So after a week in France on holiday I have managed to get another book down to blog about! I hoped that once the summer holidays kicked in I would be able to get my head in a few more books – and then we decided to buy a house, instruct rather inept solicitors who were like grumpy teenagers and then move into said house. As such, I have not been able to read as I hoped. However this will now change as we are moved in, as unpacked as we need to be for the near future and it’s time to actually stop for a little while. I was excited to write this blog today and thought I would do it while my son was asleep. And indeed I am – though he decided that 5:15am was an appropriate time to wake up which is pretty out of character for the dude. So it is with a can of Tesco bootleg Red Bull I am writing this and have had to make a few more notes than usual to help me along!
With it being a summer holiday in the beautiful sunshine of Normandy what else could I have been reading than a book by the wonderful Jenny Colgan. This is a follow up novel to The Summer Seaside Kitchen, which I read by the pool in Menorca last year, and follows the story of Flora who moved back to a remote island in Scotland called Mure. Back then she was a paralegal who was sent to deal with a case back at the home she had tried to run away from to the bright lights of London and ended up staying and opening her own Seaside Kitchen with the help of her late mother’s recipe book. Flora’s emotionally distant yet ravishingly attractive boss Joel followed her there; finding peace in the tranquillity of the island and its people. Mure is fictional, more’s the shame in all honesty, but represents many of the windswept and untouched places that exist in the far reaches of the north. I loved reading the book last year so was really excited that a sequel had been written. Flora always made me imagine someone like Merida from Brave – all pale skin and a mass of hair. A strong positive character I could get behind.
This time Flora and Joel have set up home on the island. Joel is being kept busy and working all hours for Colton, a rich businessman who was the reason they all ended up back there in the first book and has also entered a relationship with Flora’s brother Fintan, leading Flora to be left alone for long stretches and never quite knowing where she stands with enigmatic lawyer. Following a disastrous surprise visit to see Joel in New York, Flora decides to focus on her business and catering in Mure – managing two weddings in the very small and contained community but hey this is fiction – and try to move on from feeling rejected and lonely in her relationship.
What Colgan does well is creating a community in her novels. These small and tightly knit yet very welcoming places sound like the kind of town I want to go to. Mure sounds windswept and interesting and as beautiful a place as she has created in others I have read such as The Beach Street Bakery or The Little Shop of Happy Every After. The people all look out for and help each other, they know when something is wrong and do their best to put it right. I can’t imagine living in a place like that and I don’t know if that makes me feel just that little bit sadder. One character, Saif, who arrived in a short novel written between the two Seaside Kitchen novels, has arrived as a refugee and is the local doctor as forms part of his conditions for staying. He is seen as something a little strange but by the same token completely accepted into the community. Saif’s story throughout this book is both heart warming and wrenching at the same time. He has been waiting to hear if his children had been found and the wonderful news of when they have been is tarnished by the fact they have both clearly been through serious difficulties. One of the boys becomes very clingy and the other emotionally distant and physically aggressive. The story is well written and sensitively done and you find yourself rooting for Saif more and more as the story progresses. The way the community works together gives you that little bit of hope in humanity and hope that somewhere like this something like this can actually happen.
Flora and Joel are a little more frustrating – you can find yourself getting irritated at Joel’s lack of communication and lack of care at times but the same also goes for Flora who seems to be that little bit too needy at others. He seems to view her as some sort of mythical figure, a Selkie as explained in the book a few times, but this can get quite tedious to read about – Flora is often made out to be some sort of nymph that comes in and helps out in certain times and it just comes off as cheesy in places. When you learn Joel’s reasons for being this way it becomes a little more understandable but I didn’t find the payoff that satisfying – and indeed if Colgan decides not to write a further novel in this set I will feel a little frustrated with it.
There are lighter moments in the book- Flora’s arch nemesis and her marriage to Charlie who Flora turned down in the previous novel is quite amusing – and Fintan and Colton’s blossoming relationship is lovely to read. It is tinged with darker moments as Colton is the reason Joel is away so much and being worked so hard; the impact of this on Joel and his demons is quite shocking to read about at times. However a lot of the story is about the intertwined relationships between all the characters in this community rather than a focus on the businesses being run or the personal issues of the lead character. A little different to the others I have read and tinged with a lot more sadness as well.
I can’t decide fully how I feel about this one. I don’t think it’s the strongest or the most memorable one I have read. I did enjoy it but it wasn’t the light warm hug I was looking for in a Colgan. Maybe that’s what my problem is – it was a little too serious and shocking at times and for all this to happen in the tiny community of Mure was maybe just too much for me to take seriously. It will be passed on with positivity but won’t be remembered quite as fondly as others.