To Love and Be Loved

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Merrin led a simple, quiet life that made her very happy. She needed nothing more than to be near her family, to walk barefoot in the grass and to have the sea breeze tousle her long hair.

My experience of Amanda Prowse's novels, gained over the past few years, had me eagerly anticipating this book. It's replete with family drama and romantic disappointments, but the basic underpinning is a deep-seated love for the small seaside town with its natural beauty and tight community where lead character Merrin finds her strength and soul satisfaction. In the end, life does go on with some happy resolution for a number of key characters, including Merrin. We follow Merrin's life journey as her future is ripped apart and she flees her home to try and make a life elsewhere. But, as we all know, the problem with running away is that we take along the problems that are in our hearts and our heads. And at some point, we just have to turn around and deal with them. The ending made me feel so many things. I would have thought there were other ways Merrin could have ended in better but do I know more? I don't think so. And then came what would be one of the most important moments of her life: the wedding day. She would remember every detail, no matter how insignificant. Moments that would forever mark her life, but for very different reasons than she thought.Amanda Prowse is an international bestselling author of twenty-eight novels published in dozens of languages. Her chart-topping titles What Have I Done?, Perfect Daughter, My Husband’s Wife, The Coordinates of Loss, The Girl in the Corner and The Things I Know have sold millions of copies around the world. Where do I start? Merrin is a beautiful character, full of hope, romance and life. It broke my heart to read how she crumbled, along with all her dreams, on that fateful day.

We love our passions. Mihalyi Csikszentmihaly published his first book about the state of “flow,” a full engagement in an activity in which passion becomes its own motivator, in 1975. A flood of validating research followed. Our dedication to an activity that we love brings countless benefits that align with those of other sorts of love.From a trusted advisor and devoted friend of Mother Teresa comes a “powerful” ( The Washington Free Beacon) firsthand account of the miraculous woman behind the saint and a book that is “rich in reflection on contemporary sanctity” (George Weigel).

Amanda Prowse sets this novel in a fishing village in Cornwall, and a market town close to Bristol. The fishing families are close knit, with the novel concentrating on two of these families, the Kellows and the Cardys who live in fishing cottages, and the Mortimers who are a wealthy biscuit factory family who live in a Palladian Clifton home. With its size, gardens, employment of staff and education of the son of the house, the Mortimers are established as different from the village people who are largely fishers, and shopkeepers. I find the character development so well done. This is one of those stories that would make the reader think about their lives and make them want to leave the toxic things, including toxic people and relationship, out of their lives and start living again amidst heartbreak and fears. This is the story of Merrin, a girl like you & me..a girl next door 🚪..I related to her at so many aspects.. Much of the remainder of the book is spent with our h living in a city 3 hours away, working at a castle-cum-luxury hotel, missing her Cornish home terribly, but continuing to stay away because of the gossip and the guilt of putting her family through the fiasco that was(n't) her wedding. She misses her Gran's funeral because she just *can't* stomach the possibility of seeing Digby or his mother. Insert eyeroll.Merrin Mercy Kellow is the main character in this book, but there are some fab other characters too. Merrin’s sister Ruby, her best friend Bella, her first boyfriend Jarvis and also her parents. They live in Cornwall and having spent a lot of lovely holidays there I really enjoyed the setting. Amanda is so descriptive that you can imagine looking out to sea and feeling the sand between your toes.