ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – A Fatal Love by Louisa Treger

A Fatal Love by Louisa Treger is published by Bloomsbury and out now. My thanks to the publishers for the review copy.

Following Ruth Ellis’ long-awaited posthumous conditional pardon in July 2026, never has there been a more compelling moment to revisit the woman behind one of Britain’s most enduring legal cases.

It is Easter Sunday in 1955 and a young man lies face-down on the ground covered in blood. A woman, blonde and petite, stands over him with a gun in her hand. This is the story of Ruth Ellis as never told before…

As Ruth awaits her trial in Holloway Prison, she recollects growing up in England during the Second World War and the events that led to the death of her lover, David Blakely.

Meanwhile, Kitty Carrington – the assistant to Ruth’s trial lawyer – tries to forge her own path through the male-dominated legal world of the 1950s and ensure that Ruth receives a fair trial.

Navigating secrets, betrayal and a broken justice system, Ruth and Kitty try to take control of their own lives and narratives. But do we ever really know the full story?

The story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, is well known but A Fatal Love delves deep into Ruth’s thoughts and feelings and what ultimately led her to kill her lover, David Blakely, in what appeared to be cold blood. It’s a timely novel as very recently Ruth was granted a conditional pardon with an acceptance that domestic abuse and coercive control can lead to diminished responsibility, a defence that wasn’t available to Ruth at the time.

I thought A Fatal Love was absolutely brilliant and completely gripping from beginning to end. It concentrates mainly on the years from when Ruth met Blakely until the day of her death, but it also takes us back to show a bit more about Ruth’s background, her family life, her children and her marriage to George Ellis. It illustrates how Ruth (and so many other women besides) got into a spiral of abusive relationships that eventually led to her downfall.

Louisa Treger also imagines the life of Kitty Carrington, assistant to Ruth’s lawyer, and through her is able to give a voice to a fellow female in the middle of a male-dominated legal world. Although Kitty doesn’t play a huge role in the story, I really enjoyed her sections and I feel like she was going to go on and do amazing things.

This is such a sad and moving story, beautifully written and portrayed by Treger. The research felt impeccable and where events and conversations were imagined, they felt authentic and true to the period and the characters. A Fatal Love is an empathetic story of a toxic love and a woman driven to the edge of madness. I thought it was superb.

Louisa Treger is the critically acclaimed author of four novels – The Lodger (2014), The Dragon Lady (2019), Madwoman (2022) and The Paris Muse (2024) – translated into several languages. Her work has twice been selected as The Times Historical Book of the Month, most recently for Madwoman, which was also a Book of the Month in the Independent. She has written for numerous publications, including Financial Times, The Times, the Telegraph, Tatler, BBC History Magazine, and English Heritage. Radio appearances include BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme and BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She appears regularly at literary festivals and cultural institutions, and is deputy chair of the board of the Oxford Literary Festival.