoughby family, past and present, and other students, especially the members of the Osiris Society, an exclusive club founded by Juliette’s father, Cyril, in 1901. The three histories combine at the Gallery and the various mysteries that have occurred over the last hundred years are finally tied together. The plot is a complex weaving together of the three histories, beautifully written, detailed, logical, unlikely, but believable. There are a couple of minor plot anomalies, but I suspect most readers will miss or glided over those, because the story is so strong. The pace is deceptive, because of the amount of detail needed to support the underlying plot. I’ve argued with myself about the stars for this, but have decided that if I had no quibbles I would have given it 6 so knocking it down to 5.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

I am not really an art officianado so I wondered whether I would enjoy a book about art and painters but actually this was more of a mystery and a good one at that.

How can Caroline, who has made her reputation on the work of Juliette Willoughby, reconcile what happened at university to her life now? What is the secret in Juliette Willoughby’s painting and what is the story behind the tragic death of Juliette and her lover?

What is the truth behind the Willoughby family’s secrets?

If Caroline can’t find out now, it could end in tragedy for the people she loves.

This book is an exhilarating ride from start to finish, it will get under your skin like nothing else.
The story follows the life of surrealist artist Juliette Willoughby and her turbulent life in 1930s Paris. This life and her masterpiece become the subject for 2 cambridge students' final dissertation in 1990 and it is only then that a complex and twisted web of interconnected families, relationships and secrets come to light and begins to unravel.
The main characters of Patrick and Caroline are flawed but relatable and pull the story from their university time in 1990 to the present day art accumulating billionaires of Dubai
Unputdownable!

This book exceeded all of my expectations and I would fully recommend this if you enjoy dark academia mysteries! Set across 3 timelines, the story follows Caroline and Patrick as students at Cambridge in the 90’s as well is in modern day Dubai. At university, the two begin to investigate the mysterious lost paintings of Juliette Willoughby, and what follows is a dark, twisted journey into her past. With endless twists and turns, this was a really fast paced read that I couldn’t put down. One of my favourite reads of the year!

It’s the 1930’s and Juliette Willoughby has absconded to Paris with her married lover Oskar Erlich to live. They’re both surrealist artists.
Moving forward in time to 1991 two university students Caroline Cooper and Patrick Lambert, they’re both history of Art students about to start their dissertations for their degrees.
They are allocated a supervisor for just the two of them, and this course of action will set them off on a journey towards their future career paths, and much more than they could have ever imagined.

The book is written in different timelines, 1930’s Paris, 1990’s England and present time Dubai.
I was drawn into the mystery and intrigue from the beginning, second guessing myself as I read along. Interesting and lots of suspense.
I don’t want to give the plot away, but I really enjoyed reading this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

An enjoyable book from this writing team under the name of Ellery Lloyd. However as a fanatic for the books of Jeffrey Archer I have to say his knowledge of the art world and his writing skills to entertain are a little better than this.. That said anyone who enjoys stories involving the art world will enjoy this book that shows the authors great knowledge for the subject. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC this book.