About the Book, Under Vixens Mere:

After Harry Jones takes his life in the chilling waters of Vixens Mere, not one body is found by the police rescue team, but two.  Tucked away in the English countryside, the run-down marina at Vixens Mere hosts a ragtag community of houseboats whose lives are as tangled as their mooring ropes. Harry Jones’s death dredges up more than grief: a second body in the water, hidden love affairs, and old grudges. As the marina begins to reveal the truths of the past, its dwellers unify against investigators, vindictive exes, and anyone else who tries to break them. The boats of Vixens Mere brim with secrets…. A marriage broken by war, a guilty lover returning, a ramshackle haven for aging hippies, a newcomer chasing a better life, a home haunted by addiction, and a loyal outcast whose devotion turns deadly. Step aboard and lose yourself in the secrets, betrayals, and unbreakable ties of a small community.

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About the Author, Kit Fielding:

Kit Fielding plans and writes his novels in a motorhome at various locations around the country.

The feeling of impermanence is natural to him due to his mother’s traveller roots and a childhood succession of tied-cottages accommodation in different parts of England.

Kit Fielding says that there was always a curiosity about what was waiting, or was lurking, just around the corner. This legacy has stayed with him to the present day and it feeds into his work.

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My Thoughts:

Under Vixen’s Mere is one of those novels that quietly gets under your skin and then refuses to leave.

From the opening pages, the prose immediately stood out to me. It’s spare without ever feeling sparse—clean, confident, and quietly assured. Dialogue and description are held in careful balance, each doing its work without calling attention to itself. Nothing strains for effect, and that sense of restraint builds trust early on, inviting the reader to settle in and follow where the story leads.

I was drawn to this book for deeply personal reasons. I’ve long fantasized about living on a boat, and I happily lose hours watching The Mindful Narrowboat on YouTube (mercifully free of mysterious bodies). What I didn’t expect was how fully this novel would deliver not just a setting, but a lived-in way of life—one that feels authentic rather than romanticized.

This is, in many ways, vicarious travel: across years, across seasons, and into a rare, largely off-grid canal-boat community tucked into the English countryside. The residents of Vixens Mere come and go with the rhythms of the water, maintaining an almost paradoxical balance—deep closeness paired with fierce privacy. Secrets are kept, histories linger, and yet there is mutual sympathy and loyalty that feels earned rather than idealized.

The cast is refreshingly outside the usual literary comfort zone: nightclub bouncers, pig farmers, laborers, drug dealers. These are not middle-class protagonists smoothed for palatability, yet each one climbs off the page with warmth, dignity, and unmistakable humanity. They love, fight, fear, and hope as fiercely as anyone else. I could picture every one of them.

Kit Fielding manages a large ensemble with impressive control, giving each character space to breathe—and yes, killing some of them. Tragedy and darkness are present throughout, threaded carefully among humor and joy. The mere itself—the body of water at the novel’s heart—becomes a quiet gravitational force, anchoring two stable, loving couples while secrets of adoption, unrequited love, affairs, suicide, and manslaughter drift in and out like the boats themselves.

What struck me most was the confidence of the writing. The scene-setting is assured, the revelations slow and satisfying, and the sense of jeopardy in the latter half is handled with admirable restraint. This is a writer who asks for your patience—and repays it fully.

Most of all, this book felt refreshing. Refreshing in its refusal to lean on stereotype. Refreshing in its complex, contradictory characters. Refreshing in a storytelling style that is unusual, engaging, and delivered with raw honesty and flair.

Choosing a favorite among the residents of Vixens Mere is nearly impossible, but if pressed, I’d gladly spend an evening with Big Ed and Millie aboard Crystal Lady—the emotional linchpins of this ragtag family. Their relationship feels utterly authentic, and I’d happily sink a beer (or three) with them in The Shed.

This is one of those rare books I was reluctant to finish—not because the ending faltered, but because I didn’t want to leave these people behind. I know they’ll be living in my head for a long time yet.

Goes well with: a pint in a weathered pub, damp boots by the door, and the quiet creak of ropes against wood as night settles over the water.

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