This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
REVIEWED BY DEBS CARR
Lily Button has had a strange upbringing. She’s spent her teenage years looking after her grandparents and having been happy cosseted away in their cottage since they took her in when she was eight, she’s seen no reason to make any friends. Now they’re both dead, within months of each other, and she’s discovered that the cottage she assumed she’d always live in has to be sold to cover huge debts. Lily can’t imagine what her grand parents could ever have spent their money on. They always took care to live as frugally as possible, without televisions, holidays and even growing and eating their own vegetables, but despite their unextravagant way of life, she still ends up without any money, or home, and no one to turn to for help.
She moves into the garden shed, but is eventually forced to move out and try to plan some sort of future. Lily is befriended by Al, who it turns out knows better than most what it’s like to hit rock bottom. He saves her from drastic action and through his advice she ends up taking a room in a house with a friendly family. She initially finds it strange, but gradually becomes used to the way the couple and their children live. Lily wants to go to university, but first she needs to make some money. She takes on cleaning work and her favourite job is cleaning the beautiful home of ex-soap star, Harry Summer and his beautiful wife, Sarah.
Lily agrees to act as waitress for their pre-Christmas party and it’s there that Harry’s wife says something that will come back to haunt her. When Sarah commits suicide while on holiday days later, Harry pleads with Lily to keep coming back to the house to keep it clean. She is happy to do so and watches as the grieving widower works through his tragic loss. Lily is already in love with Harry and when she discovers that he has feelings for her, she believes she’s the luckiest woman alive. There’s a lot Lily doesn’t know about life and especially Harry. As her life changes in ways she couldn't ever have envisaged, Lily starts to wonder what exactly it was that drove Sarah to kill herself and also tries to find out more about the man she’s fallen in love with.
This book is written in two tenses. Lily’s story is in the first person and then we meet Jack. He’s married and has three children. Jack lives in Australia and regrets settling down so young. One day he has a car crash and returns home unexpectedly. What he finds shocks him, but ultimately gives him the chance to start living his dreams.
At first I didn’t like Lily’s story being interrupted by Jack’s, but as I read more of the book I became impatient to discover how the two characters would be connected. Lily had been abandoned by her parents who had emigrated to Australia years before, and Jack was from Australia. I had a few theories, but none of them were right.
The first time I picked up this book, it didn’t grab me, but then a couple of weeks later I began reading and couldn't stop until I’d finished. The more you get into this book the harder it is to put it down. A great story with some dramatic and unexpected twists.
8/10
You can find out more about Emily Barr and her books on her website, or follow her on Twitter @emily_barr