The Fossil Hunter
Tea Cooper
Reviewed by Helen
Again MS Cooper has dug deep into research and given her readers a fabulous story set in duel timelines around The Hunter Valley, this time we discover fossils and the wonderful people who spend their lives searching for the past in some very interesting places and make such wonderful discoveries, do come along and meet the fabulous characters and enjoy their stories as much as I did.
It is 1919 and Penelope Jane (PJ) Martindale is spending some time at London’s Natural History Museum, before she travels home to Australia when she discovers a fossil found at Bow Wow Gorge in The Hunter Valley, a place she knows her young brothers would go there searching for fossils, sadly her brothers will not be coming home from France, but PJ has a bee in her bonnet now and can’t wait to get back home and do a bit of searching herself never realising what she will uncover from seventy years before.
Wollombi Hunter Valley 1847 a young Mellie Vale is about to have her life turned upside down by matters that had nothing to do with her, she is scared and very ill, but when she wakes from her fever her Pa is gone and she is living at the Doctor’s house, the Doctor’s wife sends her along to visit a friend, an amateur palaeontologilst, Anthea Winstanley with her daughters and a couple of other young girls for ten days of what should be fun and to help Mellie heal.
Mellie is soon helping Anthea to find these sea dragons and learning as she goes in the beautiful Bow Wow Gorge, she and Anthea are very close but things turn around when a stranger visits and trouble is brewing, life changes very quickly.
PJ arrives back in the Hunter Valley from the battlefields of France she hopes to talk to her father about her brothers, she is also accompanied by Sam who is American, the man who wants to marry her they drove ambulances together on the front line things don’t go as planned when she arrives home and her and Sam find themselves searching for fossils in the Bow Wow Gorge but when they find human bones the search depends and they find they are uncovering secrets from seventy years ago.
I truly loved this story it is so well written, the characters are easy to get to know and there were many twists for me as the truths come out about what had happened all those years ago at Bow Wow house and gorge. I do highly recommend this one a must read, Tea Cooper has never disappointed me with one of her stories another page turner and one for the keeper shelf.
My thanks to Harlequin AU for my copy to read and review and Netgalley.
5 stars
Expected publication: October 27th 2021 by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
