'The Valley of Lost Secrets' is a beautiful debut by Lesley Parr. I would agree with the comment from Emma Carroll that it reads like a wartime classic, as it reminded me of Michelle Magorian's 'Goodnight Mr. Tom' and Robert Westall's 'The Machine Gunners.'

At the heart of the story is the wonderful relationship between the two brothers, Jimmy and Ronnie, who are evacuated from Islington to the Welsh village of Llanbryn, which couldn't be more different from their home. Six-year old Ronnie loves the Thomases who have taken them in, but his older brother struggles to adjust to his new reality. There's a wonderful passage in which Jimmy ponders about everything that's happened at whilst looking down from the top of the hill unto the valley below:

Something about being up here, hidden away from the world, makes me feel better. How can Lillian Baker and Florence Campbell fit in so easily when I just feel lost. Even Ronnie's getting on with it and making friends. He'd probably be fine here without me in this horribly new place where everyone knows each other and being called Jones is somehow funny. But all I have is him, my daft little brother, who forgave me straight away for being so horrible to him at the foxhole. I lean my head back and look up at the light, flicking through the big, jaggedy-edged leaves It will be autumn soon and they'll start to fall, but I won't see it. The war will be over - people say it won't last til Christmas - and I'll be out of Wales and back in London by then. Please let it be soon.

But something happens which changes Jimmy's entire perception of Llanbryn - he discovers a skull hidden inside the trunk of a hollow tree and makes it his mission to find out who it belongs to. He shares his secret with Florence, a girl who he'd shunned in his previous London life because she came from a rough and dirty family, and of course, his little brother. The search leads Jimmy to a monumental discovery, which will alter not just his own life, but that of those around him.

Lesley Parr paints a beautiful picture of a community struggling to adjust to wartime reality, and I was really fascinated to read the Author's Notes in which she writes about her own village, Cwmafan, which is known locally as 'the Land of the Moving Curtains' due to everyone knowing everyone else's business. Ronnie discovers the two sides to this quality - with some of the locals being extremely kind and generous, and others proving nosey and judgemental.

A gorgeous historical mystery that I would thoroughly recommend to young readers and adults alike.