Glittering Hour: The most heartbreakingly emotional historical romance you'll read this year - Tapa blanda

The epic and long-awaited new romance from the author of Letters to the Lost, winner of the RNA Award. 'Emotionally fraught, evocative and redemptive, The Glittering Hour has been well worth the wait. What a superb novel - Iona Grey really is back with aplomb' Fiona Mitchell, author of The Maid's Room `Poignant, beautiful and sad. A must read!' Katrina Oliver 'Deeply captivating, engaging and so irresistible. I could not put it down! Petra Quelch 1925. The war is over and a new generation is coming of age, keen to put the trauma of the previous one behind them. Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing whose life is dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure; to parties and drinking and staying just the right side of scandal. Lawrence Weston is a struggling artist, desperate to escape the poverty of his upbringing and make something of himself. When their worlds collide one summer night, neither can resist the thrill of the forbidden, the lure of a love affair that they know cannot possibly last. But there is a dark side to pleasure and a price to be paid for breaking the rules. By the end of that summer everything has changed. A decade later, nine year old Alice is staying at Blackwood Hall with her distant grandparents, piecing together clues from her mother's letters to discover the secrets of the past, the truth about the present, and hope for the future. Netgalley readers are falling in love with Iona's storytelling yet again! `I HAVE NO WORDS GUYS!' 'I am completely and utterly speechless, it has been days since I finished The Glittering Hour for the SECOND time in two days, seriously. I was so distraught at being forced to say goodbye that I couldn't face even looking at another book, let alone reading another one. So I did the only thing that made any sense, I picked it up again and went back to the story again' 'How am I supposed to put into words how this story quite literally stole my heart, smashed it into a billion pieces and rebuilt it all in one day? It simply impossible to just put her books down, for even a second! The Glittering Hour is of course no different, once you start, from that very first page, you are irrevocably hers until she has finished with you' 'Breathtakingly beautiful, but even that description doesn't give it the justice it truly deserves' 'I have waited for what seems a lifetime for The Glittering Hour, after loving Letters to the Lost so much I was worried it maybe wouldn't live up to expectations. But how wrong I was, The Glittering Hour was EVERYTHING and MORE. More than I could have ever hoped and prayed for. It has well and truly surpassed all my expectations and smashed them well and truly out the park' 'When it comes to historical fiction I have had a favourite author, who no one in the world could even get close to, after this I have to give that crown to my new Queen, Iona Grey' 'This review will never be able to give it the justice it so rightly deserves. There simply is not enough words or even the right words to express to you how stunning this book is' 'The Glittering Hour is breathtakingly beautiful, stunning and an epic love story that will stay with you forever. Iona is an extremely talented story-teller, who can truly make you feel as though you are living within the pages. Compelling and utterly impossible to put down' Further praise for Iona Grey: `Captivating characters, convincing and compelling' Fern Britten `An epic story of love and loss that will break your heart' Santa Montefiore 'A beautiful, tender story from a naturally gifted storyteller. A wonderful debut novel and a real weepy!' Lucinda Riley 'A captivating and deliciously romantic tale of life-lasting love that will tear your heart in two' Rachel Hore 'Extraordinarily vivid, compelling and beautifully told' Miranda Dickinson 'Sweeping, wonderful and truly, truly romantic' Julie Cohen 'A moving period love story' Sunday Mirror 'A beautiful love story' Prima 'A touching story that swept me along to its end' Woman & Home 'Tender, heart-rending and utterly compelling' Good Housekeeping

Iona Grey has a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University, an obsession with history and an enduring fascination with the lives of women in the twentieth century. She lives in rural Cheshire with her husband and three daughters. She tweets @iona_grey.