Secrets at the Last House Before the Sea by Liz Eeles
Publication Date:
18th Feb 2021
Genre: Women’s
Fiction
4 Stars
There’s nothing
the view of the sea and the sky from the window of your childhood home. And the
occasional mist that surrounds the house and isolates you from the rest of the
world can be peaceful, stifling, or terrifying.
Rosie Merchant
feels all of these and much more as she stands in the empty Driftwood House,
located in the small seaside village, Heaven’s Cove. Her mother passed away
when Rosie was in Spain, enjoying her life and work.
She gets back home
to the village she couldn’t wait to escape from. What else could she do? But
her plan of packing her mother’s possessions and catching the next possible
flight crumbles when she receives a notice.
Confused between
listening to her mind and her heart, Rosie finds it hard to come to terms with
her mother’s death. One decision leads to another, and secrets start to trip
her in the most unexpected ways. Was her life even real? What other secrets did
her mother hide? How would it change Rosie's future?
Include a handful
of villagers- Nessa, a single mother who fast becomes Rosie’s friend again,
Liam, the school’s heartthrob, who is now a farmer with sad eyes and troubles
of his own, Belinda, the lady who knows everything and can gossip from day to
night, Katrina, who manages to inspire strong feelings without even trying, and
a few others; the book is a mix of people we come to like and people we’d love
to hate.
The setting and
its descriptions are the highlights of the book. As a fan of settings, this
pleases me to no end.
Luckily, the
characters, too, were well developed to add more weight to the story. There is
a good mix of show and tell, which set a steady pace for the narrative to
create interest and hook the readers’ attention.
The story is
neither too heavy nor too light. It has moments of smiles, chuckles, and
sadness. Of course, we can guess the secrets, but then, this isn’t a thriller.
The author keeps us invested in the characters, and we find ourselves wishing
for something good to happen.
Yes, there is some
romance as well. I found it quite nice to see how it develops over time rather
than take us by surprise at how fast it seems to have proceeded. The story has
a happy ending, and that made me very happy.
Overall, this is a
warm and bittersweet book with wonderful locations and easy-to-understand
characters.
I received an ARC
from NetGalley and Bookouture.
P.S: I’ve come to
expect more from the books by this publisher. The covers are fantastic and make
me want to read them all.
#SecretsattheLastHouseBeforetheSea #NetGalley
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