Bestselling author Flora Douglas has the perfect life - or that's how it looks from the outside. Her grown-up children have flown the nest, her divorce is amicable (even if her ex still can't figure out the boiler) and she's ready for the second act of her life. The only problem is - she's stuck.
With her book deadline looming, one impulsive decison changes everything - and she finds herself booking a six month stay in the house she grew up in.
The Harbour House doesn't look like her childhood home. It's been renovated beautifully - erasing every trace of the place where she grew up in foster care.
She hasn't returned for thirty years, but the village hasn't forgotten her - and neither has Tor Wilson, the boy whose careless teasing was the final straw that sent her running.
Now Flora and Tor are forced to face the question they've both been avoiding - who are you when everything you've built falls away?
As Flora reluctantly teaches a creativity workshop and Tor builds a space for lonely men to find friendship and purpose, the two of them discover that healing the past might be the only way to move forward.
Review: This book is part of the Applemore Bay series written by this author. Applemore Bay is a fictional small fishing village in the Scottish highlands. The books in this series feature people or places in the village, with a growing list of recurring characters with each one. They can all be read as a standalone.
This story features successful author Flora Douglas, who is returning to Applemore Bay where she grew up after an absence of more than thirty years. Luckily, she is able to rent Harbour House, the very house where she grew up. She is suffering from writers’ block and hoping that a change of scene might help. Unfortunately, one of the first people she encounters in the village is Tor Wilson, whose teasing made her life a mystery when they were at school. Flora is not able to forgive him for ultimately driving her away from Applemore Bay all those years ago. Unable to come up with ideas for her book and with her publisher hounding her, she is persuaded to run a creativity workshop for local people which proves a great success and gives her ideas for taking her writing in a different direction. Meanwhile, Tor is facing the imminent departure of his son for university and looking for ideas to fill his spare time. He comes up with a notion that he might create a space where men like himself could meet and work on projects, sharing their skills. As Flora realises that she must move forward and forget the past, she hopes to be able to let Tor into her life and perhaps the pair can anticipate a happy future.
I very much enjoyed and confidently recommend this latest book in the Applemore Bay series. As always, the setting was so well described that I could well picture the village, typical of many in that part of Scotland. Although, like the other titles in the series, this story is complete in itself, I like to revisit the characters I have got to know in previous parts. I felt for Flora suffering from writers’ block, with her next book overdue and her agent and publisher nagging her. I’m sure many authors recognise that scenario. I thought that the other central character, Tor, was a great single dad, who brought his son up to be strong and independent. Tor’s idea to establish a place where men could pass a few hours together using their skills to help others was inspired. I was hoping that Flora and Tor could settle their differences and maybe some romance would follow. As anyone who has read any previous parts of the series will be aware, there are many eating establishments in Applemore Bay, so there was some delicious food throughout the story.
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