The Wildflowers by Harriet Evans - A Really Enjoyable Clever Mystery

Harriet Evans is a cracking good storyteller and she had me intrigued from the very first page of The Wildflowers with the story of The Bosky, a mysterious ramshackle beach house in Dorset , and the family who owned it, the Wildes, who spent idyllic summers there in the 1970s.
I wanted to know was it really so idyllic? Why did the family suddenly stop coming and what was it that brought them back forty years later to put all their family secrets to rest?
The characters are beautifully drawn too: with Sir Anthony Wilde who first came to the Bosky as a boy in the war with strange Great Aunt Dinah, (after he'd been rescued from the rubble of his house where his mother had been killed in a bombing raid) and who became a famous Shakespearian actor, and his wife, Althea, also an actress,  on a Sunday night TV drama, and their unconventional marriage with many other partners, some of whom would visit The Bosky during those hot August holidays.
They had two children, Benedick and Cordelia, known as Ben and Cord, who used to play with a strange girl called Madeleine, who came each summer with her repressive father to stay nearby. Mads keeps a diary the happenings at The Bosky which she keeps hidden under the floorboards of the porch and takes out each year.
The story is also told from Cord's point of view when she overhears a shocking secret, and distances herself from her family to pursue a career as an opera singer.
This is one of those really enjoyable clever mysteries, you want to read again to pick out all the clues. Fabulous!

A Richard and Judy Summer Read 2018.

Class by Jenny Colgan, writing as Jane Beaton - An up-to-date yet nostalgic, novel about boarding school life by the sea

What girl didn't like Enid Blyton's boarding school books: Malory Towers, The Twins at St Clare's, or The Naughtiest Girl in the School?

I loved them, and so did Jenny Colgan -  so much that she decided to write her own school series for grown-ups, set in the twenty-first century, not the Forties and Fifties, and telling the story of the teaching staff as well as the girls. The first ones were published a few years ago, by Jane Beaton, but nobody knew that she was really Jenny Colgan as they were quite different from her usual books. Now they've been republished with Jenny Colgan boldly on the cover for us all to enjoy!

Class: Welcome to the Little School by the Sea  is set at a fictional school in Cornwall with four towers. Sounds familiar? Enid Blyton based Malory Towers on Lulworth Castle in Dorset (Wikipedia).

The main characters are:

Maggie Adair, from Glasgow, who applies for a teaching post at Downey House School to get some experience of teaching girls who want to learn instead of the indifferent students at the local comprehensive, is amazed to get the job.

Dr Veronica Deveral, the headteacher, who needs to keep the school successful to ensure it receives certain funding, is being besieged by the inspectors, and on a more personal level has a secret that she's kept close to her heart for many years.

Felicity Prosser, known as Fliss, doesn't want to leave her friends in Guildford and follow in her elder sister's footsteps to Downey House, and sets out to do all she can to be sent home (a bit like Elizabeth Allen in The Naughtiest Girl in the School!).
Alice Trebizon-Woods, who befriends Fliss and sets out to lead her astray.
And Simone Pribetich, a scholarship girl, who is so proud to have a place at Downey House, but finds it so hard to fit in, no thanks to Alice and Fliss.
Add Stan, Maggie's devoted boyfriend back in Scotland and David McDonald, the handsome English master from the neighbouring boys' school (and his dog!), and you have a wonderful story of the ups and downs of life at Downey House.
If you're looking for an up-to-date, yet nostalgic, novel about boarding school life by the sea, this is the book for you!
And if you want to know what happens next, Rules: Things are Changing at the Little School by the Sea, is also out now, and there are four more to come. Now where's my torch so I can get reading under the bedclothes?!

For a Gripping Read, Try Bay of Secrets by Rosanna Ley

Bay of Secrets is Rosanna Ley's second novel, and the second that I've enjoyed in a bid to read them all this summer.
Known for her skill in intertwining place and story to make an epic multi-stranded romance, this one is set in Barcelona, The Canary Islands and England. This made me very pleased because I visited Barcelona in August and I love to have a book to read set in the place I'm staying!

However, the Barcelona that Sister Julia lived in at the time of the Spanish Civil War could not have been anything like the modern city of today, apart from the fact that the amazing towers of the Sagrada Familia would have stood there waiting for the church to be finished as they still do in 2015.

Sister Julia is one of the three main protagonists. Her parents could not afford to feed her, but wanting her to be safe during the war, forced her to join a convent against her wishes. Here she, unwittingly at first, helped Dr Lopez who fasified death certificates and handed babies over to parents to adopt for large sums of money. On finding out his treachery, she begins to keep a book recording the names of the mothers, their babies and who adopted them. Will she ever be able to help any of the children to find out who they really are?

In 2011, Ruby Rae's parents are killed in a motorcycle crash. Clearing out their house, she discovers a shoe box containing a photo of a hippy girl with a baby, love beads and a baby's bonnet and wonders what they could mean.

Meanwhile Andrés Marin, born in Fuerteventura in The Canary Islands, was also sent away by his father because he promised to be a better artist than him. He came to England and spent seventeen years in Dorset setting up a building business. He meets Ruby at an auction when they both bid for a dilapidated  seaside cottage. Will 'hate at first' sight turn into love for them?

Through the themes of adoption; being wanted or not being wanted by parents; art, and the colours of West Dorset and The Canary Isles, Rosanna paints gripping story. It's not an easy heartwarming read because of what the characters have to go through, but you can't help reading on to find out what happens to Ruby and Andrés, and what Sister Julia's little book of names has to do with their lives.