The Olive Tree

A magical house. A momentous summer. Set over two months, a summer in Cyprus reveals many secrets.

It has been twenty-four years since a young Helena spent a magical holiday at a house in Cyprus, where she fell in love for the first time. When the now-crumbling house, ‘Pandora’, is left to her by her godfather, she returns to spend the summer there with her family.

Yet as soon as Helena arrives at Pandora, she knows that its idyllic beauty masks a web of secrets that she has kept from William, her husband, and Alex, her son. At the difficult age of thirteen, Alex is torn between protecting his beloved mother and growing up. But equally, he’s desperate to learn the truth about his real father . . .

When, by chance, Helena meets her childhood sweetheart, a chain of events is set in motion that threatens to make her past and present collide. Both Helena and Alex know that life will never be the same, once Pandora’s secrets have been revealed . . .

Lucinda writes about the inspiration behind The Olive Tree:

I originally wrote this story for myself, after a family holiday in Cyprus in 2006. I then put the manuscript away, my children grew older, I wrote other books . . . and then in 2015, as I was clearing out an old desk drawer, I rediscovered it. It was then entitled ‘Helena’s Secret’, and it was fascinating to read it and remember a snapshot in time when the children had been younger. While the characters in The Olive Tree have remained the same, the plot has changed considerably towards the end – with the benefit of ten years’ hindsight, I was able to take the family into the present day.

Although much of the plot and the characters are of course fictional, there is no doubt that this is the closest I’ve come to drawing from my own life experience of being a mother, stepmother, wife and trained dancer. At the time of writing, our five children were of similar ages to the children in the book, and we had family and friends staying with us too – all of whom inspired the characters in some way. Yes, it doesn’t have the ‘sweeping’ historical background, or the one-hundred-year timespan that I have become known for writing about, but I think it’s important for novelists to push themselves in different directions occasionally and I am delighted that my readers have enjoyed the book so much.

Lucinda Riley

Reviews for The Olive Tree:

‘Brimming with the colour, atmosphere and sultry heat of beautiful Cyprus, this is a gripping story about family relationships across all generations, the ties that bind us with sometimes invisible cords and the complex nature of 2family” in the modern world’

Lancashire Evening Post

‘With its complex and utterly engrossing story, and the pages permeated with the aroma of olives, grapes and the blistering Cypriot sun, The Olive Tree is the perfect summer read. Riley cleverly juggles multiple timelines and viewpoints of different family members at various stages of their lives, making us root for every single one of them and forcing us to ponder the fleeting nature of our own life’

Reader’s Digest

‘There are always twists and turns that you don’t expect and I swear to you that some will leave you speechless’

Libri: medicina per il cuore e per la mente, Italy

‘You will also close this novel with a satisfied sigh’

Hebban, The Netherlands

‘It will whisk you away to the glorious sunshine of Cyprus . . . refreshingly different’

Daily Express

‘An extremely engaging, mysterious book that conquers you from the front page!’

Coisas de Diana, Brazil