Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Freya is desperate for escape from her messy break-up when she’s offered a job caring for elderly Kathleen in the seaside village of Heaven’s Cove. Kathleen’s once-red hair is now a brilliant white, but there’s always laughter in her Irish lilt – until the day Freya finds her weeping, her gaze fixed on Driftwood House, perched on the cliffs above the village. She refuses to say what’s wrong…
Kathleen’s son Ryan, quiet with striking emerald eyes, resents that a stranger is caring for his mother. But as Freya presses him for answers on a long walk across a windswept beach, Ryan finally admits that Kathleen breaks down in the same way, on the exact same day every year – never telling anyone what is causing her pain.
Finding a photo of Kathleen as a young girl standing outside Driftwood House years before she says she moved to the village, Freya is determined to find the source of Kathleen’s heartache. But as she gets closer to Ryan, and to the sad, forgotten history of the house, Freya is faced with an impossible decision…
Should she share this heartbreaking secret with Ryan and risk their chance of happiness together? And will facing the truth bring Kathleen peace in her final years – or will it tear them all apart?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Girl at the Last House Before the Sea and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Girl at the Last House Before the Sea is the third book in the Heaven’s Cove series by Liz Eeles and it was just as enjoyable as the previous two offerings. At this stage the author has built up a lovely picture of the coastal town of Heaven’s Cove and it’s like returning to old friends as place names, shops and the characters are all familiar. It’s lovely to see mentions of the characters who featured strongly in the first two books just to see how they are getting on but in doing this, it also provides a refresher for readers new to the series. So therefore this book is easily read as a standalone story but you will really want to go back and read what has already happened as there truly is something special about the village and its residents and they quickly find a way to get under your skin and have you rapidly turning the pages to uncover more of the stories they are willing to share.
The book has a very intriguing opening, so much so that many questions arise that you wish you had the answers to but patience is a virtue and you must wait until the last quarter or so of the book for all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. Kathleen has only one image from long ago that has not been destroyed but the bitter taste of betrayal and the searing pain of a broken heart have lingered for so long. She has held a secret close to her chest for many years and she is determined she will take it to her grave. Instantly, my interest was piqued, and I soon found it difficult to leave this book out of my hands. Freya and Kathleen are the two women on whom the book focuses and despite a somewhat prickly start I found they developed into the perfect pair who complemented each other and helped each other in ways they would never have thought possible given their first meeting and the circumstances by which Freya comes to be in Kathleen’s life.
Freya arrives in Heaven’s Cove to stay with her half sister Belinda, whom she hasn’t seen in 3 years. Belinda is the stalwart of the tow, she is on every committee that exists and spearheads many campaigns and events. Basically, she is the town busybody who has her fingers in a lot of pies and knows everybody’s business and is not that likely to keep a secret. Freya is the complete opposite to her and given their family history you sense there is an uneasy tension between the pair. Freya’s marriage has fallen apart and her whole life direction has changed. When we meet her, she is damaged, hurt, lost and worn down and you get a sense that coming to the town is a last resort as she has nowhere else to turn to especially as the care home where she worked is closing down and now she doesn’t even have a job. This is a real story of Freya building herself back up slowly but surely with plenty of obstacles in her way which she must try and overcome. She came across as being emotionally challenged and at times clueless but underneath it all if she only had the confidence in herself, she is a good listener and keeper of secrets which may or may not be of advantage to her.
Freya was a well written character and it was like she arrived in the village when Kathleen needed her the most and in doing so a special bond was formed between the pair. I fervently hoped as I read through the story that the issues unsettling and affecting the pair could be resolved. Kathleen although unwilling to admit to at first, needs someone to keep an eye on her. She has become a bit of a liability living on her own and this is where Freya steps in. She agrees to live with Kathleen for a month to see how things go. Kathleen’s son Ryan is very suspicions at first as he feels Freya is too good to be true or has she ulterior motives? Sometimes, you wonder can people not just accept others at face value but then the further we delve into Ryan’s personality and past history you can see that is a man who is hurting. He lost his wife in a car accident and has been left to rear his 12 year old daughter Chloe on his own. He finds the village stifling as people are in each other’s business all the time but yet he can’t move anywhere else as Kathleen refuses to do so.
Ryan had aura of being troubled and sad and when you discover the real reason behind it you gain a deeper appreciation of him as a character. I liked how Chloe featured and how Freya became connected with her although this led to problems perhaps Freya would have avoided if she had known how certain things would fair out. Similar to Freya, Chloe is struggling but can’t express how she is feeling. To be honest there was a lot of keeping secrets and you wished that the characters could have been more open with each other, but I suppose if they had been there wouldn’t have been much of a story at all. I could see where the romance element of the book was going although there were plenty of little events and lack of actually saying what one thought getting in the way to allow love to blossom.
Driftwood House which stands on the cliffs overlooking the town featured so prominently in the first two books and once again plays a very important role. The house is like a character in itself, in that it has had many guises over the years and means something to quite a number of people. Why is Kathleen so entranced with the house yet so fearful of ever going near it? What hold does it have over her? Freya wonders when she finds Kathleen crying one day is it somehow connected to the house? I loved this aspect of the story as it brought some historical fact into this piece of fiction. It was just the right amount as given the genre of the book I didn’t think it would be right to have it turn into a full-blown historical fiction novel. But when the truth is revealed it was certainly an eye opener and it made complete sense as to why Kathleen came across the way she did for the vast majority of the book. It was like Freya was the catalyst/key to get Kathleen to open up but also by meeting Kathleen and Ryan, Freya learned an awful lot about herself and gained confidence and hopefully would also find her new place in the world. Be that Heaven’s Cove or further afield.
The Girl at the Last House Before the Sea was a heart-warming, interesting read. The pace was very good and things weren’t unnecessarily dragged out. The themes of second chances, reconnecting and establishing family connections all played out wonderfully. Thankfully, there are more books to come in this series as I am thoroughly enjoying Liz Eeles’ writing and I am not quite ready to leave Heaven’s Cove behind.
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