Something is amiss but like the main character you can’t quite put your finger on what is really going on or who can be trusted. Her confusion at what she sees and experiences, and her inability or unwillingness to challenge anyone, becomes repetitive until her son James arrives and asks difficult questions of his mother.

The story is inspired by a real diary which the author discovered by accident while helping her mother move house. William was making good progress after his illness but then mysteriously begins to worsen and Constance appears to be responsible for this. The heart of the novel though is set in the spring and summer of 1927, with Europe still reeling from a war that ended only nine years ago, a Britain that had just the previous year had a general strike and an Italy dividend between those with communist sympathies and a rising Black shirts fascist movement.The first weeks are promising as Constance settles in, is accepted as being valuable to the family by Evelyn (William’s niece) and husband Roberto, and William’s condition starts to improve. She has been on her own for a year although the reader gets glimpses that perhaps she was not always happy in her marriage and sad and grieving though she may be you sense there is a small element of freedom surrounding her. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as you see quickly drawn into the story and then you never want to leave these characters alone.

What makes this truly remarkable is that the novel was written during the Covid lockdown but not actually in Tuscany. The author has a very distinct style of setting the scene, and this helped me read the book all the way to the end.A man who disapproves of Mussolini’s black shirts, and Evelyn’s husband Roberto happens to be one of them. Her confusion as the events of the castle unfolded and she began to doubt her actions and memories felt very real. To remove herself from her mundane existence in England and the shadows that still haunt her connected to the death of her daughter Millie several years ago. It's not a time or a country that I have read much about, so it was interesting from that point of view (although I must note here that the story was focused on a character working in another country and so there was only a little political detail). He is brusque and offhand with Connie and she feels she can’t do anything right but she persists in assisting him through keeping him company, reading to him, writing correspondence and administering medication as recommended by the visiting doctor.

She is making mistakes that she would never have made before and not sleeping as she hears unusual sounds echoing throughout the castle.

In Murder Under the Tuscan Sun by Rachel Rhys, readers will be transported to the Italian landscape of Tuscany in the 1920s, where the book is set in a grand castle, home to William North, a once powerful man, who has, in recent months, deteriorated due to ill health. Those who have read the book will understand when I say that I also loved Alina's story, the glamorous parties and the fabulous ending of the novel. I never thought Connie was losing her mind but rather that there were sinister forces at work and this led to a feeling of mistrust regarding every character. It's 1927 and Fascism is on the rise in the beautiful country that Connie comes to love - and even present in the castle in the form of the handsome young Roberto who is married to Evelyn, William's niece. I have not read any Rachel Rhys novels before but will definitely do so as I found this easy to get into and one I did not want to put down.