Letters From Elena by Anne Hamilton #LettersFromElena @AnneHamilton7 @TheBookSocial @annehamilton.bluesky.social #BookReview

 

April Zarney was ten when her best friend, Elena, disappeared. It was July 1974 and rumour was that Elena’s family had headed back home to war-torn Cyprus.

Thirty years later, with two failed marriages behind her and her career as concert pianist in jeopardy, April decides to run away to Cyprus to find out what really happened to her friend.

Letters From Elena is a love story exploring family, identity and displacement through the faulty memories of three generations of women, each on a journey to make sense of their lives and the world around them.

Letters From Elena by Anne Hamilton was published on 3 July 2025 by Legend Press. My thanks to the author who sent my copy for review. 

I read Anne Hamilton's first novel; The Almost Truth in April last year and adored it. It has become one of my all time favourite books and I recommend it regularly. I was really excited to find out what was next from this talented author and I have not been disappointed. 

When April’s childhood friend Elena disappears without a word in 1974, she’s left with unanswered questions. Thirty years later, now a concert pianist at a crossroads in her life, April travels to Cyprus to uncover what really happened. What she discovers, through old letters, is a story of friendship and displacement.

Anne Hamilton's writing is so powerful, it is full of nostalgia, beautifully observed, and sensitive to the difficult histories of both the characters and the place.

From the opening pages, the author's prose feels so evocative. Her decision to use letters as a structural device is so clever: it gives voice to the child’s perspective in 1974, alongside the present-day narrative. The letters feel authentic.

I was really impressed by the realism of the descriptive prose with the dusty paths and heat-wilted afternoons. April’s search is beautifully handled: not a melodrama but a quietly urgent quest.

The author gives Cyprus and its divided history real depth. The geography, the political tremors, the shifting borders, they’re not just backdrop but part of what haunts April’s journey. 
The story spans three generations of women, all dealing with displacement, belonging, memory and identity. Their voices are so strong.

A beautifully written, quietly moving novel about friendship, loss and the long shadows of memory. Thoughtful, tender and immersive

Anne Hamilton co-founded a UK based charity, Bhola’s Children, supporting a home and school in Bangladesh for disabled children and remains a trustee today. 

She has been sharing her time between the UK and Bangladesh for the past 21 years, which inspired both her memoir and most recent novel, The Almost Truth. 

The unpublished manuscript for The Almost Truth was the winner of the Irish Novel Fair, and a short story adaptation of it is included in an Edinburgh Charity anthology, The People’s City, titled The Finally Tree.

Twitter: @AnneHamilton7

Instagram @annehamilton_author

Bluesky @annehamilton.bluesky.social