The Lost Letter

Adrienne Chinn

Mar 2019 · Sold by HarperCollins UK

About this ebook

‘The Lost Letter from Morocco has great authenticity, immediacy and is an emotive and engaging read.’ Rosanna Ley

A forbidden love affair. A long-buried secret. A journey that will change everything.

Morocco, 1984. High in the Atlas Mountains, Hanane’s love for Irishman Gus is forbidden. Forced to flee her home with the man she loves, Hanane is certain she’s running towards her destiny. But she has made a decision that will haunt her family for years to come.

London, 2009. When Addy discovers a mysterious letter in her late father’s belongings, she journeys to Morocco in search of answers. But instead, she finds secrets – and is quickly pulled into a world that she doesn’t understand.

And when history starts to repeat itself, it seems her journey might just change the person she is forever...

A heartbreaking story of impossible love and dark family secrets that readers of Dinah Jefferies and Victoria Hislop will love.

Ratings and reviews

Addy is wrapping up her chemotherapy with many ‘proclamations’ from her half-sister, Philippa, in to discuss their father’s estate and choices Philippa had made, unbeknownst to Addy, about the disposition of house and possessions on the west coast of Canada. A box of his things given to Addy contained his Mont Blanc pen and several polaroid photographs, a surprise to Addy as she didn’t know her father was also a photographer. She has had, of late, a particularly bad run of luck: a cheating boyfriend, a photography studio going toes up and the cancer – she’s decided that a coffee table book of travel photos has the potential to sell, and the photographs from her father and the mysteries they hint to, along with an unfinished and never-mailed letter to her decide her on Morocco. This book worked, and didn’t on several different levels. The descriptions of Morocco, the social structure and the history were well presented and brought instant visual references and uncovered interesting layers of ‘precedence’ based on history, religious and tribal affiliations and affluence. And Addy’s discovery of Omar who acts as a tour-guide, taking her to the Zitoune waterfalls so present in the polaroids left from her father, into the village of Zitoune as she searches for Hanane, the woman her father was so enamored of and who made him happy. Of course, we have the ‘obligatory’ romance between Addy and Omar, a romance that is seeded with difficulty for them both, and the ongoing questions of what happened to Hanane, as well as her father’s time in the area. I had a mixed reaction – the story was a bit meandering and never quite reached the level of answers that the story required, while falling into the ‘trap’ of taking what could have been a solidly ‘second chance at her dream’ story for Addy. With the cliffhanger ending that wholly and completely left the story unfinished, and Addy’s ready acquiescence into ‘biddable’ partner as defined by Omar felt a bit ‘grubby’ – Addy was far too biddable and malleable, I wanted to see more growth and backbone from her with this new quest to find more about her father and recapturing her desire for photography – and that never quite happened. It was as if we were close – and then that was pushed aside to find answers that never really came, leaving this as one of the many great concepts that never reached fruition stories. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

About the author

Adrienne Chinn was born in an old paper-making town in Newfoundland, and grew up in rural Quebec and Montreal. She retraced her English father’s footsteps back to England, where she now lives and works as an interior designer.

When not writing or designing, she can normally be found in the queue at Gatwick heading off somewhere new: she travels all over the world, but most often to her beloved Morocco, which she has been visiting regularly for over ten years.