The Square of Sevens of Bath and London

Submitted: 20th June 2023

Do you want to read a novel about a real life mystery involving cards and fortune telling? Immerse yourself into Dickensian London with larger than life characters you will be aching to stay with and others, to run from?

Oh the highjnks, codes, puzzles in this novel are devilishly good and perpetually perplexing.

Turn over your first playing card and enter at your own peril….

BookTrail Travel to The Square of Sevens

Boarding Pass Information: London and Bath

Author guide: Laura Shepherd Robinson

Genre: historical

Food and drink to accompany: anything sold from a rural inn

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BookTrail Travel to The Square of Sevens

This is a belter of a book that is just screaming out to be made into a film with gothic musical overtones, menacing music and side eye looks of pleading to camera.

Red, our leading lady is a fine character, snatched right from a Dickensian novel. She is purely an invention of Laura Shepherd Robinson so I am now more in awe of this lady than I was after reading her first two novels. I swore then she must have lived a previous life in the Deptford Docks of X where her novels are set. Now, with Red, I suspect she has also known Dickens well and has been able to pluck his inspiration to make literary magic of her own.

Red, with her father, moves from village to village telling fortunes using an ancient method of cartomancy known as the Square of Sevens. Her father says he has enemies and their constant moving is to escape them. Red is intrigued but too young to know what this really means. When her father dies, she is taken to live with a respectable gentleman.

BookTrail Travel to The Square of Sevens

It’s from that moment on that the book really ramps up. We head from London to elegant Bath – oh my word this world of white washed buildings and spa baths was just heavenly to be immersed in. I felt thrust into society just like Red and felt rather underdressed whilst reading these rich chapters to be honest. When Red starts reading people’s cards, she stumbles into the path of the De Lacy family. What high jinks and dark mysteries the reader becomes embroiled in then! Oh this was like a puzzle wrapped up in a riddle and then an enigma. So many twists, and turns, red herrings and slaps in the face. I had to stop reading at certain points to catch my breath.

This is a whole lot of fun and an epic achievement of writing in my eyes. I’d never heard of the document and the Secret of Sevens but now I am fascinated! The author includes a detailed author note that is almost as fascinating as the novel. How she had taken that mystery and woven it into this rich tapestry is an act of magic in itself.

There’s lots to love here – fortune telling, card games, inheritances disputed and stolen, people who say they are one thing but are really another, stolen documents and hidden wills. And just as you think you’ve worked something out, WHOOSH, that rug is ripped from beneath your feet.

The Secret of Sevens is cleverly crafted – right down to the detail of the illustrated cards which outline each chapter. The chapters themselves are structured according to the rules of the secret.

Be in awe of this novel.