Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Dublin, 1956. When Mary Kate Ryan loses the love of her life, she’s not sure how she can keep going. Feeling completely lost, she allows her friend Moira Kent to persuade her to re-open the Boarding House for Single Ladies where she made so many memories and created a safe place for women who needed it. Now it’s Mary Kate who needs to start over…
As Mary Kate sits by the large bay window, with her little dog Guinness by her feet, she watches the residents of the house coming and going and realises there are others who need her help. Can Mary Kate and Moira uncover the mystery surrounding their new guest? And can they provide a home for two orphan sisters with nowhere to go?
Soon Mary Kate breathes new life into the boarding house and learns that family can be formed in all sorts of ways. Clever, kind Moira is like the sister she never had and Moira’s sweet, adopted ten-year-old daughter Abby means the world to both of them. And being back in Merrion Square brings Mary Kate the kind of laughter and joy that she never dreamed she’d experience again.
But when a devastating secret about Abby’s birth mother begins to unravel, it threatens to destroy the happiness of her patchwork family. Mary Kate must gather her strength to protect the future of the boarding house – and to stop darling Abby being taken from them.
Can Mary Kate keep the friends who have become her family safe? Or will her new-found happiness be torn apart?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Return to the Irish Boarding House and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
It’s been a number of years since Sandy Taylor published The Irish Boarding House and it is a book that has always stayed with me. So I was thrilled to discover that she had written a follow up book, Return to the Irish Boarding House, and I had high hopes that it would be just as good as the first book. There is absolutely no need to have read the previous book as the reader is brought up to speed in a conversational/storytelling style from the main character as to who featured before and what their stories were. That’s not to say great detail is gone into which would result in ruining said book for readers who haven’t read the first story surrounding Mary Kate. Not at all but it also served as a handy refresher for me as it had been over two years since I had read that book. But things started coming back to me pretty quickly and the story is very easy to follow along with. I always remember the Maeve Binchy vibes/tones that I experience whilst reading book one and I’ve been searching for books and authors like that ever since we lost such a wonderful writer. Again these elements are present and what follows is a series of interconnected stories and an assortment of characters which all centre around the boarding house with the red door in Merrion Square, Dublin.
Mary Kate had been the stalwart/matriarch of book one but when we first encounter her again she is in a place of great pain and loneliness ever since the death of her beloved husband Sean. He was the one who helped her renovate the boarding house which became like one big family with all the people that came and went and those that stayed and became firm friends. Her beautiful cottage and garden in the Wicklow Hills is not the same place it was since Sean went from her life and she questions how can she go on without the love of her life? Her future is filled with sadness and she is angry that she was given a precious love only for it to be taken away from her so cruelly. The history surrounding Mary Kate is detailed in the first chapter which I won’t go into as it forms a big part of book one but her background and the circumstances she found herself in have always inspired her and ever since she was fortunate enough to be able to buy the boarding house she has never taken this for granted and always done her best to help those in need. But now she has stayed away from all her friends and shut herself off from the world but when her great friend Moira comes calling at the door with a proposal there is a slight awakening in Mary Kate.
Moira is solid and wise and having spent several years running the house as a school since Mary Kate moved to her cottage she feels now is the time to finish up with the school and return the house to its former use. Really Moira had an ulterior plan in mind and knew that it was the turn of Mary Kate to receive the help, love, support and guidance that she had offered to so many others of the years. Through reopening the boarding house Mary Kate comes back to life and the sparkle returns to her eyes as she navigates a whole new set of adventures with friends old and new. Mary Kate is a deep and soulful person whose mantra is, the love you give always comes back in so many ways. The themes of the church and love are two very strong elements to the story as they had been with book one. The role of the church affects several characters here and it’s quite impossible to comprehend that these events were ongoing until recently. The shadows of which are still being felt across Ireland to this day.
Familiar characters make a reappearance and all add to the story as a whole. Mrs Lamb is the cook and her daughter Eliza, a child in the body of a woman, was so sensitively written. There was the absolutely perfect balance between seriousness and humour with her. I felt as if I was laughing with her not at her and the way she took everything so literally and spoke literally also was brilliant. The bond she had with ten year old Abby was fantastic and would go on to play a crucial role within the story. Moira features too as she is the adoptive mother of Abby but her story had more or less been previously told so although there are a few bits that she is essential to I wouldn’t have called her a dominant force throughout the book. James Renson, the lawyer friend of Mary Kate, is on hand once again when needed and it is almost like he has stepped into the role vacated by Sean (even though he is married) that he will protect and guide the women when they need it. He was definitely someone that Mary Kate could rely on when she had ideas that needed some help with their execution.
I have to admit that there was a flurry of new characters introduced that at some points it did become overwhelming. Simply because their stories were introduced and then some detail was given. Mary Kate would solve their problem quite easily and then bang it was on to the next new person. It felt too rushed and it became a bit formulaic and expected and I wanted a few twists and turns. I think shortening the number of new characters by one or two would have been beneficial and would have allowed space for the other new people to breathe and share their stories in greater depth. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed reading of each new character but I felt I was just getting to know them and then with a turn of a page to a new chapter someone else was introduced that I had to get to know and I hadn’t the previous new character quite sorted in my head yet. Also, I felt with Mary Kate there was a lot of repetition she constantly referred back to her grandparents and the advice they gave her and whilst valid it was said over and over again in different paragraphs with just some words changed. Sometimes, I thought I had gone back a page whilst tapping my kindle rather than forward as I was thinking hold on haven’t I already read this? It did become slightly annoying at some junctures but I learned to push past this and seek the stories of the new characters.
Perhaps Emma and Nell Gavin, sisters from Cork, are the two newest characters that caught my attention. Theirs is a story, elements of which would ring true for a lot of people from the Ireland of the past. But Emma was loyal and devoted to Nell and I loved how Mary Kate could see that but also that Emma needed to seek independence at the same time without feeling guilty that she wasn’t doing a disservice to her sister. Alana Kennedy’s story was heart-breaking and inspirational in equal measure and I only wish that people at the time had the courage to do what she did. For I believe there must have been lot of people individually and as a pair who experienced something similar to this and wish they could have been as brave as she was. Norah Clancy was a very divisive character who I didn’t think I could see any redeeming features in. She is the key to an already familiar character but I know I wanted things to go a certain way and feared it could have gone in the opposite direction. Both Isobel and Megan were the two characters I felt could have been left out or in Megan’s case more detail could have been given or her story could have been fleshed out more once she arrive at the boarding house. Although it was clever how the author had me thinking one thing when in fact it was the complete opposite. Isobel’s connection to the house was tenuous at best and it came too late in the story for me being truthful. I’ve been purposefully vague with details of each new character because I feel it best for readers to discover them for themselves.
All in all, Return to the Irish Boarding House was a good read and a worthy successor to book one even if there were a few points that niggled at me as mentioned above.That ending well all I can is it was apt but heart-breaking and will bring a tear to many a readers eye. Forgiveness, kindness, acceptance, breaking down barriers and love are all what matter in life and Mary Kate and all her friends that she has come to call family show this in abundance in this charming and heart-warming read.
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