In Francesca Segal’s new novel, a widowed music teacher, Julia, falls in love with a divorced obstetrician. Her daughter hates her new stepbrother with a passion, and her in-laws from her previous marriage have yet to approve her new partner. Can the two warring families be joined or will Julia’s love fall victim to circumstance?

Segal’s book is a modern reworking of Henry James’s novel of the same title. Yet while it is relatively easy to plot the parallels between the action of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence and the events of Segal’s award-winning debut, The Innocents, the similarities between James’s work and this one