📖 Publication Day Book Review ~ The Marriage Contract by Sasha Butler

Salt Publishing
6 October 2025

My thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to review this book 

 

‘Once she had thought of them, their love, as a fortress that nothing, not giants nor dragons nor men with fists and minds of gore could tear down. She realises now, that their love is malleable, mouldable, breakable. As soft as dreams

Summer in Worcestershire, 1577. Eliza Litton, a talented artist, is in love with childhood friend, Francis. But her tyrannical father, who rules the household with insults and fists, has other ideas. As summer comes to an end, Francis vanishes after a drunken night at the inn and Eliza’s father forces her to marry a gentleman, Edmund.

Thrown into a new, unfamiliar life with her husband who appears distant and cold, Eliza cannot tear herself from the memory of Francis. Yet her feelings for Edmund soften with time; he presents a life to her better than she ever dreamed. He provides her a safety she never had beneath her father’s roof and encourages her to paint, to pursue the things she loves.

As she begins to fall for Edmund, Francis is adrift on his own voyage, doing all he can to survive, fixated on returning to Eliza.

But as Eliza grows closer to Edmund, she uncovers a deceit she never imagined, causing her to question her own loyalties and commit her own betrayals. After everything, who will Eliza be? And what choices will she make?

The Marriage Contract vividly portrays life in the precarious and unforgiving Elizabethan era, exploring love’s many forms; how we can betray the ones we love, and how we can find forgiveness; and explores a woman’s fight to follow her desires and find her autonomy.

📖My Review..

Eliza and Francis, are childhood sweethearts, they dream of a life together however, Eliza’s abusive and controlling father has very different plans for his daughter and marriage to a blacksmith’s son is never going to happen. Setting his sights on a far grander match for his only daughter, Eliza has no choice but to obey her father’s wishes and so enters into a marriage contract with Edmund Cecil, a young man of means who has a gentle nature, and a lifetime of secrets of his own.

Delicately written, and with a quiet lyricism, The Marriage Contract brings Elizabethan England to life, from the rather forlorn wattle and daub house of Eliza’s childhood in rural Worcestershire, to her much grander moted marital home at Cecil Hall in Warwickshire, every part of the story flowed beautifully. I absorbed every word, went back to passages I found so beautifully written that I needed to re-read them and, in reading, I sensed a much older world around me, one that was filled with love, but overshadowed by grief and the hint of angry betrayal. Immersed in Eliza’s life I allowed her sorrow to consume me, noticed her small moments of triumph, and watched as she began to unburden her sadness, blossoming in a way that she could never have imagined when once she ran free, with Francis, in the fields around her childhood home. And what of Francis, well therein lies a another tale of loss and heartbreak, adrift and alone, he dreams of what might have been.

Bittersweet and utterly beautiful, The Marriage Contract is an exceptional debut novel from a talented writer whose love for storytelling shines with every carefully considered word. It is one of the best books I have read this year.

It’s so good I have decided to make it my Book of my Month for November.

About the Author

Sasha Butler is a writer based in the West Midlands. Her first novel, The Marriage Contract will be published in 2025 and was shortlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize 2022 and the Bath Novel Award 2022, under the former title, As Soft as Dreams. 

She is interested in writing historical novels focusing on ordinary people who, despite living in eras so different from our own, are ultimately recognisable in their humanity - with desires, hopes, loves and fears.

In addition to novels, she occasionally writes short stories. Her short story Map of an Affair featured in Floodgate Press’ anthology, Night Time Economy (September 2024).

In her spare time, Sasha enjoys exploring National Trusts and planning trips to far-flung places. She lives with her partner in a little apartment with an ever-growing collection of books and plants.

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