What do you think?
Rate this book
The Windhover
Perthshire. 1957.
The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.
Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.
It’s 1982.
Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.
The Windhover is an emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, tracing the shockwaves of lies and loss within one family and exploring whether redemption is truly possible when the betrayal runs so deep.
The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.
Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.
It’s 1982.
Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.
The Windhover is an emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, tracing the shockwaves of lies and loss within one family and exploring whether redemption is truly possible when the betrayal runs so deep.
Unknown Binding
Published July 23, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 31, 2026
The Windhover is a beautifully structured novel which never loses its way. I was fully immersed in the locations and family dynamics. The characters are so well drawn that I feel like I met them. The children’s thoughts are expressed in ways which are exactly right for their ages and their very different personalities. I was completely hooked and needing to know everything right up until the very satisfying end.
The descriptions of the loch-side hostel are particularly good. The locations is really solidly built and so are the the sensations of being there - cold, stony, remote and bleakly beautiful. The emotions and relationships are brought to life just as well. There’s a yearning for emotional connections which runs through both timelines, while at the same time it is completely understandable that all the characters are also putting up barriers between themselves and everyone else. My heart broke for every one of them at one point or another.
Absolutely wonderful! Such good prose. I loved this book so much.
The descriptions of the loch-side hostel are particularly good. The locations is really solidly built and so are the the sensations of being there - cold, stony, remote and bleakly beautiful. The emotions and relationships are brought to life just as well. There’s a yearning for emotional connections which runs through both timelines, while at the same time it is completely understandable that all the characters are also putting up barriers between themselves and everyone else. My heart broke for every one of them at one point or another.
Absolutely wonderful! Such good prose. I loved this book so much.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Many thanks to Netgalley, Dead Ink Books and the author for the arc.
The premise of this book sounded fantastic and I was hoping for a 5 star read. Sadly, this book did not deliver for me. We follow three siblings Moira, Ewan and Alison in different timelines and the various secrets within the family. The writing is absolutely beautiful, in particular the descriptions of the Scottish landscapes. This brings me to my main issue with this book which is that there is not much in terms of plot until around the 80% mark. Additionally, the characters themselves seemed fairly unremarkable in that none had very defined traits. This combination meant that the book therefore fell a bit flat for me. Whilst it was still an engaging read, I would recommend this book to readers that are content with the book focusing on the landscape and surroundings.
The premise of this book sounded fantastic and I was hoping for a 5 star read. Sadly, this book did not deliver for me. We follow three siblings Moira, Ewan and Alison in different timelines and the various secrets within the family. The writing is absolutely beautiful, in particular the descriptions of the Scottish landscapes. This brings me to my main issue with this book which is that there is not much in terms of plot until around the 80% mark. Additionally, the characters themselves seemed fairly unremarkable in that none had very defined traits. This combination meant that the book therefore fell a bit flat for me. Whilst it was still an engaging read, I would recommend this book to readers that are content with the book focusing on the landscape and surroundings.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews