When you escape to an island for a fresh start

Synopsis

Welcome to Bramble Island! Find breezy, sunshine-filled days, shaded woodlands, glittering sea and a summer of love…

Maggie Cassidy is the new park manager of Bramble Island in Dorset. A job on an island where she is the only year-round inhabitant is the perfect fresh start for her. But when she’s torn between the job she came to do and the island she has grown to love, can she hang on to her perfect new life without compromising her dreams?

Charlie Mackenzie is the forester on Bramble Island. He is a loner full of secrets, burnt out by the life he left behind in San Francisco. When his past catches up with him can he finally face what he has spent three years running from without jeopardising everything that healed him?

Bramble Island lulls them both into an idyllic existence but when the outside world bangs on their door, is history about to repeat itself for both of them?

My review

After making a terrible judgement and mistake, Maggie Cassidy is happy to be the new park manager of Bramble Island in Dorset. As she is going to be the only real inhabitant of the island, it’s the perfect place for her to make a fresh start.
Together with volunteers she wants to treasure the island she has fallen in love with, but also trying to find the perfect solution for the job she was hired to do.
Caring of the island means that she has to work with forester Charlie Mackenzie, who isn’t keen on being social and prefers to keep his solitude after he got burnt by the way he was living his life in San Francisco.
But the more time Maggie and Charlie spend together, the more feelings start to surface, at a high speeds. However, with Maggie’s secrets and Charlie’s past resurfacing, can they hold on to the wonderful, exclusive feeling they have on Bramble Island? Or have they not learned from their past? 

Living on an island always seems something magical and wonderful. However, the practical person in my immediately would start think about all the logistics and even about improbable issues that could (but obviously won’t) arise. 

But of course, Bramble Island isn’t such a remote island, where you have to search your own food, go on a hunting spree etc.
Of course Maggie will not be in the middle of nowhere and will have everything available, only it will take a trip with the ferry or boat to achieve them. 

I could completely comprehend how Maggie fell in love with the place, because I would have fallen in love too!
There is so much peace, you can feel one with the nature and you are just in awe of Mother Nature!

I also understood why Maggie needed this job, living on an island for a year. She made some mistakes that burnt some bridges and she feels even ashamed of her actions. She needs a place to start over, and Bramble Island is perfect for her. We also see her passion for nature, what she already had, but we see also her respect for nature grown, trying to find the perfect solution for the task she has been hired for.
it was good to see how Maggie opens up more, not only towards the volunteers but also opens her heart little by little for Charlie. 

Charlie, who literally ran away from a good life in San Francisco, but has also cost him a lot… When I first met Charlie, he was a grumpy, closed man, just wanting to do his job and a wish to be left alone. But meeting Maggie was the medicine for him to actually feel again. 

The pace the feelings grew between the characters was maybe for me a bit too hasted, but I can also put the blame on the Island, that does its thing. And furthermore, when you know, does it truly matter how quickly feelings grow? 

However, growing feelings and admitting them, isn’t the end of the story, so when I thought I had reached the end, I was surprised that still had many chapters to read!
And then so many things happened at the same time, it had me truly left a bit shocked! Both Maggie’s and Charlie’s past suddenly resurface, and not all with good intentions.
And I felt a little bit sad to see how the old habits would seem to gain again power over our main characters… 

Seeing how Maggie and Charlie are trying but also failing to find the perfect compromise made me feel sorry, because they both worked so hard to get where they were.
And those not so loveable chapters took too much place in the whole scheme for a sucker for a happy end like me. 

I found this a beautiful story about how people can try to escape their past, find a wonderful place to heal their wounds, find the unexpected. But it was also about redemption and facing your past. And facing your past can also mean rebuild bridges you thought were impossible to rebuild. Plus, realizing what you have lost, but most important, what you have gained and become.