Accidental Darlings

'Delightfully subversive, I loved it' RED

The darkly funny new novel from Polari Prize-shortlisted author Crystal Jeans, inspired in part by Dickens' Great Expectations…

It’s 1924, and the village of Skimpole is full of secrets.

When Anastasia’s mother dies, she must move in with ‘the Aunt’ – a writer, too fearsome for a first name, who lives in a dilapidated mansion with her dogs.

But mysteries abound: who wrote the raunchy love letters she discovers in the Aunt’s bedroom, signed ‘Big Willy’? Why do the villagers hate the Aunt so much? And how did Anastasia’s father, who passed before she was born, really die?

When the Aunt’s friends arrive at the house one summer, wreathed in cigarette smoke and an air of debauchery, Anastasia may be closer to finding answers – but the truth will turn her world upside down…

Reviews

Praise for THE INVERTS:

'An absolute *blinder*… so, so funny and sexy. So excited now to read everything by Crystal Jeans' Caroline O'Donoghue

'A delightful book I wish to fling at my friends with affectionate abandon' DIVA

'This delicious romp is the sort of thing Nancy Mitford might have written if she'd been gay… wonderfully blithe, witty and moving' Rowan Pelling, DAILY MAIL

'Funny, outrageous, heartbreaking and so much fun' Kate Davies

About the author

Crystal Jeans' first novel, The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and her second, Light Switches are my Kryptonite, won Wales Book of the Year in the English Language. Her breakout novel, The Inverts, was published by The Borough Press in 2021. Crystal lives in Pontypridd with her two children.