Wolves in Winter, By Lisa Hilton - Paperback review

The year is 1492, the city is Toledo. Four-year-old Mura, child of an Icelandic mother and Spanish father, has an odd appearance: golden-brown skin, silver hair, green eyes.

Nor is that the only odd thing – she speaks to her dead mother in dreams and communicates with wolves. When her father, a scholar and bookseller, is taken by the Spanish Inquisition, Mura escapes and is brought up first in a brothel, then as a slave in the Medici household in Florence, and finally in the custody of the Caterina Sforza, alchemist and poisoner. It’s colourful, atmospheric, eventful – but it read to me rather like a children’s story written in adult style. Not my cup of tea; but it might be someone else’s.