The River Home is the fourth novel by best-selling British-Australian author, Hannah Richell. Despite strong misgivings Margot has, after eight years away, returned to her chaotic childhood home, Windfalls. She’s here for her sister Lucy’s hastily arranged wedding to Tom (Is she pregnant? Probably…), so of course Kit, Margot’s estranged mother, will be there.

Margot is prepared to draw a line under the past to keep things civil for Lucy's sake, although Lucy is (naively?) hopeful that the rift can be repaired, but Kit is insisting on an apology and an explanation for Margot’s terrible act. Their (always responsible) elder sister, Eve is, meanwhile, stressing over all the arrangements that Lucy airily seems to believe will come together.

When Kit Weaver and Ted Sorrell bought the run-down farmhouse near Bath over thirty years earlier, forsaking city life, Kit envisaged an idyllic existence of Ted writing plays and Kit creating a family. The reality was different: Ted plagued by writer’s block; Kit struggling with motherhood, then almost accidentally falling into fame as an author of the best-selling Rare Elements series. If her sisters remember a happy childhood, Margot, dropped through the cracks of a breaking family, has a different recall.

Now, they will all be together again at Windfalls. It is a mistake? Each of the sisters holds a dark secret, while Kit and Ted have separated. Can they all hold it together for these few days?

Richell has the reader instantly intrigued with the mystery of what Margot did and why, and hints are gradually meted out with flashbacks as the main story plays out over a few days. There are plenty of secrets and not a few red herrings to distract from the truth. Richell’s characters are multi-dimensional and fairly credible, although for a teen in 2010, Margot seems exceptionally naïve.

While Richell’s depiction of the author in the grip of her muse, and the effect of that on those around her, makes sense of those acknowledgements-to-family we often find at the end of books, and while our demands, as voracious readers, are clearly responsible for some of that, Kit is still not an easy character to like or connect with.
This is a gripping and emotional read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy.

Excellent read as always with Hannah Richell