The Penny Heart

By: Martine Bailey

Narrated by: Charlotte Strevens

Sentenced to death for a simple confidence trick, Mary Jebb escapes the gallows...but her reprieve is harsh: seven years in the unforgiving penal colony of Botany Bay. Yet Mary is determined not to be forgotten, sending two pennies, engraved with a promise, to the two men who sealed her fate.

Timid artist Grace Moore jumps at the opportunity to marry handsome gentleman Michael Croxon - happy if only to get away from her drunken father. But when Grace takes on a new cook, the two penny heart love tokens reveal she is tied to a world she didn't know existed...a world of deceit, double crossing, revenge and murder.

©2015 Martine Bailey (P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton

Only ok

Unnecessarily complicated twists and turns that didn't add much to the story. It gets interesting only about 70% in. The only credit I can rly give is to how infuriatingly clueless and annoyingly gullible the richer lady is being described. She honestly didn't deserve her little victories.