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I finally started it on Sunday, and finished it this morning. What a wonderful book! It’s well-written, with some three-dimensional characters, a very low-key romance, and an entirely satisfying conclusion.
Brenda is the first person we meet; she’s a young estate agent who runs her own business, and is clearly very successful in what she does. She’s saving up for the deposit on a house of her own - a ‘forever house’ - but in the meantime lives in a flat above her office.
We meet her as she’s about to do a valuation on a large, well-maintained house called Hunter’s Moon. Sally and Alex are the owners, but Brenda just meets Sally to start with. This is appropriate, as these two women are the main protagonists of the novel. Sally is in her late sixties now, and it quickly becomes apparent that she and her husband really don’t want to sell their family home. But Alex has recently been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and they want to move somewhere cheaper and easier to maintain.
Brenda and Sally like each other immediately; and although they play very different roles, and have different skills, I found their personalities a bit too similar to distinguish them easily. They are both good organisers, both have an eye for design, both are extremely kind and intuitively empathic. That doesn’t matter when we’re involved in the contemporary part of the book, as Brenda organises an open day and attempts to sell the house.
But a significant part of the book takes place in 1967 when Sally had just left home, and when she first meets Alex and his family. It’s nicely done; the forays into the past work almost seamlessly, as Sally remembers events from her youth. Sally came from a working-class family who didn’t travel much, and who were quite close. Brenda came from a military family who moved constantly; hence her deep desire for a home of her own. However, both have traumas from their past, which are hinted at and eventually revealed; and despite the very difficult circumstances and names, I more than once forgot which one I was reading about.
It was my only slight problem with the book; one which probably wouldn’t have arisen if I had not kept reading when I needed to sleep. There’s a wide cast of minor characters, some of them a tad stereotyped, but I didn’t have any problem distinguishing those. A lot of the story involves Alex’s family, when he is a young man and his younger sister Annie is about sixteen. Their mother Margot was a well-known novelist at the time. She was bohemian in the extreme, and suffered mood-swings as well as some writers’ block.
I didn’t much like Margot; I felt quite sorry for her husband at times. And I never entirely believed in their oldest daughter Phoebe, who is a clothes designer - but that didn’t matter. Alex and Annie felt well-rounded and believable, and Sally - who works for them - likeable, well-organised, and good humoured.
There’s not a whole lot of plot. The storyline switches between the present and the past, gradually building up a picture of how Sally and Alex met and fell in love, and also gradually revealing more about Brenda’s past, including her former connection with someone who betrayed her. Perhaps more could have been made of her rivalry with another estate agent company, whom she used to work for; but I was glad there wasn’t any direct conflict or tension.
By the time I was just a few chapters in I could hardly put this book down. I found the last couple of chapters extremely moving, and when I had finished, I immediately put a few more Veronica Henry novels on my wishlist.
Definitely recommended to anyone who likes gentle character-based women’s fiction.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews
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