The blurb…

Fortune favours the fraud…

When she was thirteen years old, Ada Howell lost not just her father, but the life she felt she was destined to lead. Now, at eighteen, Ada is given a second chance when her wealthy godmother gifts her with an extravagant art history trip to Italy.
In the palazzos of Venice, the cathedrals of Florence and the villas of Rome, she finally finds herself among the kind of people she aspires to be: sophisticated, cultured, privileged. Ada does everything in her power to prove she is one of them. And when a member of the group dies in suspicious circumstances, she seizes the opportunity to permanently bind herself to this gilded set.
But everything hidden must eventually surface, and when it does, Ada discovers she’s been keeping a far darker secret than she could ever have imagined…

My thoughts…

‘The Favour’ includes a recreation and modernisation of the ‘Grand Tour’, which I’ve read about several times in other books; for those who are not aware, it’s a trip where privileged young men during the 17th and 18th centuries would travel throughout Europe, where Rome was often an ultimate destination. The aim was to finish an upper-class male’s education but often became synonymous with drinking, gaming and romantic escapades! These tours could take years, but in ‘The Favour’ our principle character has booked on a shorter, recreation of the tour: an art history trip to Italy. The lead, Ada Howell is experiencing great change in her life; she has recently moved away from her family home after the death of her father and feels very adrift. The opportunity to travel and explore Italy calls out to her and this is where we find the story begins to shift.

I enjoyed the detailed and atmospheric art history detail throughout the story and with themes of deception, connections, the other, friendship, obsession and desperation, this is certainly a layered novel. The characters are, for the most part, quite unlikeable and evoke questions of privilege and power.

I enjoyed the more sinister underscore and the clever build-up of tension and shade within the narrative. The misdirection and plotting were well executed and I loved the reading experience of uncertainty and considerable questioning. A book that hooks you in and pulls you along mercilessly into its clever close.

The author – Laura Vaughan

Laura Vaughan grew up in rural Wales and studied Art History in Italy and Classics at Bristol and Oxford. She got her first book deal aged twenty-two and went on to write eleven books for children and young adults. is her first novel for adults. She lives in
South London with her husband and two children.

Please buy from independents if you can XX