The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor is based on the real events that took place between 1917 - 1921 when young girls Frances and Elsie from Cottingley in England took photos of themselves with faeries. The cousins aged 9 and 16 respectively, stirred up quite a storm at the time and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed the photographs were genuine. The photographs were the subject of news and magazine articles and Arthur Conan Doyle was so convinced of their authenticity that he published a book in 1922 called The Coming of the Fairies.
In The Cottingley Secret, Hazel Gaynor imagines what might have happened from Frances' point of view and I found her take on the event to be a convincing one. The story is told in dual timelines and in the present day, 35 year old Olivia has travelled back to Ireland to farewell her late grandfather. With fond memories of their time together, he has bequeathed his beloved second hand bookshop Something Old to Olivia. Going through his belongings, she finds a document with hundreds of typed pages entitled Notes on a Fairy Tale by Frances Griffiths.
Written by Frances later in life, it begins when she is just nine and a half years old in Cottingley in Yorkshire in 1917. Frances loves to be outdoors and spends hours at the local creek where she sees real faeries. In Frances' manuscript, she mentions her father going to war and the heartache of not knowing when he is coming home or when WWI will end. When it eventually does end, the grief that follows leads to the rise of spiritualism right across the country. This was a unique period in time where people were looking for more and wanted to believe in faeries, making this an opportune time to pull off the perfect hoax... or was it?
Apart from dropping her collection of sympathy cards received after the passing of her grandfather into the kitchen bin - who DOES that? - Olivia is a likeable character. Her nana has dementia and is in a nursing home and the connection between Frances' manuscript and Olivia's nana and grandfather is a slow reveal.
Olivia's love of books is highly relatable and I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the bookshop and it's eventual glow up; I just love a property makeover and this one had a touch of fantasy about it. Admittedly there is a light romance element but for someone who doesn't like romance novels, I was relieved the romance didn't dominate or interfere too much with the narrative.
The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor will appeal to readers of historical fiction interested in the case of the Cottingley Fairies and who enjoy mysteries, family secrets and intergenerational connections.
