My enormous thanks to Alara Delfosse at Headline for sending me a surprise copy of The Sea Stone Sisters all those months ago. It’s my pleasure to share my review today. 

Already available in other formats, The Sea Stone Sisters will be released in paperback by Headline on 27th August 2026 and is available for purchase through the links here. 

The Sea Stone Sisters

Like the stones in their rings, the sisters were meant to stay together. 

Now they were scattered across the world.

1931. When Iris Blackmore’s father knocks down the Sisters of Skara standing stones, a dark shadow falls on her family that will echo down through generations. With their fortune lost, the four Blackmore sisters are scattered to the four winds, taking only the rings they inherited from their beloved mother.

Present day.  Grieving and adrift, Roz Chatton leaves her home in Australia, arriving in London with little other than her late mother’s ring. When she stumbles upon a painting of four ancient standing stones, she feels the past calling to her. Drawn to Scotland, Roz begins to unearth a long-forgotten mystery, and a secret that lies waiting for her within her mother’s ring …

Four lost sisters. An epic journey home. Will you follow?

My Review of The Sea Stone Sisters

When four sisters are abducted from Skara in c. 2800bc their father erects four standing stones in their memory and curses any who might remove the stones in the future.

The Sea Stone Sisters is a glorious book. It’s what might be termed a ‘proper story’ that draws in the reader and holds them spellbound. It truly has everything; there’s romance, history, society and travel all underpinned by a mystical thread that treads the line between superstition, magic and reality in a way that is breathtaking. I loved this story.

The plot is fabulous. As The Sea Stone Sisters is the start of a series, it is the eldest, Iris, who is the focal point with her 1930s narrative echoed by the present day timeline of Roz. There’s danger, strength and vulnerability for both women so that the strands of the past weave effortlessly between the two time frames, illustrating just how the past impacts the present. I was utterly entranced. I’m not going to spoil the story by saying what happens and I know it’s a cliche to say that I could not put this book down, but genuinely, I was desperate to be reading it every moment I could. 

I loved Iris. Whilst we are fed enough detail about her sisters Rose, Lily and Daisy to make them rounded and interesting and to make me desperate to read more about them in future books, in The Sea Stone Sisters it is Iris who really pulsates with life. Her fierce determination to keep her family together ironically sees her travel far and wide in settings that vibrate with detail and realism. The senses thrum through Iris’s experiences so that what she sees and experiences in Ceylon and Australia are very much part of who she becomes. Eleanor Buchanan’s eye for detail in transporting her readers to her settings is every bit as artistic as Iris’s skill in drawing and I felt as if I were walking alongside Iris. 

Equally, Roz is fabulous. Her difficulties are highly relatable in a world of coercive control and social media, so that she feels realistic. I adored the pull of Skara linking her to Iris and the past. There’s a convincing and compelling exploration of visceral DNA and memory that is just fascinating and the exploration of what constitutes home and belonging is sensitively expressed.  

I thought The Sea Stone Sisters was brilliant. I could not have enjoyed it more. It’s beautifully written, full of heart and the most perfect escapist read with sufficient reality to persuade even the most challenging reader. Just fabulous. 

About Eleanor Buchanan

After many years of travelling the world, Eleanor Buchanan has turned her hand to a brand-new series of enthralling stories that combine her passion for travel, her belief in the power of evocative love stories and her enduring fascination with the relationship between the past and the present. Now based in York, she still searches for wide horizons whenever she can.

For further information, follow Eleanor on Instagram.