Emma's Review: The Path to the Last House Before the Sea by Liz Eeles

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Fleeing from a heartbreaking mistake, all former nurse Alyssa wants is to focus on her new job giving tours of Heaven’s Cove to visitors and sharing the myths and legends of this beautiful place. Nobody needs to know the real reason she came to the village…

Over cups of tea with elderly resident Magda she soon makes a friend who is alone in the world too. For decades, Magda has been secretly in love with her best friend Stan. Desperate to return Magda’s kindness, Alyssa is eager to bring these two lost souls together. But meeting Stan’s tall, handsome son Jack scuppers her plans.

Dedicated to caring for Stan, Jack says Alyssa’s focus on legends keeps the village in the past. But when Alyssa finds an old map revealing the true story of a Heaven’s Cove couple who sacrificed everything for love, she’s sure the romantic tale could bring Stan and Magda together… and although digging up old secrets soon ruffles feathers in the village, with Jack and Alyssa growing close, she can’t help but think she might find happiness after all.

But will Alyssa ever be able to open up about her own past? Or will the truth tear them apart?

Book Link: Kindle 

Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Path to the Last House Before the Sea to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.

The Path to the Last House Before the Sea is the fifth book in the Heaven’s Cove series by Liz Eeles. All the books are easily read as standalone stories and they can be read in any order. I have read them as soon as they are available because I enjoy them so much and this latest instalment is no different. It’s a lovely, relaxing read with a beautiful setting and the coastline and cliffs play an important role in the themes of the story. There are a few characters from previous books who reappear, Not in a dominating way but more so in the background so long-time readers can see how they are getting on. Belinda doesn’t appear to have changed at all and is still very much always on the hunt for gossip as she tries to be at the forefront of all the goings on in the village. It was also lovely to see Rosie and Liam come full circle as they celebrate their wedding at Driftwood House. The house has always in some way featured strongly in the books and it does so again here as a mystery/going back to the past element of this new story has the character of Charity living above the village in the house over three hundred years ago. The brief prologue tells us how she steals away one night to give a gift to the man she loves. This forms the basis of the mystery which our new character Alyssa is determined to solve.

Alyssa has been living in the village for six months in a caravan at the bottom of Magda’s garden. Magda is 71 and runs the local ice cream parlour as well as a catering business. The pair have a tentative friendship but as Alyssa is so closed off and guards a deep secret she doesn’t reveal much of herself to Magda just as Magda herself harbours a secret - one of unrequited love. Jack is the son of Stan who runs the local supermarket. He has returned to the village to keep an eye on his dad who is in ill health. He is dealing with the breakup of his marriage and also the loss of his mother several months ago. These three people are the main characters in the story and the chapters alternate back and forth between the trio.

This worked very well and it didn’t at any point feel like I was reading three separate stories as they shared common themes with secrets and not allowing oneself to express how they feel being the common threads they shared. The story as a whole had a lovely pace to it and mixed the old with the new as Alyssa sought to seek redemption to have Charity and her lover Josiah’s name cleared if at all possible. The memorial stone that is on the green in the village claims one thing which in turn has meant Jack has always felt a burden on his family. But Alyssa feels a kinship with the maligned labourer as she too has been on the end of a supposition and she knows it is not pleasant.

Alyssa runs a myths and legends tour of the local area and she meets Jack when he goes on one of the tours. She has fled from a traumatic past which she refuses to reveal any details about to any of the locals but Magda is astute and she knows that Alyssa is hiding something and that living in a small caravan at the bottom of a garden is not normal for a young woman. I had my suspicions as to what had happened with Alyssa that made her so unreadable and like a damaged soul. I was more or less right and when it was revealed it didn’t come across as a major shock and I felt the same when the other characters found out too. By that point, it just felt like a natural revelation that was fitting in well with everything else coming to a resolution/conclusion in the story.

Alyssa first encounters Jack on one of her tours. His snarky comments and rude attitude are certainly not welcome and from the outset he comes across as boorish, stuffy and pedantic. The reasons for this do become clear further on and the reader begins to understand where he is coming from. It sounds silly to say this but I liked the fact that he was a bit different form the usual male character in the women’s romantic fiction genre. He was definitely vulnerable, and it was refreshing to see that for a change. He was a very private person with lots of insecurities and worries and it was so cute and touching that he always recited the mathematical term pi to a certain point as a way of trying to take control over things and in doing this he centred himself and remained calm. In my mind, Jack was haunted by many things and he didn’t have the correct coping skills to deal with things and that’s why he came across in such an awful manner to Alyssa when she first meets him. Secrets can be toxic as each of the three characters soon come to learn and its only when Jack and Alyssa open up to each other due to an unfortunate incident they find themselves in that they start to see that they do have things in common with each other and maybe things could potentially develop into something more?

Poor Magda is the one who I felt so sorry for her as she wrestling with whether to tell Stan, the husband of her best friend Penny (who as I have mentioned has passed away), that she is and always has been in love with him. She was tying herself up in knots over the situation, battling with her conscience over whether to stay quiet or to finally get her feelings out in the open and in turn this was making her cranky with people especially Alyssa. Therefore, I didn’t like the way she spoke to Alyssa at one point but on reflection I could see it was her frustration and anger at the situation coming out and she had to let her annoyance out in some way. Yet, at the same time Magda was like the matriarch of the book and she was always there for Jack to give him advice and would do the exact same for Stan no matter what the outcome would be if she decided to get her feelings off her chest. I thought how this element of the story was handled was really good. It could have been cliched and so easily solvable but I liked how Liz Eeles threw a few curveballs in.

Overall, The Path to the Last House Before the Sea was an entertaining and enjoyable read with a slowly unravelling mystery from the past that helped the characters in the present to find resolutions and acceptance to their own problems. As Liz herself described in her author’s note, it’s an enemies to lovers romance and that really sums this story up perfectly. But whether the path the characters find themselves on in the later half of the story is a smooth or rough one you’ll have to read this delightful book for yourself to discover the answers. Heaven’s Cove is a special place with history and heart and I am loving every book in this series so I was delighted to discover that Liz is hard at work on the next book which is to be set during winter which I hope will mean it’s a Christmas book. Either way, I’m looking forward to it already.