Review: Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney

Rating: Buy it ASAP – a bookshelf essential

What is it? Fiction, mystery/drama

Ideal for fans of: The Guest List (Lucy Foley) or Sleep (CL Taylor)

What makes it special? Exceptional prose and a triple twist

Get it in South Africa from: Pan Macmillan South Africa

Daisy Darker died eight times by her thirteenth birthday. Then again, she was only given fifteen years to live thanks to a congenital heart defect. Daisy suspects this is the reason she is her mother’s least favourite child. Because she was born damaged, into an already breaking family.

But that’s all behind her now. Daisy is preparing for a family reunion. To celebrate her nana’s 80^th birthday bash, the whole family will meet at Seaglass; a ramshackle old house isolated on a tiny island. And Daisy has a secret. Yet while her family is stuck together until the tide goes out, they’re not alone. They’re trapped with a killer.

Daisy Darker can be summed up in a single word: delicious. The writing is superb, with a nod to high-brow literature, yet accessible. Daisy Darker reads so easily it feels like you’re inhaling the story. And what a story it is! We’re slowly guided back through the Darker family’s murky past, until it becomes clear that Daisy isn’t the only one who’s hiding something. Each trip back adds to the present narrative and helps build tension as we count down the hours until the tide is out.

Feeney ends of this masterpiece with a satisfying grand reveal that includes not one, or two, but THREE twists. So yes, you might be able to correctly navigate the red herrings and guess the killer correctly. But I guarantee that you will not predict the unique outcome. And that’s reason enough to try Alice Feeney. She’s put a modern spin on a well-known genre, and made it new again. Moreover, her writing is vibrant, explosive and dramatic, and this makes for the perfect literary getaway.

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney is published by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, and can be sourced from Pan Macmillan South Africa.

Review: Field Guide to the Amaryllis Family by Graham Duncan, Barbara Jeppe and Leigh Voigt

Rating: Buy it ASAP – a bookshelf essential

What is it? Non-fiction, field guide

Ideal for: Plant lovers and amateur botanists

What makes it special? The content is organised by biome, with full-colour illustrations

Get it in from: Penguin Random House South Africa (Struik Nature). Otherwise, check out the Botanical Society of South Africa (or your local botanical garden).

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The Amaryllis family is made up of a whopping 18 genera, comprising 265 species located mostly in Southern Africa. And this book covers all of them. 

Amateur botanists, hikers and nature enthusiasts alike will no longer have to guess exactly which Amaryllis plant they’re looking at.

The Field Guide to the Amaryllis Family is the bible for all-things Amaryllis. Comprehensive is an understatement.

It’s detailed and fully illustrated – including drawings and photographs of the underground structures (which is hopefully only for the event that you stumble across an uprooted bulb. Please don’t dig up Amaryllis willy nilly! I beg you!)

Each entry includes where a plant is found, look-alikes, and its life cycle. That way, you’ll know when to look out for flowers, seeds, or good ol’ fashioned greenery. It also features the history and medicinal properties of each species.

Finding a plant is easy, as they’re organised by biome. If you don’t know what that is, no problem. The authors have included a section explaining what these are and how they differ. 

This means that depending on which region you’re located in – and there are maps to help you work it out – you can narrow down searches, making identification user friendly.

[I feel like this is a good point to repeat: there are 265 different species of this plant. That creates a lot of potential for misidentification.]

As an aside, this is exactly how I discovered that I live on the cusp of two biomes; fynbos and succulent karoo (the authors are turning me into a novice geographer, too – how’s that for an added bonus?).

This book is also a visual record of the entire Amaryllis family. If you don’t use it as a field guide, you could still keep it is a comprehensive botanical diary. The photographs and illustrations are downright gorgeous, and for good reason. It took a tribe; 162 photographers and artists.

And as a final treat, it provides a list of bulb stockists, so that you can source some of these botanical delights for yourself, too.  

Field Guide to the Amaryllis Family by Graham Duncan, Barbara Jeppe and Leigh Voigt is published by Galley Press, and can be sourced from Struik Nature, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa.