Description
One hot summer, first love, so many buried secrets . . .
A bold new story for fans of We Were Liars, intertwining past and present, love and loss, from the best selling author of The One Memory of Flora Banks.
One hot summer, first love, so many buried secrets . . .
Senara has never been in love before. She's not done anything exciting before. Always the sidekick . .
Until the summer that changes everything.
Cliff House is closed off for most of the year until its rich Londoner owners come down to Cornwall for the summer. This year, despite herself, Senara finds herself pulled into this world of wealth and ease, sunbathing and beautiful people. She even finds herself falling in love for the first time.
But Cliff House and its owners are hiding things. They've been hiding things for too long and now, despite all their efforts, their secrets are coming out . . .
Secrets that involve Senara's friends and her family in a way she could never have imagined.
Review
Set in a Cornish seaside village, where the locals are generally doing it tough, the wealthy tourists arrive for summer. The richest of the tourists own the Cliff House - which is mostly empty, although rumours abound around what may have happened within its walls over the years.
When three local students doing a school project decide to fly a drone over the Cliff House to get a better look, it crashes and in their attempt to retrieve it one the students, Senara, is discovered by the 92-year-old owner, Martha.
Martha is a wonderful character, with an incredible story. At the age of ten she was taken in by the brother and sister who owned the estate as a London evacuee. When her family all died during the war she was adopted and eventually became the sole owner of the property. With her family rarely visiting her since COVID, Martha hatches a plan that will ensure all of them come scrambling back one last time.
Senara quickly develops a bond with Martha, and also with her mega-rich granddaughter, Clem. But as they do we slowly uncover the relationships, mysteries and potential murders from the past that effect all of their families today. And when human bones are found within the Cliff House walls, questions of their identity, secrets from the past, and links to possible crimes linger everywhere…
The ending is as spectacular as it is just, and this is a marvellous murder mystery spanning 80 years and three generations. With themes of belonging, war, truth, finding love, family and doing what is just, thiswill be enjoyed by teenage readers 14 and older.
Reviewed by Rob
