Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

Last night I finished this newly published book, The Secret Thread by Eve Chase, and I will be thinking about it for a long time. The title is quite fitting as there is a thread running through this story, invisible at first, and as the story of Jo, Mimi, Woody, Pamela, and others unfolds, that thread becomes more and more visible. It also becomes more and more taut, as though it is being pulled from both ends at once. Indeed it is.

Although I found the beginning to be a bit slow, the pace eventually picks up and soon it is as though you are on a roller coaster gathering speed to make it up that next steep climb, only to come crashing downhill again.

There is much to like in this story. Aging celebrities, fashion, interior design, journalism, mystery, and love. There is the underlying theme of loss, the ache that comes from the loss of loved ones, both from death and from a fractious family relationship. It is all a tangled web of loose threads, like the tiny bits of yarn left over after sewing a bajillion granny squares together, but they all come together for a very satisfying end, just like that multi-colored afghan that took eons to crochet.

Aging celebrity interior designer Mimi Mott advertises for a “Girl Friday” to work with her in her London apartment cataloging personal items of clothing, furnishings, and memorabilia for an upcoming auction. Mimi considered these items “just stuff,” but some of them are highly personal like her own grandmother’s handmade quilt or the heart-shaped emerald pendant her late husband gave to her before they were married. An out of work journalist, Jo O’Mara, applies for the position, but she is in search of more than just a paycheck.

As someone probably near the same age as Mimi, I look around my own home and see so many areas that need to be “decluttered,” but I struggle with doing a Marie Kondo on even one dresser drawer of socks. A tiny pair of socks from a Brownie uniform? A mixed pair of red/yellow cuff socks that I wore in the late 80s when I worked as a clown for kids’ birthday parties? I wore a red sock on my left foot with a yellow high top converse and a yellow sock on my right foot with a red high top converse. That clown job, while exhausting and consumed most of my weekends, helped me pay my rent. It seems there is a story for almost every pair of socks in that drawer.

After seeing Marie Kondo videos on Netflix, I ordered her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and yes, I did make some progress by clearing out an old china cabinet filled with “just stuff” and sending most of it to other homes via my neighborhood Buy Nothing group. I even got rid of the china cabinet itself! (Please applaud here…)

Everything I own seems to carry a strong memory, and once I start sorting through things, I start to recall all of those memories, and five hours later, nearly everything has been returned to where it was when I started. (Even Marie Kondo doesn’t Marie Kondo anymore.)

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about other books similar to Marie Kondo’s method of decluttering. Perhaps the most popular was Margareta Magnusson’s book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning that was an international bestseller and global phenomenon.

This book has been on my TBR list for years but as I continue to age, I feel that I should move it up to the top soon. One line in Magnusson’s obituary says it all:

Magnusson died in Gothenburg on 12 March 2026, at the age of 91. Her daughter, Jane, who was one of her five children, confirmed that her mother had left her attic and basement empty.

Ironically, a copy of this short book was recently offered in my neighborhood Buy Nothing group where I threw my name in the hat but did not end up with it. Was someone doing a Swedish death cleaning on their own bookshelves and decided to pitch this book? Looking at the number of people who requested it from the BN post, it appears we are all looking to declutter.

Back to The Secret Thread and Mimi’s own version of Swedish death cleaning. As the story progressed, I thought about whether some plot points were realistic, and perhaps they weren’t, but you know, I don’t care. I enjoyed this book. And, as I said, all the loose threads came together with a very satisfying end.

I highly recommend this book if you enjoy books told from multiple POVs, one setting in London and another out in the countryside, with two timelines running side by side. Bonus if you are a gardener, as was Mimi’s entire family, working as estate gardeners while Mimi was growing up. You will learn about different flowers, their growing seasons, with a little birdwatching thrown in for good measure.

Thank you NetGalley, Ballantine Books, and Eve Chase for the ARC ebook. I look forward to reading more of Eve Chase’s books!