The Island Escape - Kerry Fisher

Synopsis:

Octavia Shelton thought she’d have a different life. One where she travelled the world with an exotic husband and free-spirited children in tow.

Instead she’s married to safe, reliable Jonathan, and her life now consists of packed lunches, school runs and mountains of dirty washing. She’s not unhappy. It’s just that she can barely recognise herself.

So as Octavia watches her best friend’s marriage break up, it gets her thinking. What if life could be different? What if she could escape and rediscover the person she used to be? Escape back to the island she visited years ago? And what if the man she used to love was there waiting for her?

What did I think?

What an amazing story!  I thought I was picking up a summer/beach read but this has to have the best opening page to a romance-style novel EVER!!  I thought I was reading the wrong book, so bravo Kerry Fisher!

Octavia and Roberta are best friends who have married unsuitable men.  Octavia's husband, Jonathan, is anal and pernickety whilst Roberta's husband, Scott, is a controlling selfish bully.  The story is therefore two-fold with Roberta and Octavia being the subject of alternative chapters.

Roberta, not surprisingly, leaves Scott and has to adjust to single life and find somewhere to live with their teenage daughter, Alicia. Roberta eventually dabbles her toe in the shark-infested waters of internet dating and meets the lovely Jake.  Of course Scott is still hanging around in the wings like a pantomime villain trying to spoil her Happy Ever After.

Octavia's marriage has clearly gone stale, although she has three beautiful children.  Jonathan loses his job but eventually gets offered a position in Sardinia.  He is reluctant for Octavia to visit him (we can guess why, the snake!) but she eventually does.  As Jonathan has no spare time to spend with her she takes the ferry over to Corsica where she revisits the haunts of her teenage travels and the homeland of her first love, Xavi.  Will fate intervene and bring them together again?

Do not mistake this for a no-brainer chick-lit book.  This is an engaging story of two best friends and their quest for happiness, with a sprinkling of humour along the way.  It is beautifully written, it made me laugh and almost made me cry, especially with the line "maybe hands were like memory foam mattresses, carrying the imprint of people they've loved forever."  Food for thought, indeed.

If you think I've overdone the exclamation marks, go read the book yourself - you won't be disappointed!!!

I received this e-book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Buy with free delivery from the Book Depository

Buy from Amazon

The Book of Lost and Found - Lucy Foley

Wow!  I loved it - this should be made into a film, although obviously with a slight change of title.

The book starts in the 1920's with Tom and Alice meeting several years after they met as children. It then jumps to the 1980's to Kate, an aspiring photographer and daughter of a famous prima ballerina.  Kate's Mum, Julie Darling, was adopted by a lady named Evie and it is Evie who gives Kate a letter claiming to be from Julie's biological mother, Celia.  The letter also contains a drawing...

It is this drawing that sends Kate to Thomas Stafford, a famous painter, who now lives in Corsica.  The descriptions of Corsica are so vivid, I could almost feel the sun on my face and hear the gentle lapping of the waves against the shore.  Thomas, through flashbacks, talks to Kate about his history with Alice which leads her on to a meeting with her biological Grandmother, Celia, in New York.

The book swaps effortlessly between the past and the present, describing a love story between Tom and Alice and even giving Kate a love story of her own as she searches for her Grandmother.  It is set in London, Paris, New York and Corsica, each one so descriptive that you feel like you are there, and spanning the period from the 1920's to the present day.

It's a brilliant book - I look forward to more from this author and will be adding this to my recommended list.

Check it out and buy from The Book Depository