The Favour - Laura Vaughan

 

Delighted to be on the blog tour for this amazing book.

Description

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...

Review

I love Italy and so to revisit past haunts via this book was just heaven in the present climate. Ada goes to Italy as part of a group of young privileged people on an organised tour. Although she no longer lives in a grand house now her Father is dead, her Godmother has some money to spare to pay for the expensive tour.

Whilst on the tour the students get to experience Italy, there's a few secrets that surface, and it's actually educational too (for the reader also!). Ada tries her hardest to resurrect what's left of the lifestyle she once had, with a plummy voice to match, but unfortunately not the cash to splash. So when she gets the opportunity to provide a "favour" for her more affluent new friends, she's quick on the uptake. Hopeful of  beneficial rewards and new connected friends in her future.

The beginnings of this book belie what is to come. Up until this point it's a beautifully written book, with a wonderfully descriptive backdrop of Italy. Ada reminiscing on the childhood home she wishes she still roamed and the life she felt destined to lead. But something that happened whilst they were in Italy comes back to haunt the group in later years. It concerns in particular Ada and her "favour" and a couple of the others. In a page turn this became more like a dark Agatha Christie with a wonderful twist to the plot. It's just absolute genius.

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars and wish it could be more! My thanks to Random Tour Things for the copy of the book to review.

About the author

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.