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

Blue slipper bay (by Wendy K Harris)

(Amazon UK link)

Last month I reread (and thoroughly enjoyed) the book ‘The sorrow of sisters’ by Wendy K Harris. I’ve now just finished the second in the ‘Undercliff’ trilogy, ‘Blue slipper bay’. I last read it in 2007, and had entirely forgotten both the storyline and the characters.

The first couple of chapters introduce a lot of different people, which feels a bit bewildering at first. But the characterisation is good, and it wasn’t long before I could keep the main characters in my mind fairly easily. Jill is the first person to be mentioned. She and her family live on the Isle of Wight, where her husband Ash runs a medical centre. Jill is a psychologist and works at the centre, but she’s concerned about Ash. He seems worried, although it may just be that their firstborn, Rose, has just started university. 

Then we meet Nick, who has evidently suffered a terrible bereavement. He dreams often of his late wife, and has some nightmares, too. He lives a mile or so away from Jill and Ash, in a rental cottage where he’s living a minimalist lifestyle and trying to decide what to do with his life. In the meantime, he’s taken on the huge project of trying to renovate a hotel and its grounds: this belongs to Jane, who was the main protagonist in ‘The sorrow of sisters’. 

And there’s Sophie, who lives in London with her husband Peter. She is evidently someone who takes on a lot of responsibility caring for others. She has an elderly mother whom she visits regularly, and she works as a counsellor for a bereavement group. She’s looking forward to seeing Jill, who is her closest friend, and who will soon be visiting, while Peter is away.

Two traumatic things happen to Sophie, and she decides to take up a long-standing invitation to visit Jill and her family, for an unspecified period. It’s the catalyst for a lot of change in her life; Sophie has to decide who she really is, and what she wants to do. But she needs breathing space, so she’s very pleased when she’s offered a job as a waitress in a local cafe. 

It’s a beautifully written book, with the lives of these folk - and others - gently weaving together. It’s a small community, so everyone knows everyone else. Rumours abound, though some are unfounded. I was pleased to read a bit more about Jane and her husband Chas, who features in ‘The sorrow of sisters’, and it was also good to see a bit more of Marguerite, an intriguing character who also has a major role in the first book. Marguerite is unable to speak, but communicates well with her own form of sign language. She’s also highly intuitive, and apparently psychic.

There are forays into various kinds of alternative medicine in this book, some of it harmless and possibly helpful. But one of the big problems stressing Jill is that Ash is dabbling in a form of regression therapy, something which really needs special training and careful supervision. 

The importance of honesty in relationships is mentioned more than once, as well as the necessity of healing from traumas, and grieving for as long as it takes. And I was quite struck by conversations about childhood: one character, with quite a rigid upbringing, envied another character her free-and-easy bohemian mother. But the latter character longed, as a child, for a home that had rules and expectations. The message comes through: no childhood is perfect, and as adults we need to accept our past, forgive where possible, and take responsibility for our own decisions. 

There are quite a few other issues that come to light in this book, which drew me in so much that I finished it in just two days. But the time I’d read about three chapters, I was hooked and could barely put the book down. The writing is evocative and the people all believable, with plenty of flaws. We see multiple viewpoints throughout the book, making it feel slightly less personal than a single-viewpoint novel; but it works well.

Definitely recommended if you like character-based novels with depth.  The writing is evocative; the author evidently familiar with the Isle of Wight. It’s not necessary to have read ‘The sorrow of sisters’ first, but I think it helps to be familiar with at least a few of the people in the book.

Review copyright 2025 Sue's Book Reviews

The sorrow of sisters (by Wendy K Harris)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s a long time since I read the three novels by Wendy K Harris; she no longer has a website, and I can’t find much about her online. I had forgotten everything about the books other than that I enjoyed them. And whereas I read them in the ‘wrong’ order last time, I decided to read them chronologically.

I read ‘Sorrow of sisters’ back in 2008 and have just finished rereading it. The main character is 49-year-old Jane. She’s happily married to an accountant called Chas; they have a comfortable relationship, and are clearly good friends as well as a married couple. He is helpful and understanding, while quite matter-of-fact; a good foil to Jane, who is full of imagination. She’s also a popular writer of women’s romantic fiction. 

Jane and Chas have no children, but most of the time she’s fine with this. She’s less enthusiastic about her relationship with her cranky father, Henry, who lives on his own. He’s a retired doctor, but still sees some patients. She’s never felt very close to him, or to her mother Victoria, who died some years previously. And in the past few months, before the story opens, she’s been feeling quite disturbed. She isn’t able to write, and keeps making excuses and procrastinating. She puts it down, in part, to her age. And then she receives a letter from a solicitor telling her that her aunt Lillian has died, and has left Jane her cottage on the Isle of Wight.

But Jane had no idea that she had an aunt. She had been told that both her parents were only children, and believed that her father was her only remaining relative. She confronts him, and he admits that his wife had a sister, but they didn’t speak to each other. He says that the cottage is probably a shack, and suggests she ask the lawyer to sell it. Jane decides that she will take a trip to the Isle of Wight to see her inheritance; Chas is supportive, and she doesn’t tell her father that she’s going…

In Jane’s cottage there is an elderly woman called Emmeline who tells her that she knew Lillian well. By the time they meet, the reader knows that Emmeline and Lillian were more than friends; some of the sections of the book are written from Emmeline’s perspective. And some include flashbacks where its as if the deceased Lillian is speaking to her - it’s never entirely clear if this is somehow the case, or whether Emmeline is reading some of the detailed journals that Lillian kept. 

It’s really very cleverly written; a most impressive debut novel. Gradually more and more information and secrets are revealed, through discussions and flashbacks, allowing readers to keep a step ahead of Jane. She discovers what she thinks caused her rather traditional, uptight parents to cut contact with Lillian and Emmeline. But that’s only the start of a plot that’s powerful, beautifully written, and which leads to compulsive reading.

Parts of the book are shockingly traumatic, although the author wisely avoids gratuitous detail. I wouldn’t suggest a child or sensitive teenager read this; indeed, as the main character is nearly fifty and others are older, I doubt if it would appeal even to young people in their twenties. Transita, the publisher of this book (though they are no longer in existence) was looking for novels intended for women of forty-five and above. I think they succeeded admirably with ‘The sorrow of sisters’. 

While there’s undoubtedly a plot that unfolds meticulously, this is essentially a character-based book. I found Jane a very likeable and believable woman, as is Emmeline. Chas is perhaps a tad too good to be true, and Henry a very confused person with a most unpleasant past. 

There’s something of a mystical element; there’s a young woman called Marguerite who doesn’t speak, and apparently doesn’t hear. But she communicates with her hands, and also with some stunning paintings and drawings. She has a special healing touch, too, and a strong sense of what is happening to the people she loves, even when they’re not there.

If you like this kind of book, I would recommend it highly. No longer in print, but it can sometimes be found second-hand. 

Review copyright 2025 Sue's Book Reviews

Rocken Edge (by Wendy K Harris)

(Amazon UK link)

I started reading books by Wendy K Harris just over a year ago with 'Blue Slipper Bay', the second in her Undercliff series set on the Isle of Wight. I enjoyed it thoroughly, although it was a little confusing in places, having not read the first one. A couple of months ago I was given, and read the first in the series, 'The Sorrow of Sisters', and was totally captivated.

I was even more pleased when Wendy Harris herself commented on one of the reviews I wrote, and offered to send me the third in the series as soon as it was published. I was delighted when 'Rocken Edge' arrived, shortly before we returned to Cyprus from the UK, after a busy few weeks.

It was only this week when I finally sat down to read it, and was instantly hooked. The novel opens with Clare, a young teenage mother, tired and hungry, arriving with a heavy backpack, looking for Rose. The journey is further than she thinks, and she is almost collapsing with exhaustion by the time she finds the caravans. It's fairly clear she's suffering from mastitis, too, so not surprising that disaster strikes...

Meanwhile the elderly Fran, a sheep farmer in a low-key kind of way, finds something very surprising in her stable. She is unsure what to do at first, but gradually her emotions take over, and her life changes in unexpected, but mostly beneficial ways. She learns a great deal about herself over the next few days, including an unexpected ability to tell lies to her closest friends.

Then there's Rachel, who owns a café, and has been planning - with her partner Sandro - a big change: converting to an Italian restaurant in the evenings, starting on Valentine's Day. The new menus are printed, and people are already booking up for meals... but Sandro has vanished. Rachel is broken-hearted, and also very worried about what to do.

Oh, and there's Father Ryan, a most unpleasant Catholic priest in Ireland. He had sent Clare to the UK to give birth in his cousin's convent, and then to have her baby adopted. But something went wrong, and he decides to investigate.

These threads and others are skilfully interwoven in this sometimes tense but very enjoyable novel. Other characters from previous books are also mentioned, giving a sense of continuity and the satisfaction of knowing what has been happening to them. The writing is good, the conversations realistic, and the people all warm and well-rounded; well, other than Father Ryan, who is a most unpleasant piece of work. He is almost caricatured in his nastiness, although, sadly, perhaps even he is realistic.

There's a fair bit of introspection in the novel, as people ponder their hurts and past problems. I don't mind that, although it might seem a bit long-winded to those who prefer crisper action.

There's also a bit of discussion about the meaning of life, and global consciousness, and perhaps a tinge more New Age than I'm comfortable with. But Clare, a devout (if confused) Catholic is respected for her views, and there's a thoroughly likeable and helpful priest who appears towards the end of the book, so it's certainly not anti-Christian as such.

As with the other books, there are some thought-provoking passages, some parts which are moving, and the power of friendship is an ongoing theme. There are also some moral issues to ponder: is abortion always wrong? How far can people be trusted? When is it better to skirt around legalities rather than calling the police?

All in all, I thought this an excellent book, and am very grateful to the author for sending it to me. Highly recommended. I think it would stand alone, although in my opinion it's best to have read the first two in the series before this one.

Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 16th August 2008

The Sorrow of Sisters (by Wendy K Harris)

(Amazon UK link)

I'd never heard of Wendy K Harris until last year, when I was sent one of her books - 'Blue Slipper Bay'- by The Bookbag, for reviewing. I very much enjoyed it, and although it was complete in itself, I realised that it was a sequel, or follow-up, to another book. I was intrigued to know more of the previous story, as well as impressed by the writing, so I put the first novel - 'The Sorrow of Sisters'- on my wishlist. I was delighted to receive it for my birthday last month.

I started reading it a couple of days ago, thinking it would last me several days as it's nearly 400 pages. I was wrong. After the first couple of chapters, I could barely put it down. I read it while waiting for my computer to boot, I read it while waiting for jam to set, I read it in between loads of laundry... and finished it this evening.

The main character is Jane, an almost-fifty-year-old novelist who has been experiencing some writers' block. Her husband is an accountant, who's somewhat stressed about his job and their finances, And there's Henry, Jane's father, who's old and frail, and a bit bad-tempered.

Out of the blue, Jane receives a letter saying she has inherited a cottage in the Isle of Wight, which belonged to her Aunt Lillian. Jane has no idea that she had an aunt, so she asks her father. He admits that Lillian was his late wife Victoria's sister, but that they did not have any contact. He refuses to say more. Jane is surprisingly disturbed, and decides to go and visit the cottage for herself.

Meanwhile, an elderly woman called Emmeline is mourning Lillian, and going over the past in her imagination with her, as well as hoping that Jane will arrive...

The book is a very clever mixture of past and present, allowing the reader to stay just one step ahead of Jane as she learns some surprising, sometimes shocking things about her past. She thinks she has discovered what it was that made her parents cast Lillian aside - little realising quite what further revelations are still to come.

The characters are well-drawn, the settings very believable, and the plot so well written that it drew me in almost at once. I kept guessing at the next step, sometimes successfully, sometimes not quite getting there. I didn't relate quite as strongly to the characters as I do to those of authors like Rosamunde Pilcher, but then again this was really plot-driven, with themes of love, loyalty, bigotry and jealousy permeating the novel.

There are one or two traumatic scenes, although nothing explicit; there are some moving passages too, and a positive bitter-sweet ending. All in all, I thought 'the Sorrow of Sisters' was an excellent book, and I'm very pleased to read that there will be a third in the series before too long.

Highly recommended.

Review copyright © Sue's Book Reviews, 24th May 2008. All rights reserved.

Blue Slipper Bay (by Wendy K Harris)

(Amazon UK link)

'Blue Slipper Bay' is published by Transita, who specialise in novels for women in their forties. This is a sequel to Wendy K Harris's first book, 'The Sorrow of Sisters', although I haven't read that.

Jill is a psychologist, who's worried about her husband Ash. He runs an alternative health centre in the Isle of Wight. Their marriage is mostly comfortable rather than sparkling, but he's recently been concerned about their student daughter Rose and seems depressed. There's also some kind of mystery to Jill, which is hinted at once or twice in the early chapters. Evidently she's not all she seems...

Jill's best friend is Sophie, who is distraught because her husband Peter walked out on her. Sophie leaves her job and goes to stay with Jill, and inevitably becomes caught up in suspicions and concerns about her friends' marriage. As she works through her hurt and confusion, she begins to discover what she really wants for herself.

And then there's Nick, living alone, recovering from the death of his wife and their unborn baby a few years before the story begins. Nick hasn't really come to terms with his loss, but he copes, just about, by working hard and keeping to himself.

I soon found myself feeling quite involved in the lives of these hurting people. It wasn't long before I could distinguish everyone easily, and found myself particularly empathising with Sophie and her quest for meaning and purpose.

I suppose this book is really chick-lit for older women: there are casual relationships as well as more committed ones, and the plot moves fairly rapidly at times, with a fair amount of action. There are many misunderstandings, too, before the expected romantic conclusion involving two of the characters.

But there are deeper ongoing themes running through the book: the vital importance of total honesty in friendship, the necessary balance between freedom and structure for children, and also the background of alternative healing with its benefits and potential dangers.

All in all, a good read, and it is not necessary to have read the first book. Recommended.

My longer review of 'Blue Slipper Bay' can be found here at the Bookbag.

Review of 'Sorrow of Sisters' is here, written a year later.