My enormous thanks to Lisa Gooding at Verve for inviting me to participate in the blog tour for Bird Spotting in a Small Town by Sophie Morton-Thomas. I’m delighted to share my review today.

Bird Spotting in a Small Town is published by Verve on 29th February 2024 and is available for purchase through the links here.

Bird Spotting in a Small Town

My feet are itching to walk to the shore, to leave the kids again, to sit with the birds and pretend none of this has happened.

In a small, isolated town on the North Norfolk coast, Fran’s life is unravelling.

As she fills her days cleaning the caravan park she owns, she is preoccupied by worry – about the behaviour of her son, the growing absence of her husband and the strained relationship with her sister. Her one source of solace is slipping out to the beach early in the morning, to watch the birds.

Small-town tension simmers when a new teacher starts at the local school and a Romany community settle in the field adjoining Fran’s caravan park. From the distance of his caravan, seventy-year-old Tad quietly watches the townspeople – mainly, Fran’s family.

When the schoolteacher and Fran’s brother-in-law both go missing on the same night, accusations fly. Yet all Fran can seem to care about is the birds.

An eerie and unsettling novel, Bird Spotting in a Small Town perfectly encapsulates the intensity of rural claustrophobia when you don’t know who you can trust.

My Review of Bird Spotting in a Small Town

Travellers are en route to Fran’s Norfolk village.

Bird Spotting in a Small Town is a beautiful and disturbing book that I found utterly spellbinding. From the very beginning there is a claustrophobic sense of foreboding that encases and ensnares the reader so that this is a mesmerising read.

I loved the structure of Bird Spotting in a Small Town. The sections belonging to Fran and Tad ebb and flow like the tide on the Norfolk beach setting. And the setting is perfect. There’s a bleakness of the winter which lifts as the months progress in contrasting proportion to the intensity of the narrative that swells and deepens as the dates pass. There’s an intimate atmosphere created by the first person voices of Tad and Fran, with Tad rather akin to a Greek chorus adding layers of understanding to the narrative. Not only that, Tad provides a sensitive insight into the lives of Romany travellers that is filled with understanding.

I thought Fran was a mesmerising, complex character. It’s almost as if she herself is transfixed under a kind of spell as she fails to engage with the obvious under her nose. In contrast, Tad feels grounded, solid and sane. Fran’s obsession with bird-spotting is terrifying because it represents her fragile mental state, her inability to engage fully with her family and leaves the reader wondering just how far her life might unravel. Equally, all the other characters in Bird Spotting in a Small Town are layered, vivid and real, incorporating profound themes of identity, violence, secrets, family and community as well as addiction and mental health.

Sophie Morton-Thomas writes with such skill. Her prose is simultaneously sparse and poetic. It’s almost as if her writing is alive; a sentient being in its own right, thrumming with beauty and danger. The plot of Bird Spotting in a Small Town is deceptive. Certainly there are shocking moments but it is as if much of the action is being carried out just to the side so that it’s impossible to predict quite how it will end and there is an ethereal quality to the read. I thought this technique was utterly brilliant. As events unfold, they are all the more impactful and this living, breathing narrative has begun before the story started and will continue after it has been read. I don’t want to spoil this fabulous read for others but everything is resolved and nothing is resolved at all – just like life! 

Bird Spotting in a Small Town is an absolute triumph. Sophie Morton-Thomas’s prose is exquisite. Her story-telling is sublime and her depiction of humanity startlingly insightful. In case you hadn’t guessed, I adored this book! 

About Sophie Morton-Thomas

Sophie Morton-Thomas was born in West Sussex and has always loved reading and writing – she had about ten penfriends as a child. She is now an English teacher as well as a mum to three (two grown-up!) children and two cats. Her first novel, Travel by Night, was published by darkstroke, an imprint of Crooked Cat Books, and was a #1 Bestseller across multiple Amazon Kindle categories.

She is currently a student on the University of Cambridge’s Crime and Thriller Writing master’s degree and recently moved to the coast for work – but also for inspiration for her stories!

For further information, visit Sophie’s website, follow her on Twitter/X @sophiemoto1 and find Sophie on Instagram.

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