Tea Cooper
395 pages
Harper Muse, 2021
Amazon Description:
The Hunter Valley, 1880. Evie Ludgrove loves to chart the landscape around her home—hardly surprising since she grew up in the shadow of her father’s obsession with the great Australian explorer Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt. So when an advertisement appears in The Bulletin magazine offering a thousand-pound reward for proof of where Leichhardt met his fate, Evie is determined to use her father’s papers to unravel the secret. But when Evie sets out to prove her theory, she vanishes without a trace, leaving behind a mystery that haunts her family for thirty years.
Letitia Rawlings arrives at the family estate in her Ford Model T to inform her great-aunt Olivia of a loss in their family. But Letitia is also escaping her own problems—her brother’s sudden death, her mother’s scheming, and her dissatisfaction with the life planned out for her. So when Letitia discovers a beautifully illustrated map that might hold a clue to the fate of her missing aunt, Evie Ludgrove, she sets out to discover the truth. But all is not as it seems, and Letitia begins to realize that solving the mystery of her family’s past could offer as much peril as redemption.
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Thanks to TLC Book Tours for allowing me to participate in the tour for The Cartographer’s Secret by sending me a copy to review!
This is the third book I’ve read by Tea Cooper (the other two are The Woman in the Green Dress and The Girl in the Painting, in case you were wondering) and I found all the elements I enjoyed in the other two in this one as well.
There are three things that I really like about her books. The first is that they are set in Australia, a place I would very much like to visit one day, so I appreciate the vivid picture she paints as she describes the setting. I also really like that she writes dual timeline novels that weave two stories from different times together. And then I always enjoy how she works in a mystery that slowly unravels as we go hop back and forth between the two stories with an ultimate reveal near the end.
My favorite thing about The Cartographer’s Secret was the mystery element. I was dying to find out what happened to Evie and liked that the search for clues brought up the question of whether or not knowing the truth is always better. The romance that blooms between Lettie and Nathanial was also sweet, and contributed to a satisfying ending.
If you like books with lots of family secrets and drama then The Cartographer’s Secret is probably a good choice for you. There are lots of bones in this family’s closets, but there is also some reconciliation and healing that happens as Lettie searches for answers. Overall it’s a great story that I highly recommend.