London, 1754.
Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst – that Clara has died in care – the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed – by her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl – and why. Less than a mile from Bess’ lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse on the edge of London, a young widow has not left the house in a decade. When her close friend – an ambitious young doctor at the Foundling Hospital – persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.
From the bestselling author of The Familiars, and set against the vibrant backdrop of Georgian London, The Foundling explores families, secrets, class, equality, power and the meaning of motherhood.
Title: The Foundling
Author: Stacey Halls
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
DISCLAIMER: I am reviewing an Advance Reader Copy of this book that I received in a giveaway and so things are subject to change between this and the final edition. My opinions are my own.
Wow, that book started with a bang! It drops you right in to Bessie dropping her baby off at the Foundling hospital and the emotional turmoil that causes. You can immediately see her love for the one-day-old baby and how much it hurts her to have to do this. This is possibly the quickest I’ve ever started caring about a character before.
The writing style in The Foundling is really quite good and consistent: I hate when some historical books use modern language or slang accidentally in the words and in really drags you out of the time period of the book. The slang and old terms are used enough to be believable, while not too much to make you not actually understand what’s going on.
One thing that I couldn’t imagine particularly well though: The hat Bessie sells shrimp from… I’m not sure if it’s just my lack of imagination, but my brain kept giving me a giant sombrero-style hat which really threw me while I was reading. The picture of her in her cotton dress and that hat was quite funny! (I assume it was some sort of tray, but I couldn’t get this image out of my head!)
It really surprised me when we got the change of perspective too – I was expecting to stay with Bessie for the whole book, and instead I get a large portion of it with Alexandra. I think it was good to show her internal monologue, because otherwise I think I would have judged her as Bessie likely saw her: the woman who stole her child. I wouldn’t have got the other side to the story and really sympathised with both sides.
It was also good as I have anxiety, though not as debilitatingly as Alexandra, so that really helped endear her to me and understand her motivations more.
It’s also interesting how Alexandra’s specific anxieties really narrow the world in which we get to read about, since she rarely leaves the house, and does so only to go to church and back. It forces our characters to spend a lot of time together and to see their specific character traits. I’m not sure how I would manage being cooped up that much, even being a person who enjoys staying in and cosying up with a good book, so that helped me feel for little Charlotte too.
The whole feel of this book reminded me of how Jodi Picoult books work: giving you both sides of one story in such a compelling way that you’re not sure who you side with by the end. Stacey Halls has that skill of being able to debate both sides of an argument just as well and it really shows in The Foundling.
It did help too to have a kind and warm character like Doctor Mead in the mix, to break away from the harsh realities of the time and the issues of the book. He’s the kind of doctor I think anyone would be happy to have.
One thing I wasn’t as keen on, though still liked, was the ending. It all felt a bit too… neatly tied up and resolved for my liking. I’m really glad about how it worked out in the end because I couldn’t see a way of it working all throughout the book, but I thought the issues were a little more complex than that.
Maybe seeing more of how it led up to the ending would have helped – seeing the messiness of figuring out a situation with a kid stuck in the middle would have been very interesting. Though I suppose that might have made the book almost double the size, so maybe not!
Overall I very much enjoyed this book, and it was a nice breakaway from my usual Fantasy or Sci-Fi reads to a historical book which I always enjoy but don’t often get around to. I haven’t picked up The Familiars yet by Stacey Halls, but this has really made me want to!
Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst – that Clara has died in care – the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed – by her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl – and why. Less than a mile from Bess’ lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse on the edge of London, a young widow has not left the house in a decade. When her close friend – an ambitious young doctor at the Foundling Hospital – persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.
From the bestselling author of The Familiars, and set against the vibrant backdrop of Georgian London, The Foundling explores families, secrets, class, equality, power and the meaning of motherhood.
Title: The Foundling
Author: Stacey Halls
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
DISCLAIMER: I am reviewing an Advance Reader Copy of this book that I received in a giveaway and so things are subject to change between this and the final edition. My opinions are my own.
Wow, that book started with a bang! It drops you right in to Bessie dropping her baby off at the Foundling hospital and the emotional turmoil that causes. You can immediately see her love for the one-day-old baby and how much it hurts her to have to do this. This is possibly the quickest I’ve ever started caring about a character before.
The writing style in The Foundling is really quite good and consistent: I hate when some historical books use modern language or slang accidentally in the words and in really drags you out of the time period of the book. The slang and old terms are used enough to be believable, while not too much to make you not actually understand what’s going on.
One thing that I couldn’t imagine particularly well though: The hat Bessie sells shrimp from… I’m not sure if it’s just my lack of imagination, but my brain kept giving me a giant sombrero-style hat which really threw me while I was reading. The picture of her in her cotton dress and that hat was quite funny! (I assume it was some sort of tray, but I couldn’t get this image out of my head!)
It really surprised me when we got the change of perspective too – I was expecting to stay with Bessie for the whole book, and instead I get a large portion of it with Alexandra. I think it was good to show her internal monologue, because otherwise I think I would have judged her as Bessie likely saw her: the woman who stole her child. I wouldn’t have got the other side to the story and really sympathised with both sides.
It was also good as I have anxiety, though not as debilitatingly as Alexandra, so that really helped endear her to me and understand her motivations more.
It’s also interesting how Alexandra’s specific anxieties really narrow the world in which we get to read about, since she rarely leaves the house, and does so only to go to church and back. It forces our characters to spend a lot of time together and to see their specific character traits. I’m not sure how I would manage being cooped up that much, even being a person who enjoys staying in and cosying up with a good book, so that helped me feel for little Charlotte too.
The whole feel of this book reminded me of how Jodi Picoult books work: giving you both sides of one story in such a compelling way that you’re not sure who you side with by the end. Stacey Halls has that skill of being able to debate both sides of an argument just as well and it really shows in The Foundling.
It did help too to have a kind and warm character like Doctor Mead in the mix, to break away from the harsh realities of the time and the issues of the book. He’s the kind of doctor I think anyone would be happy to have.
One thing I wasn’t as keen on, though still liked, was the ending. It all felt a bit too… neatly tied up and resolved for my liking. I’m really glad about how it worked out in the end because I couldn’t see a way of it working all throughout the book, but I thought the issues were a little more complex than that.
Maybe seeing more of how it led up to the ending would have helped – seeing the messiness of figuring out a situation with a kid stuck in the middle would have been very interesting. Though I suppose that might have made the book almost double the size, so maybe not!
Overall I very much enjoyed this book, and it was a nice breakaway from my usual Fantasy or Sci-Fi reads to a historical book which I always enjoy but don’t often get around to. I haven’t picked up The Familiars yet by Stacey Halls, but this has really made me want to!