2023 Claire Mannion Literary Endeavour Prize, came runner-up in the Cheshire Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the Primadonna Prize, the Plaza First Pages Award and Killer Nashville's Claymore Award in the literary category. Morey lives in West Sussex, England at the foot of the South Downs with her husband, two boys, and two Portuguese Water Dogs.
She applied the Page 69 Test to Lime Juice Money, her first novel, and shared the following:
From page 69:Visit Jo Morey's website.Wittering Lodge, Stann Creek District, Belize 26th? January 2023Page 69 of my literary suspense novel, Lime Juice Money is an interesting representation of the book in that it brings several elements together. My protagonist, Laelia is settling into her father’s jungle lodge in the Belizean jungle, and while she is making chocolate for pancakes to feed her family, she reminisces on the life she has left behind in London, as well as on her childhood and her late mother. Memory (and the fragility of memory) is a big theme in the novel, and this teases out an aspect of that.
There is a bewitching comfort that comes from stirring, watching a spoon turning through a changing texture, building, and transforming ingredients like alchemy; elements bursting together as sauces thicken, warmth dispersing around and around. Time slows.
The cacao silkened in the crackled enamel saucepan, one of only two I’d been able to find in Dad’s attempt at a kitchen. I ached for my utensils sat in their jar next to the stove in Forest Hill, the wooden spoon my mother had gifted me not long before she died. Wrapped in crinkling tissue paper, tied with a velvet green bow, I loved beauty in simplicity, even then. Whenever I held that spoon I felt close to her, knowing she had poured her love into choosing it, and that she’d once touched it, too; she had noticed me—she had known me. I watched its beech age over the years, bowing and darkening gradually— just as she might have eased older and wiser if only she could have stayed.
A rogue finger came from behind me and plunged into the bowl.
“Shit. You scared me.”
“Ow! It’s hot!” Aid said, his finger coated in chocolate. I slapped the back of his errant hand. He smelt of stale beer.
“Of course it’s hot!” I laughed but when I turned to look, he stood like stone.
He wasn’t laughing. “It wasn’t meant to be hard. I’m sorry.”
I turned back to the mixture and stirred.
“Are the pancakes ready?” Dylan called from the rug, where he was surfing a sea of paper and coloured pencils.
“Won’t be long,” I said, shutting off the gas and grabbing the foiled plate I’d set aside. Aid stood over me, still staring.
Laelia was a chef in London before she lost her job due to mishearing a customer’s allergen request (Laelia has a hearing impairment but was too ashamed to wear her hearing aids at work), so this scene is a moment of her reconnecting with the kitchen and what she enjoys doing best.
Laelia’s new partner, Aid becomes an increasingly volatile and shady presence and here, we see their relationship beginning to falter ever so slightly. He is drinking more in Belize, and Laelia is starting to notice. Aid ‘stood like stone’ and is losing his sense of humor. Throughout the novel, Laelia must balance the needs of her children and her uncertain emotions with the increasing desire to be free of the dangers she senses around her.
What’s missing from this page are some of the darker elements and intrigue of the story as well as its deceptions. Lime Juice Money is seeded with secrets and lies, betrayals, corruption, and greed across both its timelines. The page 69 extract is from Laelia’s narrative, but some of the novel follows her father Ellis’s discovery of rare orchids in Belize in the 1980s, the breakdown of his marriage, and the regretful decisions he makes. The unsettling atmosphere lurking behind the veil of paradise is everywhere to see, and hear, and smell. Memories become more fractured. Accounts become more unreliable. The noises beyond Laelia’s tinnitus become even more bewildering.
Ultimately, Lime Juice Money is a tangled, searing journey that takes the reader into the heart of danger with a chilling final twist.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
