Voyeur by Francesca Reece (Headline) isn’t the first novel to follow a young woman spending a restless summer in France – just look at 1950s classics such as The Dud Avocado and Bonjour Tristesse – but that doesn’t make it any less addictive. It follows Leah, a young woman from Cumbria who finds herself drifting around Paris after being “ambitioned out of London”. She longs for a more fulfilling, exciting life, but isn’t sure how to build one – until she takes a job typing up the memoirs of famous author Michael Young. When he invites Leah to the south of France with his affluent family and friends, she quickly finds herself entangled in their murky relationships.
“Reece perfectly captures the anxiety of waiting for your life to ‘begin’ in your early 20s,” says Lucy Robson, Stylist’s head of SEO. “Voyeur is told in both Leah and Michael’s voices: while she transcribes his diaries, wondering what was written on some key missing pages, his perspective jumps between present-day France and 1960s London and Athens. With a complicated love triangle, glamorous settings, a cast of enigmatic characters and a mystery that will keep you guessing right until the end, it’s a genuinely thrilling summer holiday read.” £16.98, Bookshop.org
Watch Francesca Reece’s recent conversation with The Other Black Girl author Zakiya Dalila Harris at the Stylist Literary Festival on demand here