The Finery – Rachel Grosvenor

Published By: Fly On The Wall Press
Pages: 300
Released On: 25/08/2023

Tyranny is in the air in the city of Finer Bay, and Professor Wendowleen Cripcot would like to be left alone, thank you very much. The memories of the last one hundred years are quite enough to be getting on with, if only these young upstarts from the government body, The Finery, would stop trying to control her every move. With the eyes of a dictator upon her, there are not many places to hide…but Wendowleen has never been one to back down from a fight (just ask her pet wolf), and insurrection is brewing underground.

*****

Thanks to Fly On The Wall Press for my gifted proof of this title in return for an honest review.

The publisher very kindly gifted me a copy of this book a while back but for some reason I never got around to reading it. But I started it yesterday (26/10/23) and finished it in the same day. It’s absolutely fabulous. And for a debut it’s very accomplished.

I haven’t read a good fantasy for a while. Lots of thrillers and mysteries and whatnot, but a good old fantasy has been missing. And I thought I would get it from this book. From the off, when Wendowleen wakes up with a wolf asleep on her bed, you know the direction it’s going in. However, having finished it, I’m not sure I would call it 100% a fantasy. Yes there are fantasy elements, but sadly it feels more like our reality, things are becoming just a bit too familiar. There are too many worrying signs that our reality may become like the reality in the book: dictators monitoring every corner, controlling our every move, protests, uprisings etc. We’re already seeing it but I dearly hope it doesn’t get to this level. So I would call it a frighteningly familiar fantasy.

Professor Wendowleen Cripcot is a fabulous character. Right from the off she is just a fantastic old woman, nearing her 101st birthday, who has her own rules and beliefs and she’s not about to bow down for anyone. She’s strong and fierce but equally loveable and I wanted to protect her and follow her in equal measures. Obviously there are a lot of other characters, which I won’t go into too much detail here, but there wasn’t a lost one, they all earned their place in the story and helped to move Wendowleen’s along. For me, this whole story is sort of a tête-à-tête between Wendowleen and the so-called “Director”.

It was really quite funny at times too. I wasn’t expecting it to be so. But it has this wry, dark humour under the surface that helps bring character to the story. If it had been all doom and gloom, I’m not sure it would have been nearly as enjoyable. You need a bit of light. By having this depth to it, it makes for a much more exciting and relatable story that I wanted to carry on reading.

I often find that, because I’m lucky enough to have so many books to read, including ARCs, unless a book really grabs me, I find myself getting distracted by other, possibly better books, and I was worried I would be here as I know I’ve got some cracking 2024 books waiting. But I didn’t at all. Once I was in, I was hooked, and I just wanted to keep reading, wanting to find out how it ended.

Okay, I’m not going to spoil it because obviously, why would I? But I was plodding along, thoroughly enjoying it, and then about 3/4 of the way through – bombshell. It’s a quiet bombshell. It doesn’t shout and yell, it’s just slipped in. It was a literal jaw open on chest kind of moment – bravo Rachel.

It’s a mixture of, yes fantasy, but also adventure, action, thriller, horror, comedy, dystopia, contemporary – and somehow Rachel has found a way to balance them all. I think it would make an utterly brilliant TV series.