The Summer Fair by Heidi Swain

 

Beth loves her job working in a care home, looking after its elderly residents, but she doesn’t love the cramped and dirty house-share she currently lives in. So, when she gets the opportunity to move to Nightingale Square, sharing a house with the lovely Eli, she jumps at the chance.
 
The community at Nightingale Square welcomes Beth with open arms, and when she needs help to organise a fundraiser for the care home they rally round. Then she discovers The Arches, a local creative arts centre, has closed and the venture to replace it needs their help too – but this opens old wounds and past secrets for Beth.
 
Music was always an important part of her life, but now she has closed the door on all that. Will her friends at the care home and the people of Nightingale Square help her find a way to learn to love it once more…?

Time to start a new book and I was desperate for something uplifting, a hug through the pages and one author I know I can always rely on to deliver this is Heidi Swain so The Summer Fair was an easy choice to make.

We are welcomed back to Nightingale Square with open arms by the friendly and supportive community and what a treat it was to see how our much loved characters are doing and that they are still working tirelessly to bring more help and opportunities for everyone.

We have a few new faces this time around not least with our main character Beth who is clear to see early on that with a pure heart of gold and her natural longing to be able to help others that she was going to fit right into the heart of the community but she also has her own troubles that she has struggled so hard to bury but as she moves into her new home with a gorgeous live in tenant and starts her new job role her troubles begin to bubble to the surface.

Pete and Elijah are both loveable gentlemen, Pete was like a big friendly bear who everyone needs as a friend he hasn’t been treated well by those he held dear and yet he was so forgiving. The inclusion of that care home residents brought an unexpected cheeky humour to the book which I loved and I hope these folk will pop up in future Nightingale Square books.

There is an exceptionally quick developing romance that wasn’t without its bumps along the way and although this relationship was really predictable , the hopeless romantic in me still enjoyed watching their relationship blossom.

The storyline explores the effects that grief and heartbreak has on our paths and passions often sending us on a different path to the one we wanted and it also shows that sometimes wrongs are really worth trying to make right.

This book certainly didn’t disappoint and I got everything I was hoping for and more. Heidi Swain has pulled another beauty out of the bag and I am still not ready to leave Nightingale Square and its residents behind.

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