Sandybridge is a British seaside town with everything you would expect it to have. It is definitely a place for tourists to come and visit but for Grace it is somewhere she wants to escape from.
Why when there is a whole world out there would you want to spend your life in one place. Grace is itching for adventure and to spread her wings. She is not going to get it helping her parents in their antique shop and she can’t understand why her new friend Charlie would want to settle in Sandybridge.
Help comes from an unexpected quarter for Grace and although she does escape Sandybridge there seems to be more than one thing keep bringing her back there.
It is either her parent, her dog, her best friend Charlie, her first crush Danny and even her love of history seems to still all centre around Sandybridge. Perhaps everything is really under your nose and GRace has to go away to find out it was there all the time.
With the help of Grace’s quirky acquaintance Remy, we watch as an awkward fifteen year old branches out, finds herself and others and discovers the world in very different terms to what she imagined. The book switches between Grace early years in the Eighties, which made me rather reminiscent of the eighties which I grew up in to various important periods in her life.
There is a lot packed into this book upon reflection and it is not just full of teenage angst but the sort you get as an adult when you question the paths you take and the people you come across in your life.
A light read with a magical element or two which gave it a bit more substance than perhaps you were first expecting when you pick up the novel. This author is certainly progressing when it comes to her writing, as I have enjoyed this and her last novel much more than her first.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.
Letters from Lighthouse Cottage is out now.
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