I'm not the greatest fan of romantic fiction - though it could probably be argued that my favourite 19th century novels are just that! Anyway, despite the fact it's a genre I don't often buy, I've made an exception for A Secret Cornish Summer, by Phillipa Ashley, because she's a friend, as well as being an award-winning novelist and Sunday Times bestseller, and I always enjoy her work. Besides, there's nothing to say I can't like light-hearted love stories in addition to classics and 'serious' books.
A Secret Cornish Summer is the perfect feel-good book for a hot summer's day, when you're feeling too lazy to do anything, and don't want to to think too deeply, or to worry about the awful things happening in the world. It's set in Cornwall, and features a heroine who lives in an old lighthouse keeper's cottage, and runs a cafe (with home-made cakes) and a coffee roasting business. Eden is feisty, funny, intelligent, caring and hard-working, and is slowly rebuilding her life following divorce from a man who spent all their money, planned to marry another woman whilst still married to her - and ended up being jailed for fraud. Now she has received a letter from Simon saying he is out of prison, but has an incurable disease, and wants to meet her to put the past to rights. Eden suspects this is one of his manipulative lies, and is determined she will have nothing more to do with him.
Understandably, she is wary when tanned, blond Levan moves in next door. Their first meeting is not auspicious - he standing on his head in the garden wearing nothing but a pair of orange Speedos (doing yoga in the garden in his pants, as Granny Iris says). They are obviously attracted to each other, but Levan has a secret past, and is as cautious of Eden as she is of him. Phillipa is very good at creating dramatic tension between her characters, especially when it involves a couple who are obviously destined to be together (even if they don't realise it yet), and this book is no exception. The 'will they, won't they' story line moves along at a good pace as Eden and Levan encounter various obstacles - the path of true love never runs smoothly in a romantic novel! And things get more complicated when evil Simon reappears..
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Cottages on the mainland at Mayon, where families of the keepers from the Longships Lighthouse made their homes. Did Eden and Levan live somewhere like this? (Pic: Rob Allday, Wikipedia)
I won't reveal more of the plot than that (you'll have to read the book if you want to know), but I will say there is a happy ending - I do love a happy ending! There are some nicely drawn characters: Eden's mother Sally, her granny Iris, her glamorous best friend Morwenna, Sardine the cat, and a host of others. There is a fascinating account of the way coffee beans are roasted, and mouth-watering descriptions of bakes and bakes. And the setting is spectacular with an isolated cluster of cottages by a lighthouse on a headland in the far west of Cornwall. Eden's father and grandfather were both lighthouse keepers, and her mother and grandmother had hard, lonely, worrying lives when the men were working on lighthouses out at sea. Eden was brought up in the cottage where she now lives after her father was posted to the lighthouse on the cliff, and the family bought the property after the light was automated. There is a wonderful chapter where Eden takes Levan inside to see the equipment, and they climb the spiral staircase in the tower to look at the light and admire the view, looking across the sea to the Wolf Rock and Longships lighthouses, both of which really do exist, unlike Hartstone in Phillipa's novel. I know she carries out a lot of research, so the details and history are absolutely spot-on, but presented in such a natural way you don't know you're learning something new. There's a theme of secrecy which runs through the novel. In it (and, maybe, in real life as well) Lands End is the hub of a global telecommunications network, and Levan is a cyber security expert, working from a hidden HQ. "The fact that Cornwall had secrets hidden beneath its granite, concealed in ramshackle sheds and beneath its azure waters, was lost on the sunbathers," writes Phillipa. "They lay on the golden sans, oblivious to the priceless information passing beneath their feet - all those trillion-dollar deals whizzing across the Atlantic in a tiny fraction of a second. All those shadowy transactions that could be so easily intercepted if anyone wanted to." Levan has to make sure that none of those messages fall into the hands of the wrong people and, occasionally, to ascertain some messages are intercepted by the right people. It's a hidden world, and I liked the way secrets in the landscape reflect secrets in people's lives - even Granny Iris has something in her past she chooses not to reveal.
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