Best BookTrail of the Month – February 2023

Submitted: 28th February 2023

Best BookTrail of the Month – February 2023

It’s that time of the month again – looking over the last month and picking up a favourite book where all the BookTrail signs align…

Why this won February’s Book (Trail) of the Month

Location – Edinburgh

Setting – a castle

Characters – a man and his spurned lover

Overall – inspired by a true story, this is fascinating!

Drum roll please…..

The plot:

“In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.”

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian Nimmo is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess.

Only a year before, Christian was leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn’t the only woman in Forrester’s life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead . . .

You NEED to read this novel.

Short review:

I loved this one! It’s inspired by a real life case of a woman accused of murdering her lover and being sent to the Maiden which was the guillotine used at the time. It sets off the time and city of Edinburgh of the time very well indeed.

Great writing and fantastically life sized characters. Despite the awful crime which takes place in the book, the novel is quite witty and bawdy with it. There’s a poor house, whore house and then there’s a mansion on a hill where the rich man lives. That’s where the trouble lies.

That cover is just as wonderful as the story within. So much so that I bought a special hardback edition with gorgeous sprayed edges to it.