Reviewed by Emma Crowley
After a whirlwind romance, Clara is excitedly planning her wedding to her handsome fiancé Logan in the picture-perfect Cornish village of Port Promise, with her mother and three sisters at her side.
She will never forget the day when she first caught sight of artist Logan, the sea-mist curling the ends of his dark hair, as he strode across the gorse-covered cliffs near the village. She feels so lucky that Logan seems happy to make her home his own, painting on the windswept Cornish beaches and calling in for lunch at the fish shack where she works with her best friend.
But when Logan inherits a beautiful house in London and reveals that he wants them to build a life there, it’s a huge shock for Clara. She knows it could be an amazing new start, but when she thinks about leaving her family behind, her heart aches.
Suddenly it seems like she and Logan have very different dreams. Can they find a way back to their happy ever after or will the mismatched lives they want threaten everything they have built together?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Second Chances for the Lifeboat Sisters to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Second Chances for the Lifeboat Sisters is the second in The Lifeboat Sisters trilogy by Tilly Tennant and was published simultaneously alongside the first book but I gave myself some time before diving into book two. For some reason I presumed book two would more or less tell the same story as the first book but from the point of view of the second Morrow sister Clara, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. God knows where I got that idea from and to be honest I was a little hesitant thinking did I want to more or less reread the same story just told by a different sister.
Thankfully this wasn’t the case at all and Tilly Tennant has done a brilliant job in moving forward the story of the Morrow sisters. Yes, this is written in such a way that it can be read as a standalone but I would urge you to read The Lifeboat Sisters beforehand as it was an excellent book with Ava at its centre and it really sets the scene for the series. Ava really found a place in my heart and I was enthralled by her story and I was worried I wouldn’t feel the same way about Clara. I felt I would be switching allegiances so to speak but as the book progressed I found myself lost in Clara’s story and all the changes and struggles that she was experiencing. Ava is still my favourite sister so far but I thoroughly enjoyed Clara’s story and am really loving the whole concept of the series.
Book one gave the reader little titbits as to what they could expect from Clara’s story and I felt a strong sense of foreboding that really all was not well in her world at a time when it very much should be. Clara is engaged to artist Logan and they share a little apartment above his gallery in Port Promise. Yes, they have been through the mill as a couple and Clara’s family too following the loss of their father at sea just over a year ago but things should be starting to turn a corner or so Clara thinks but as winter draws in around the Cornish village of Port Promise things are about to get a lot more turbulent for Clara. Can she weather the approaching storm? Will she listen to her heart or will she be forever treading on eggshells when it comes to her relationship with Logan?
Logan came to Port Promise three summers ago and fell in love with Clara and never left. The little fishing village is a special place which captures so many people’s hearts and the Morrow family have been central to all the goings on for countless years.The legend of their ancestor Izaiah Morrow lives on and they continue the work he started. Since that time a member of the Morrow family has always been involved the lifeboat service although Clara has a passion for food and cooking. Her long held dream is to have a restaurant of her own but facilities are thin on the ground in the village and she doesn’t have the finances either. Currently she works at the local campsite but now that her hours are reduced over the winter she has plenty of time on her hands and she should be making headway with plans for her wedding.
Clara is very different to her sisters Ava and Gaby. She is quiet, reserved and cautious and she feels stuck in a rut that she hasn’t really achieved anything with her life. She believes that she has made many compromises with Logan for the sake of his career and that there is no way she can see her dream coming true. Running her own restaurant seems further from her reach now more than ever. She spends time with her best friend Betty who runs the local café but Betty is lonely and on a mission to find a man and Clara wants to help her out. I could see where this aspect of the story and I feel awful saying it because I didn’t want it to happen as I could envisage a much bigger piece of the puzzle that I would have loved to have fallen into place.
I loved how lots of the characters introduced in the previous book reappear and one character I was definitely on the lookout for was handsome Irish man Cormac who runs the fish shack having taken it over from his uncle. He is the complete antithesis to Logan and I just wanted to read more and more about him. An all round good guy who can’t do enough for the community and he shows this in a very important way much later on in the book. Perhaps in more ways than one.
I could sense fairly early on that Clara, although she loved Logan deeply, had a niggle at the back of her mind that everything wasn’t perfect.That she was having to be someone that she wasn’t and through reading their conversations and interactions that she was pandering to him and giving in on things when he put pressure on her.It was as if she had to be wary of what she said or did in fear of upsetting him and it soon became apparent that he didn’t feel the same way about Port Promise as she did. Even from the little insights of Logan in the first book I knew I didn’t like him one bit and that feeling only intensified the further this story developed. Don’t get me wrong there are moments of tenderness and love between the pair, after all they are engaged and they do love each other, but is what they have enough?
Logan got on my nerves big time and this increased with every turn of the page. He makes no effort to become part of the Port promise community and rarely attends family events. There was an air of superiority about him that he was better than the village and its residents and far too cool for all the goings on there. He always seemed to have a bee in his bonnet that Gaby and her husband Killian and Clara’s mother Jill have a problem with him. Perhaps they do but they would never show that to Clara.
Really, I think Logan had a load of insecurities and was never happy in the first place in the village. He, never really understood Port Promise and what it stands for nor wanted to. Yes, it’s hard for an outsider to settle in but with time it’s achievable. Just look at Cormac and how well he was doing with the fish shack. I hated the way that Logan was just so disrespectful to Clara and her family and wondered what had she ever seen in him in the first place? When Logan’s grandmother passes away and he inherits her house in London he was like the cat that got the cream. But for Clara there are tough decisions ahead as Logan wants to move back to London. How can she leave her family and her beloved Port Promise? Yes, there should be a compromise in a relationship but that involves two people working together and it didn’t look like that was the case in this situation.
I really enjoyed the later half of the book as there was lots going on and Clara really wrestles with her emotions. Her head and heart lie in different places. What is the correct decision to make and when something surprising occurs her choice has more meaning than ever. I empathised completely with Clara throughout the book. Yet I knew what I wanted her to do. It seemed pretty obvious to me but there were plenty of challenges and obstacles placed in her way and most importantly does she love Logan enough to become someone else for him in order to give him what he wants or should she remain true to herself?
Second Chances for the Lifeboat Sisters has established the Morrow sisters as some of my favourite reads so far this year. It’s a heart-warming story of love, choices and second chances. The characters and setting are fabulous so much so that you’ll want to read it in one sitting if at all possible. Now my attentions turn to Gaby and her story will be revealed in A Secret for the Lifeboat Sisters which will be published in October. If it’s anything as good as the first two books, I know I am in for a real treat.
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