The Cornish fishing village of Tremarnock seems to have it all. Charming houses cluster round the harbour where fishermen unload their catch each day. There is a pub, a corner shop and a brilliant restaurant. Everyone knows everyone else and mostly they look out for each other. But throw a stranger – a beautiful stranger – into the mix and all bets are off.
Vivacious Chabela Penhallow is on holiday from Mexico to find out more about her Cornish roots, but rumours soon start to fly. Why has she really come? What is she running from? Is there more to her than meets the eye?
Many thanks to Head of Zeus via NetGalley for my copy of The Girl Who Came Home to Cornwall to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Girl Who Came Home to Cornwall is the fifth in the Tremarnock series by Emma Burstall. I have really loved this series because in the small coastal village of Tremarnock, the author has created such a lovely feeling of community and friendship. It's a place where the residents pull together when times are tough and offer each other support or a shoulder to cry on. A solution to any problem can always be found through sheer hard work, will and determination. Each book focuses on a different character but people we have met in previous books always make a reappearance and its lovely to see how they are getting on given a lot of attention had been on them in the past. But one person whose storyline has ran through all of the books is that of Liz Hart. She has been my favourite character of them all and I was keen to see what the author had in store for her in this new book.
The girl who came home to Cornwall as mentioned in the title is a new arrival called Chabela Penhallow. She is a university lecturer in Mexico City. A beautiful woman who makes an impression on people and someone who seems to have this aura of calm around her but underneath it all she is hiding pain and heartbreak and is hoping time away in a new country in a new situation meeting new people will give her the distance and perspective she needs to make some important life changing decisions. Chabela was a nice enough character but the residents were always wary of new people, despite being welcoming there is a little bit of resistance to someone new because they think they will be there one minute and gone the next. Chabela for quite some time was treated as the outsider and it would take a lot of working her way into peoples lives and laying her cards on the table before some form of acceptance could begin to occur. If she could even attempt to do this given her personality.
I felt Chabela was a character who was hard to get to know. She seemed very cut off from things and never really revealed the inner workings of her mind until quite far into the story. It all felt a bit flighty with her and I didn't find anything concrete I could latch onto in order to really identify her. Her strand of the story searching for her heritage and trying to overcome the pain she had experienced in Mexico and then in turn meeting a new friend was OK but it didn't fully grab my attention and I found myself much more interested in the residents I had read about before. Probably because I was so familiar with them, I knew their back stories and had been through the mill with them so to speak so I was perhaps more eager to focus my attention on chapters which featured them.
Liz once again really caught my attention, I love her but god she frustrates me in equal measure. She has finally got the perfect life for herself but she seems determined to see it go off track. Events from the previous book still very much have a forbearing on her now and she can't seem to shake them from her mind. They impede her decision making process and I really wanted to be able to take her by the shoulders and give her a good shake. She was letting her marriage with Rob suffer because she wasn't being honest and was reluctant to keep the channels of communication open. The lure and potency of what is forbidden seemed to me as if they were going to be Liz's downfall and I disliked the direction her thought process was taking.
You could see the guilt eating away at her as her secret became ever more of a burden. I couldn't blame Rob for his actions but truly it was heartbreaking given how much they had been through in previous books to reach this point. I really felt like it was make or break for the couple and I desperately hoped that for Liz common sense would prevail over what she believed her mind and heart were telling her. There is excitement and guilt running through her veins but she needed to push through that and make the right decision for her family in the long term. I questioned would she ever reach that point? Maybe Chabela herself could be the one who needs to speak to Liz to help her find the resolution she so desperately seeks.
The Girl Who Came Home to Cornwall was a nice, light, easy read but I don't think it was the strongest book in the series. I felt we only scratched beneath the surface of things regarding relationships and struggles. A lot more in depth discussion and a sense of talking about what is really going on needed to occur. There was too much of skirting around the issue and I think things at times all got too light and fluffy. That said I would have read this book anyway because I love Tremarnock and I hope any future books will return to the form I know that has been present in the past. It's not a bad book by any means but for me it failed to completely capture that magic and essence that I had found from book one onwards. A pleasant enough read but it wouldn't be my favourite of the series.
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