After Mrs. Hamilton by Clare Ashton

From the blurb: Clo leads a loveless life as an escort for older women. Laura is locked in a safe marriage, but longs to break out and find the parents she never met. Two women enter the lives of these friends and Clo and Laura’s secrets, and those of the generation before, begin to unravel.

This is what I have been looking for in lesfic since I started reading lesfic. This is what I have been wanting to read every time I have been disappointed by so many lackluster romances that flood the market. I felt the same way when I read Fingersmith by Sarah Waters; an almost immediate, desperate need to devour more stories with complicated characters that made me ache with sadness while making me indescribably happy.

This story is an amalgamation of intertwining plotlines, all connected in ways that you would never suspect when you begin reading it. And halfway through the book, I’m betting that you will have a Eureka! moment, thinking you have it all figured out. And I’m going to tell you right now, that you are wrong. You don’t have it figured out at all. It is so much more complicated than you could ever imagine, and even knowing that I should be expecting twists, I didn’t expect half of them.

You will meet Clo, Mrs. Hamilton, Fran, Laura, Susan, Amelia, David, Karen, and more! And I can’t tell you more than to say that Clo and Laura are friends, and Susan joins their friendship fairly early on in the story. Everyone has secrets, dark pasts, and mysterious deceptions that the reader slowly unravels up to the end. Once I picked it up, I could not be forced to put it down by any means. Readers-please pick up this book immediately. Writers, please read this and take notes.

That isn’t to say that the book isn’t without faults. For quite a while I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters, how they were connected, who was related to whom. And even towards the end, a character would be mentioned that I had to think for several minutes and flip back to recall who the author was talking about. Also, there is a storyline that left me thinking, “yeah, but now what’s gonna happen?!”

But overall, I can not recommend this book enough.

Click to purchase After Mrs Hamilton

17 comments

  1. Shit! I’m 1/2 through and now don’t know what the hell is happening since I have to throw away all my guesses.

    Loving this book, though.

  2. Nice review, Nikki. This is one of those books, that when a twist is revealed or discovered, you flip back and re-read a previous passage to see if it was there all along and you just didn’t see it. I love that in a book!

  3. Finished it about an hour ago. I was right about a couple of things but didn’t want to be right about at least one of them. So good. Just really loved this book.

  4. Just finished this after an almost-marathon. Wow, what an amazing story. Nope, I did not see some of these twists coming at me. Ok, truth be known – I did not see most of these twists coming! I kept thinking I missed some pages, lol, and going back to see if there was something I skipped. I too have questions about what comes next. There really should be an Epilogue, or another whole story! I love this one. Just read it.

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