“In an expensive London restaurant Julia Lovat receives a gift that will change her life. It appears to be a book of exquisite 17th-century embroidery patterns but on closer examination Julia finds it also contains faint diary entries. In these, Cat Tregenna, an embroideress, tells how she and others were stolen out of a Cornish church in 1625 by Muslim pirates and taken on a brutal voyage to Morocco to be auctioned off as slaves.

Almost 400 years apart, the stories of the two women converge in an extraordinary and haunting manner that will make readers wonder – is history fated to repeat itself?” 

The Tenth Gift is less a tale of romance, and more so a story of adventure, hardship and the wide, but not unbridgeable gap between cultures.

Jane Johnson cleverly melds two stories; one that plays out in the year 1625 and the other in modern day England. Stories that intertwine and slowly unravel in a riveting and impossible-to-put-down tale.

The story is heart-wrenching and brutally honest in places – it is not just a fluffy, cheery tale. That being said, I finished the book satisfied and more than a little appreciative of the authors ability to weave a spell-binding story.

/5

The Tenth Gift Formula:

3 x cups of adventure
1 x tsp of hope
4 x dashes of romance
and an extremely fine dusting of the paranormal.