Available Formats
Accidental Darlings
By (Author) Crystal Jeans
HarperCollins Publishers
The Borough Press
30th September 2025
22nd May 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Paperback
336
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 28mm
270g
'Delightfully subversive, I loved it' RED
The darkly funny new novel from Polari Prize-shortlisted author Crystal Jeans, inspired in part by Dickens' Great ExpectationsIts 1924, and the village of Skimpole is full of secrets.
When Anastasias mother dies, she must move in with the Aunt a writer, too fearsome for a first name, who lives in a dilapidated mansion with her dogs.
But mysteries abound: who wrote the raunchy love letters she discovers in the Aunts bedroom, signed Big Willy Why do the villagers hate the Aunt so much And how did Anastasias father, who passed before she was born, really die
When the Aunts friends arrive at the house one summer, wreathed in cigarette smoke and an air of debauchery, Anastasia may be closer to finding answers but the truth will turn her world upside down
Praise for THE INVERTS:
'An absolute *blinder* so, so funny and sexy. So excited now to read everything by Crystal Jeans' Caroline O'Donoghue
'A delightful book I wish to fling at my friends with affectionate abandon' DIVA
'This delicious romp is the sort of thing Nancy Mitford might have written if she'd been gay wonderfully blithe, witty and moving' Rowan Pelling, DAILY MAIL
'Funny, outrageous, heartbreaking and so much fun' Kate Davies
Crystal Jeans' first novel, The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and her second, Light Switches are my Kryptonite, won Wales Book of the Year in the English Language. Her breakout novel, The Inverts, was published by The Borough Press in 2021. Crystal lives in Pontypridd with her two children.