Dark Tides by Philippa Gregory

Dark Tides (The Fairmile Series Book 2) by Philippa Gregory

Published November 2020 by Atria Books

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Midsummer Eve 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man hoping to find the lover he deserted twenty-one years before. James Avery has everything to offer, including the favour of the newly restored King Charles II, and he believes that the warehouse's poor owner Alinor has the one thing his money cannot buy—his son and heir.

The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice in deepest mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and has come to tell Alinor that her son Rob has drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon.

Alinor writes to her brother Ned, newly arrived in faraway New England and trying to make a life between the worlds of the English newcomers and the American Indians as they move toward inevitable war. Alinor tells him that she knows—without doubt—that her son is alive and the widow is an imposter.

Set in the poverty and glamour of Restoration London, in the golden streets of Venice, and on the tensely contested frontier of early America, this is a novel of greed and desire: for love, for wealth, for a child, and for home.

My Thoughts:

I haven't read any of Phillipa Gregory's books since The Other Boleyn Girl. When I got an email about this book, I thought it was time to give her stories another chance. Did the pitch mention this was part of a series? I don't remember. 

I was 100 pages into this book before I realized it was the second book in a series. To be sure, there's plenty of backstory hinted at throughout but Gregory does such a good job of making it seem to be part of the way she wanted to tell her story that it never appeared to be an attempt to catch readers up on a first book. Except...

There are two story lines here, that of Alinor's family in London and that of Ned in the New World. As they summary says, they're brother and sister who write to each other and Ned occasionally sends boxes of herbs. And that is as close as the two stories ever come to intersecting; it was obvious about half way through the book that that would be the case. Alinor's family's story was much more interesting to me and I raced through those chapters, although Ned's might have been a fine story if I were reading it in it's own book. Gregory makes both locations come alive and there are some really terrific characters in both story lines but Alinor's story is the story that has the action and the suspense.

And in the end? Dark Tides is literally the The Empire Strikes Back of this book series. We only ever get the barest glimpse of the entire backstory and the stories more or less just drop off at the end of this book. There may, in fact, actually be more loose ends by the last page as there were at the beginning. 

If you're a fan of Gregory's, I think you'll enjoy this one. And if you've already read Tidelands, I think you won't be disappointed in this next installment of Alinor's story. If you haven't read that one, read it first.