“Love isn’t about owning someone, love is about guiding them to a place where they can discover who they are, not who you want them to be.“

An emotional tale about an innocent Irish girl who can’t wait to leave home and grow up. When she gets a chance, it’ll lead her on a courageous journey in the perils of war. She’ll come full circle, realizing that there’s nowhere quite like home.

When Rose Brown gets a chance to leave her little cottage in Cross Lane, Ballykillen and head to Cork in 1937 as a chambermaid in the Savages Hotel, she jumps at the chance. She knows she has to leave her widowed mom and three younger sisters, but her family needs the money and Rose needs to taste freedom.

She would one day look back and smile at the time she walked into a hotel room, intending to clean it and discovering that it wasn’t vacated. It was the day that changed the rest of her life. The occupant, David Townsend, was still in bed; awake, and reading Agatha Christie! A friendship is formed and before long he’s arranged for her to come to London to be a nanny for his expectant wife, Alice, and their 9-year-old boy, Raphael. It’s a wonderful fit as Alice needs Rose as much as Rose needs Alice.

When war breaks out and the ship she’s on with Alice and the children is hit by a torpedo, Rose is faced with an impossible decision. This innocent young girl finds herself stepping up to fill someone else’s shoes and, in the process, finds everything her heart desires.

I fell in love with every single character! The leprechaun in me loved the references to scrumping apples, the usage of ‘desperate.’ I could almost hear the Irish lilt in Taylor’s prose! The bibliophile in me loved the many bookish references.

“When we were children and we’d hurt ourselves, Mummy always said, ‘there is no point covering it up, you have to let the air get at it,‘ but that was what I had been doing. I had been covering up my grief with a bit of plaster, instead of letting it heal in Gold’s own good time.”

Known for her tales about showing kindness above all else, this one was influenced by her family heritage. Taylor’s family is from a little town on the banks of the Blackwater River in the South of Ireland. When she was 7, she stayed with a relative in a little cottage and admits it broke her heart to leave. I think the memories of this vacation in such a special place are woven into this book. I think you’ll agree that such an emotionally raw story can only be written by someone who has left a little piece of their heart behind in such a special place.

Publishes July 30, 2021.

I was gifted this advance copy by Sandy Taylor, Bookouture and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.