When a fresh start doesn’t go as expected

Synopsis

A new start…

When Danni Carter moves to Cornwall from London, she hopes it will be the fresh start she so desperately needs. She’s nervous, but hopefully the change of scene will help her to finally forget her feelings for Lucas Newman, a man she can never be with, because he’s already engaged to Danni’s best friend, Esther.

An Impossible Dilemma…

But when Lucas and Esther decide to follow Danni to Cornwall, and both announce they will be working with her at the new St Piran’s hospital, Danni is thrown into turmoil again. She can’t lose Esther, but being near Lucas is getting harder to deal with. Will she have to give up her new life before it’s even started?

A chance to start again?

Throwing herself into work, Danni finds herself drawn to new patient, Connie Berrycloth, a woman Danni knows has dark secrets of her own. Secrets that are about to be revealed….

As the two women form a friendship, Danni begins to realise that letting go of her dreams might be the only way of holding on to the people she loves.

My review

Danni Carter made the move from London to Cornwall for her own sake. She is deeply in love with Lucas Newman, but as he is engaged to her best friend Esther, Danni has decided to remove herself from that equation.
Danni is more than ready to make a fresh start and is happy with her new job at the St. Piran’s hospital. But then Esther and Lucas tell her their decision to make the move to Cornwall too…
With Lucas once again near, Danni finds it more and more difficult to keep her distance. But Esther’s friendship means the world to her.
To distract herself from Lucas, Danni throws herself into work, and finds a friend in new patient Connie Berrycloth, who may understand her struggles better than anyone else, as Connie herself has dark secrets…
But what will Danni do with her feelings? Because no matter what she decides to do, it will end in heartbreak one way or another.

When an author you love starts a new series, it’s always with a little fear that I start reading that book. Will the author manage to fulfill the extreme high expectations? Or will I finish the books with a feeling of disappointed?

Luckily for us, Jo Bartlett managed perfectly to even exceed my expectations and she never lost the magic that she created with the Cornish Midwives.

From the very start I pitied Danni. It’s difficult to be in love and it’s unrequited. But what when it seems that it is requited, but it’s an even bigger impossible love, as the person you love is in a relationship with your best friend?
Yet I admired her also, beside pitying her. Because she knows she cannot act upon her feelings, and makes the decision to move from London.
Danni could have been a selfish woman, and fight till she gets the man she desires. But that is not her modus operandi. Her friendship with Esther is more important to her than Lucas ever will be. And that gives you a perfect insight of who Danni truly is…

I found it terrible for her when she discovers that Esther and Lucas have decided to move to Cornwall too. Of course Danni is happy to have her best friend close again, but she herself made the move for a reason, and that reason just followed her all the way to Cornwall.

I didn’t know what outcome I was rooting for… did I want Danni to end up with Lucas, but where would that leave her with Esther? Or did I want Danni to give up on Lucas, and thus give up on love? I truly couldn’t decide, but I knew that I wanted Danni to see happy, because she deserves it as we can see in so many different aspects what a kind, gentle and loving person she is.

And it truly warmed my heart to see how she looks after Connie, a patient in the hospital. Somehow they feel they both are carrying a likewise burden, a secret they have been keeping for a long time.

My heart went also out to Connie (wow, I felt sorry for many people in this book 😀). And not only because of the terrifying accident she was in, but also for the choices she had to made in the past, and how she has been living with her secrets. And how she wants to make amends, even if she knows how difficult things can get.

What touched me the most in this book was the unselfishness of the main characters. They show us what loving someone (whether it’s your best friend, the person you are in love with, your family) truly means.
Because when you love someone you are willing to put your own happiness aside. But it also means to be the bearer of heartbreaking news, even knowing that you may have to pay the price for it.

While there is a lot to do about Danni’s and Connie’s love interest and their secrets, for me it felt like this was a wonderful, heartfelt, warm story about love in all its aspects. We see what real friendship means, we see how we are ready to make sacrifices for the people we love. And we see that even when we think to have found our match, if it’s the Real Thing, Love finds a way to make it work. And if it doesn’t work, there is a reason for it…

This was again a marvelous story, that I truly enjoyed reading. I loved each character (with the exception of one..) and I absolutely had a blast with Gwen! 😀