After the tragic loss of his wife, Helen, Luke Hansard is desperate to keep her memory alive. In an effort to stay close to her, he reaches out to an online friend Helen often mentioned: a reclusive photographer with a curious interest in beautiful but broken objects. But first he must find her-and she doesn't want to be found.
Orla Kendrick lives alone in the ruins of a remote Suffolk castle, hiding from the haunting past that has left her physically and emotionally scarred. In her fortress, she can keep a safe distance from prying eyes, surrounded by her broken treasures and insulated from the world outside.
When Luke tracks Orla down, he is determined to help her in the way Helen wanted to: by encouraging her out of her isolation and back into the world. But Orla has never seen her refuge as a prison and, when painful secrets and dangerous threats begin to resurface, Luke's good deed is turned on its head.
As they work through their grief for Helen in very different ways, will these two broken souls be able to heal?
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'Of course it needs a bit of work, the estate agent said. IN THE BEGINNING
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(Lake Union Publishing, 9 June 2020, ebook, 314 pages, borrowed from @AmazonKindle, #PrimeReading)
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This is a new author for me. I've wanted to read her work for a while as I've seen her books promoted a lot on Amazon and they always sound very enjoyable. I thought this was a great book and I looked forward to reading more of the author's work. The book opens with tragedy and there is loss and sadness throughout but a lot of love as well. Luke and Orla are great characters, they really come to life and I loved reading about how they start to heal each other. Luke is so concerned with helping Orla get out of her castle and face her fears that he pushes his own grief aside until Orla and the friends he's made gently remind him it's okay to feel grief. I fell in love with this book.
