Coming Home to Brightwater Bay by Holly Hepburn

 

On paper, Merina Wilde has it all: a successful career writing the kind of romantic novels that make even the hardest hearts swoon, a perfect carousel of book launches and parties to keep her social life buzzing, and a childhood sweetheart who thinks she’s a goddess. But Merry has a secret: the magic has stopped flowing from her fingers. Try as she might, she can’t summon up the sparkle that makes her stories shine. And as her deadline whooshes by, her personal life falls apart too. Alex tells her he wants something other than the future she’d always imagined for them and Merry finds herself single for the first time since – well, ever.

Desperate to get her life back on track, Merry leaves London and escapes to the windswept Orkney Islands, locking herself away in a secluded clifftop cottage to try to heal her heart and rediscover her passion for writing. But can the beauty of the islands and the kindness of strangers help Merry to fool herself into believing in love again, if only long enough to finish her book? Or is it time for her to give up the career she’s always adored and find something new to set her soul alight?

The best thing about reading is that even when we are in lockdown we can discover so many new places we never even knew existed and that is exactly what happened when I got swept away in Holly Hepburn’s new release Coming Home to Brightwater Bay.

What makes this book even better is that our main character Merry is an author and Merry is struggling with writers block along with a breakdown of her relationship. An opportunity to escape everything and to attempt to find her love of writing and some inspiration arises with a Writer in Residence retreat to the Orkney Islands, but will the words flow and will she find more than she hoped in Brightwater Bay?

As much as I love reading I am also interested in the author journey, how they find inspiration for their novels, the research they take to make their stories come to life and the pressures of deadlines and writers block that the majority of authors face at some point and so this book was an absolute dream to read because we follow Merry through each of these points and I found it really insightful.

I was blown away by the animals and places the author introduces us to in this novel and I was completely shocked that I had never even heard of Skara Brae, I instantly found myself Googling the place just to check that it was real and it is now somewhere I am desperate to explore myself after lockdown. The way Holly Hepburn describes each place she visits made them so alluring, they were easy to visualise.

There is a love triangle (at one point a square!) that added to this already wonderful storyline and I never quite knew if Merry’s heart was going to be stolen by the steamy Magnus or the dependable sexy librarian Niall or if indeed romance would truly blossom at all and the suspense of this only added to my enjoyment of the storyline.

There is a wonderful community spirit bringing so many friendly characters together and they all helped Merry in one way or another during her stay.  Although the book was released in four parts I am pleased I waited to read the whole book as one as I don’t think I could have waited for each part to be released!

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