Rocken Edge (by Wendy K Harris)

(Amazon UK link)

In the last couple of months, I reread the first two ‘Undercliff’ novels by Wendy K Harris, and thoroughly enjoyed them. So I was looking forward to rereading the third, ‘Rocken Edge’, which I last read in 2008. I had entirely forgotten what it was about, but knew I would meet, again, some of the people I had got to know in the earlier books, ‘The sorrow of sisters’ and ‘Blue slipper bay’. 

However, this book opens with a new character, a teenager called Clare. She is struggling to find a lighthouse in Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight (where the other books are mainly set). She’s cold, and tired, and it’s soon evident that not only does she have a heavy backpack, she is also carrying a newborn baby. She doesn’t seem all that attached to this child, but knows she must stop to feed him when he cries. She finds the process of breastfeeding painful and distasteful, but believes it to be her duty.

Clare has been brought up as a Roman Catholic, and has a strong (often misplaced) sense of guilt. We don’t learn who was responsible for her pregnancy until further on in the book, although it was no surprise to me by the time he is revealed. Nor do we learn the details of how Clare, an Irish girl, is so far from home, and on her own with the baby. She is searching for Rose - someone who comes into ‘Blue slipper bay’ - with only the sketchiest of directions.

It would be a spoiler to say much more; but something shocking happens in Clare’s exhaustion. Then for most of the book there are two people who really need to meet, but keep missing each other. I thought the tension of this worked extremely well, and kept hoping things would work out better for Clare. She has had a terrible time at the hands of people who should know better, and at times she is almost in despair. She’s plagued with guilt, convinced she has worms inside her, eating away at her. And she trusts nobody…

It’s not just Clare’s story, although she’s really the main character. There are other threads and subplots too, which make more sense when having read the earlier books fairly recently.  Sophie and Nick, who met in ‘Blue slipper bay’, are now happily married and have just returned from their honeymoon. Rachel was about to open an expansion of her restaurant to serve Italian meals in the evenings, and has sent out expensive advertising. Then her chef - who was also her lover - disappears. She’s distraught, and has no idea what she will do, until her friends come up with some suggestions.

And then there’s Fran, a self-sufficient woman who I suppose is in her fifties. She lives in a cottage and keeps farm animals. Her elderly ewe has just given birth to twins, but it doesn’t look as if they are going to survive. It seemed like a rather brutal and unnecessary scene, but is important for later events. Fran has never married, and thinks she’s immune to love, until she finds something very unexpected in her barn, and discovers something deep inside her that keeps her from reporting what she has found.

The characterisation is excellent; I could feel a sense of empathy with several of the people, in particular Sophie and Fran, although they are quite different from each other, and from me. And I really felt for Clare, whose life has been such a struggle; it’s amazing that she has made it as far as she has, though she’s evidently a very strong character. But I didn’t find her unbelievable, despite more unpleasant circumstances and experiences than anyone could expect. 

The writing is well-paced, switching between viewpoints expertly so that it doesn’t feel at all disjointed. Perhaps if someone read this without having read the earlier books, the number of people would feel overwhelming. But for me, it was like a different perspective on people and places which felt somewhat familiar. I have never been to the Isle of Wight, so don’t know which places are real and which are imagined; but it doesn’t matter. The author has created a consistent and believable world, and I felt myself quite engrossed in it.

‘Rocken Edge’ has nearly three hundred pages but I read this in under two days. It took me a few chapters to get into it, but once I was about a third of the way through it was almost impossible to put down. The ending is encouraging; I’m a tad disappointed that the author didn’t write another sequel, to update readers on what happened to Clare and some other significant people. I believe she had planned one - the author bio at the back of this book says that she was working on a fourth. But as far as I know, it was never published.

Definitely recommended if you like character-based women’s fiction with some quite significant issues covered as part of the story. Ideally after reading the earlier books, or at least ‘Blue Slipper Bay’.

Review copyright 2025 Sue's Book Reviews