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Before I Met You
Before I Met You
Dec 23, 2025 1:15 AM

Author:Lisa Jewell,Imogen Church,Sofia Greenacre

Before I Met You

Brought to you by Penguin.

London, 1920. Arlette works in Liberty by day, and by night is caughty up in a glamorous whirl of parties, clubs, cocktails and jazz. But when tragedy strikes she flees the city, never to return.

Over half a century later, in the grungy mid-'90s, her graddaughter Betty arrives in London.

She can't wait to begin her new life. But before she can do so, she must find the mysterious woman named in her grandmother's will.

What she doesn't know is that her search will uncover the heartbreaking secret that changed her grandmother's life, and might also change hers for ever...

© Lisa Jewell 2012 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Reviews

Beautiful, moving and unputdownable

—— Jojo Moyes

Heartbreakingly good

—— Marie Claire

Must read

—— Express

Warm and moving with a nostalgic touch

—— Star

Lisa Jewell just gets better and better

—— Grazia

Enchanting, intriguing and completely unputdownable

—— Katie Fforde

A taut, twisting and terrifying read that takes no prisoners as it carves and claws its way into your nightmares. Expect more than just jitters...

—— Melinda Salisbury, author of Hold Back the Tide

A twisted thriller with a fantastically eerie setting in which nothing is what it seems. I loved the landmarks and gruesome history of Harrow Lake. The buried secrets, landslides, jitterbugs and the Bone Tree will stay with me for a long time. Kat Ellis's monstrous Mr Jitters and the frozen-in-time movie setting makes for a chilling read that had me looking over my shoulder and holding my breath

—— Michelle Harrison, author of A Pinch of Magic

Harrow Lake is scary, but also hugely fun . . . the claustrophobic Harrow Lake itself seems a fully realized world, a character in itself

—— The Bookseller

Deliciously creepy

—— Amy McCulloch, author of Jinxed

Ellis brings the claustrophobia of pulp fandom front and centre in this masterpiece of a novel

—— Dawn Kurtagich, author of The Dead House

With its creeping dread and unspooling secrets, Harrow Lake feels like an Alfred Hitchcock film in YA novel form. Thrilling, terrifying and utterly compelling. Deserves to be a summer blockbuster!

—— Katherine Webber, author of Wing Jones

Alexis Henderson is giving us dark magic, Black witches, creepy woods and small religious towns, historical realness, and I'm here for it.

—— TOR.COM

This is an intensely dark read and one of the most original books I've read in a long time.

—— BUZZFEED

Henderson blends the supernatural with the real, expertly and ingeniously using dark witchcraft, sigils, and magical plagues to weave in real world themes and issues like racism, the oppression and silencing of women, and religious abuse.

—— NERD DAILY

This is one of the best, righteously angriest books I've read this year, and I cannot recommend it enough.

—— BOOKRIOT

The novel is not dead when we have writers as curious, daring and honest as Nicola Barker. Her latest is downright exquisite.

—— i Newspaper

A madly brilliant little book … I loved it.

—— Daily Mail

It marks a cautious pivot away from the involutions of H(A)PPY and The Cauliflower, back towards the highly distinctive take on literary realism that characterizes Barker’s earlier work.

—— Keith Miller , Times Literary Supplement

Gobbled all of this down all of this 209 page gem on a single long-haul flight. Set in a single 20-minute house viewing in Llandudno with a bafflingly diverse cast of characters. It shouldn’t work but I thought it was super.

—— Rick O’Shea’s Best Books of 2019 in RTE.ie

Knocked me sideways … It’s so masterful and meta. The narrative style is elegant and frenetic

—— Emma Jane Unsworth , Observer

[A]bsurdly well-researched, prescient and pin-sharp [...] so definitely pick it up'

—— Sirin Kale

[I]t's thrillingly, DELICIOUSLY fascinating about How We Live Now. She's a MINE of information- philosophy, science, literature, stats, all pulled together in her coolly elegant prose. I could not put it down!

—— Marian Keyes

These 242 pages are an (exhaustive, though not depressing) middle-finger to the word 'should'. A word which justifies women feeling the need to constantly scrutinise every decision; in the name of self-improvement, in order to have the Best Life Possible, at a hundred miles an hour.

—— Buro247

Energetic and compelling.

—— Olivia Sudjic

Sykes stays true to "High Low" form by using a high-low mix of vocabulary ... We have all had moments of asking ourselves if we are doing "this" - gestures vaguely - right, which makes the book all the more likeable. This is a form of learning how to succeed by failing - as it admits to being human.

—— Best non-fiction books about failure , Independent

Pandora is my personal guru on all things relating to the zeitgeist. How lucky you are that she can now be yours too.

—— Dolly Alderton

This will spark a thousand conversations and encourage us to find our own path to contentment.

—— Best nonfiction books of 2020 , Topshop

Hailed as a manifesto for modern women ... packed with her trademark wit, wisdom and philosophical references (if you know her, you know), this book is the opposite of doom and gloom. Instead, her judgement free observations are reassuring, comforting and wholeheartedly uplifting.

—— Marie Claire

Rushdie is a master storyteller who weaves his fictions and characters into such agreeable tapestries.

—— Sarah Hayes , Tablet

The novel's dazzling virtuosity and cascade of cultural references culminate in a final moving moment of hope

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail
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