Cut Him Out In Little Stars

The Kent and Sussex coast in the Second World War: clifftops and airfields, the distant sound of battle across the Channel, and the ordinary lives of people trying to hold themselves together in extraordinary times. It is into this landscape that Lucy Strange drops Juliet, a young woman sent to stay with her sister after the death of her first love, a fighter pilot killed in action. Grieving and disoriented, Juliet finds the coastline of her childhood both a comfort and an unsettling mirror, full of memories she is not yet ready to face.

Then a body is discovered on the beach near the house, apparently washed up by the tide, and everything shifts. Questions surface alongside memories, a chilling mystery begins to unfold, and Juliet finds herself drawn into a series of events that refuses to let her stay still in her grief.

Strange is a careful and confident storyteller, and the historical detail here is both precise and atmospheric. The novel is rooted in the real geography of the south coast, the airfields that still exist today, the rhythms of coastal life reshaped by wartime, and that rootedness gives the story real weight. Particularly pleasing is the novel’s treatment of women in wartime, lifeboat crew members, key players in the war effort, women living lives that flatly defy the usual stereotypes of the period. Strange renders these roles without fanfare, presenting them as simply what women did, which is exactly right.

But this is also a novel about love: first love lost, love that arrives when you are least prepared for it and least willing to confront it, and the way that grief and new feeling can exist alongside one another in bewildering proximity. The romance is handled with as much skill as the mystery, and the two strands weave together in a way that keeps the pages turning. There are twists along the way that earn their place, and a storytelling momentum that makes this a genuinely compelling read.

Rich in atmosphere, grounded in real history and animated by a central character whose emotional journey feels entirely authentic, Cut Him Out In Little Stars is a layered and accomplished novel that works as romance, mystery and historical fiction all at once.