A mystery she can’t remember. A friend she can’t forget.

I kept your secret Lucy. I’ve kept it for more than sixty years . . .

It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living alone with her eccentric mother – who conducts seances for the local Ludthorpe community – she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life.

When the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. But Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep . . .

Then Lucy goes missing.

2018. Edie is eighty-four and still living in Ludthorpe. When one day she glimpses Lucy Theddle, still looking the same as she did at fifteen, her family write it off as one of her many mix ups. There’s a lot Edie gets confused about these days. A lot she finds difficult to remember. But what she does know is this: she must find out what happened to Lucy, all those years ago . . .

Review:

Absorbing, mysterious, and heartfelt!

One Puzzling Afternoon is a heartwarming, captivating tale that takes you into the life of Edie Green, an eighty-two-year-old woman who, although struggling with a mind that is quickly losing the present while scattering the past, is determined to do whatever she can to piece those memories together before they’re gone for good to find her beloved friend whom she glimpsed only the other day but who actually hasn’t been seen since she disappeared almost seventy years ago.

The prose is evocative and warm. The characters are troubled, genuine, and endearing. And the plot, told in a past/present style, is a delightfully affecting tale about life, love, loss, family, friendship, deception, tragedy, community, dementia, and secrets.

Overall, One Puzzling Afternoon is a compelling, tender, lovely tale by Critchley that I absolutely adored and which did a beautiful job of reminding us that sharing, capturing, and remembering all those special moments in time, good or bad, is truly what life is all about.

This novel is available now.

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