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Just the Beginning by Sarah Bennett #Ewview #HalfmoonQuay#PublicationDay

  I have been eagerly awaiting this new series by Sarah Bennett . Just the Beginning is published today by Boldwood Books !   Everyone in Halfmoon Quay, the picture-perfect village clinging to the edge of the Cornish coast, knows Rick Penrose is the person to turn to for help. Friendly and reliable, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, he’ll do anything for anyone. When his teenage crush Anya moves back to the quay for a fresh start, he has the perfect solution. She needs a job and his great uncle needs help to run his hotel. It’s a win-win. Following the death of her husband, Anya Stokes discovered everything about her life was a lie. Without her beautiful home and the luxuries she took for granted, Anya and her daughter, Freya, have no choice but to move in with her aunt and uncle in Halfmoon Quay. As she begins to turn her life around, Anya realises the perfect man might have been right under her nose all the time. But there’s a fine line between helping and taking ov...

The Butterfly Garden by Rachel Burton #Review

 

Today I have another lovely summer read for you by Rachel Burton, The Butterfly Garden, which was published by Boldwood on 28th June

 
A gripping and beautiful tale of love, loss and secrets. Perfect for fans of Rachel Hore, Lorna Cook and Kathryn Hughes.

 

1963: When Clara Samuels buys Butterfly Cottage, she knows the scandal she’ll cause. A single woman buying property is not the ‘done thing’, especially not in a village like Carybrook. But Clara has been in love with Butterfly Cottage, and its garden, since she used to play there before the War. And when she reconnects with her childhood friend James, her decision feels serendipitous. But the true scandal is yet to come, because within six months, Clara will leave England under mysterious circumstances, and Butterfly Cottage will stand empty for more than 50 years.

2018: No one is more surprised than Meredith when she’s bequeathed a cottage by a great aunt she’d never heard of. She hopes, briefly, that the inheritance could be the answer to her financial problems. But when she arrives in Suffolk, she is shocked to discover a man is already living there. A young gardener, who claims he was also bequeathed half of Butterfly Cottage.

As the pair try to unravel their complicated situation, they unearth a decades old mystery involving Clara, the garden, and a stack of letters left unread for over 50 years…


 My Thoughts

This is a dual timeline novel, which alternates between 1963 and 2018. It features different generations but the central focus in both is the setting, Butterfly Cottage. The social attitudes towards women change over the years but in 1963, Clara finds herself up against  gossip and prejudices directed towards her as a single woman. She shows her mettle when she buys the cottage and seemingly, settles for a career as a school teacher and a single life. She knows if she was to marry and have children, she would be expected to resign, according to the views of the village which seem to come from an even earlier age. 

    Meredith inherits the cottage in 2018 and you can contrast how attitudes towards women have moved on. Meredith is at a crossroads in her life. With financial and personal issues in her past, she seems rootless and in need of some security. I appreciated how the two women's stories and experiences were interwoven. Although I did guess the secret at the heart of the novel's mystery, I enjoyed all the story threads and the characters within them.

In short: dual time line and a mystery

About the Author

 

Rachel Burton is the bestselling author of historical timeslip novels and has previously written romantic comedies.

Rachel was born in Cambridge and grew up in a house full of books and records. She has read obsessively since she first realised those black squiggles on the pages that lined her parents’ bookshelves were actually words and it has gone down in family history that any time something interesting happened, she missed it because she had her nose in a book.

After reading for a degree in Classics and another in English Literature she accidentally fell into a career in law but her love of books prevailed as she realised that she wanted to slip into imaginary worlds of her own making. She eventually managed to write her first novel on her lunch breaks.

She is obsessed with old houses and the secrets they keep, with abandoned gardens and locked gates, with family histories and surprising revelations, and with the outcomes of those surprises many generations later.

She lives in Yorkshire with her husband, a variety of cats and far too many books. By writing novels she now has an excuse for her head being forever in the clouds.

You can follow Rachel here:  

Twitter |  Instagram  |  Website   |  Goodreads  |  Facebook
 
 Aria links: Website  |  Twitter   |  Fiction   |  Instagram
 
Head of Zeus: Instagram  ||  Twitter |  Website  |  Facebook
 
  Book links  |  
 
   
Thanks to Rachel Burton, Boldwood Books and Rachel of Rachel's Random Resources for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
 
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