The Portrait Girl – Nicole Swengley

Published By: Breakthrough Books
Pages:
Released On: 10th October 2024

1880

A young woman sits for the painting of a miniature portrait – a fashionable betrothal gift – while secretly contemplating a terrifying decision that will change everything.

This Year

Freya Wetherby’s life is falling apart. Her jewellery business has failed and her boyfriend has betrayed her. Then she discovers a Victorian portrait miniature in her late mother’s belongings. Who is this intriguing young woman? Why is Freya becoming so obsessed by her?

As she embarks on a quest to discover the girl’s identity, a meeting with an art historian draws her into a fascinating but sinister series of salons where the Victorian art world is uncannily brought to life.

Past and present become dangerously blurred as Freya begins a perilous search for the truth about the portrait miniature – and herself.

*****

Thanks to Anne at Random Tours for the gifted copy of this title in return for an honest review and a spot on the book tour.

Oooooh I love a good historical novel. Especially if it involves art in anyway. And we know how I feel about a beautiful cover. Absolutely gorgeous!

This has got history, art, romance, intrigue, mystery, thrill, secrets, fear. Bear with me, but it’s almost like a modern historical novel, if that makes sense.

It was captivating from the off, both during the 1800s scenes and the present. They worked off each other well but also offers something indivudally. It really grabbed my attention.

I liked Freya as a main character. She’s lost and she’s grieving and stuck, seemingly unsure what to do next. And then this portrait appears and takes her on this unexpected journey. I liked her as she was very normal and relatable and I just wanted to go along with her story.

I thought it was ‘just’ going to be a historical/modern novel and it would be interesting. Which it is. But there’s so much more. There’s sinister characters, underhand and undermining goings-ons, secrets, dangers, manipulators; it’s a real thrill. And having a young woman in what is effectively, even now, a very male-dominated environment was interesting because you see it in different ways depending on which era you’re reading.

A woman in a male environment in the 1880s would have been very rare and a woman would still be seen as lesser. But in modern times, there’s more equality in the sense that male-dominated industries to have more women in, but I think at some level there’s still this split, and this pressure and new way of looking at it…it was really interesting. (I’m not sure I explained that right, but hopefully you get what I’m saying).

It is chock-a-block full of description. At times I wondered if it was too much, stalling the action by going into too much detail about potentially unimportant or unrelated things. But overall I think it was required to give the story the effect it wanted to have on the reader.

One thing I will say is I wanted more scenes set in the 1800s. For the majority, it is set in the present scenes, and there’s nothing wrong with that/ But I was after alternate chapters perhaps, so you could stick with the older story, get involved with the characters and whatnot, and link the two eras together, but by mainly only having the modern scenes, it lost a bit of the historical link for me.

But overall it’s a jolly good story, so layered and rich in detail, and I would thoroughly recommend it to all historical novel lovers.