Refusing to toe the line with her parents wish for her to make a suitable marriage, she intends to make a career of her talent as a dancer. In 1985, a family tragedy changed everything, and she now draws on the experience of loss in her writing, infusing love, loss and danger with the seductive beauty of her locations.

But with it comes with a knowledge of how the darker side of Malta operates and this causes Rosalie’s life to change, for the better, as she grows more worldly and caring.This meant that the beginning seemed rather abrupt and it took me time to discover the nature of the relationship between Florence, who had escaped war torn France, and her saviour, Jack. My mum and my aunt have been telling me for years how wonderful an author Dinah Jefferies is, so I was thrilled to be able to read her latest novel – The Hidden Palace. The novel focusses on two women in two different times but both closely linked to wartime and its aftermath. Le vite delle due donne, Riva/Rosalie e Florence, si intrecciano sempre più strettamente raccontandoci di perdite dolorose, guerre spietate e coraggio femminile.

Second timeline being in 1944 England where this woman Florence gets to visit her estranged mother whilst trying to escape the horrendous war in France and has had to leave behind her two sisters. But her estranged mother makes a desperate request: to find her vanished sister, who went missing years before.

The Hidden Palace is the second book in the Daughters of War series by Dinah Jefferies and having only recently read book number one the plot and characters were very much fresh in my mind. This book is mainly about Florence who escaped to England in 1942 leaving her two sisters in France.

Now living in Gloucestershire, Dinah once lived in Tuscany working as an au pair for an Italian countess; she has also lived in a ‘hippy’ rock’n roll commune based in an Elizabethan manor house, but started writing when she was living in a small 16th Century village in Spain. The plot picks up more or less from where the first instalment left off and yes the many questions I had by the time I reached the final word of Daughters of War were answered but only over time. The relationship all of the sisters had with their mother Claudette was strained and I was glad to see this was explored in much more detail.Her bestselling novels include: The Separation, The Tea Planter’s Wife, The Silk Merchant’s Daughter and Before the Rains. Florence and her aunt Rosalie have a lot in common, both have experienced heartache, and are attracted to men who are very similar. I did find some of the descriptions to be a bit long, especially of the gardens, the weather and the area around them. Many secrets and lies are exposed through the book and some are resolved but yet the way the book ended has provided plenty of substance and issues to deal with for the final instalment - Night Train to Marrakech. I enjoyed reading of her transition to Malta and although I could sense deep down that leaving Paris in the way and on the terms that she did was not what she truly wanted she knew that to be independent and follow her dreams she had to forge her own path without the support of her family.