When in need, real feelings surface…

Synopsis

Welcome to Pepper Bay, where you’ll find love, drama, and a happily ever after.

Snuggle down with this cosy, feel-good, comfort read that whisks you away to a beautiful bay on the Isle of Wight – Perfect for fans of Christie Barlow, Alison Sherlock, Rachael Lucas, and Holly Martin.

The Pepper Bay books are standalone stories that intertwine with recurring characters. Best enjoyed when read in order.

The Gatehouse Café: Vivien leads a double life. A happy one the world sees, and a miserable one that’s hidden away. Nobody knows what goes on in her home once she has closed up the café for the day. She doesn’t think anyone will believe that her partner is a horrible person, especially as he is a policeman.

Finn has been secretly in love with Vivien since he was a teenager, but she’s only ever viewed him as a friend. When he discovers she’s in trouble at home, he does everything in his power to help set her free, because even if she never falls in love with him, she’s still his best friend, and she needs help.

My review

Vivien loves running her Gatehouse Café in Pepper Bay. But while outside everyone thinks that Vivien is a happy woman, it’s once the café has closed for the day that her nightmare begins. Because nobody knows that Vivien is living together with an abusive partner. And if she would ever put it in the open, who would possibly believe her, as her partner is a member of the forces as a policeman.
But when things have gone too far, and Vivien has had and taken enough, she can count on her best friend Finn to be there for her. But what Vivien doesn’t know, is that Finn has been in love with his best friend for years…
And Finn would do anything for her, even if his feelings would never be reciprocated, because that’s the kind of man Finn is, the helping friend always in your corner, even when the world seems a dark place and Vivien may never overcome the fear her partner induced…

What an absolute delight it was to return to Pepper Bay. With each new story I fall more and more in love with the place, and my love for it was already a big one!
Yet this was perhaps also the most heartbreaking one of the series?

Because right from the start we learn that lovely Vivien, despite her façade, is living a real nightmare with her partner…
It makes me wonder and just not understand how someone can voluntary hurt the person they claim to love…
And it made me understand how well the victims are hiding the terror they are living in, and how much they can endure. It may seem a strange thing to say, but in Vivien’s pain there was also a lot of strength in it.
It truly broke my heart to see Vivien, a woman who deserves to be worshipped is treated by her partner. And it make a terrible situation even worse, the author added an extra terrible layer by making the abuser a policeman, the exact kind of person that should protect people.

The abuse itself was luckily not that graphic, giving my poor heart at least one less thing to worry about. Yet that didn’t take away that I could feel Viv’s pain anyway.

Despite everything, I was happy that Viv could always rely on her best friend Finn, no matter how much she even tried to push him away, for his and her own sake…
Finn is perhaps the kind of person that seems too good to be true… he is just everything I could possibly dream about for my own Prince Charming.

It’s clear, even without reading about his thoughts, that he is truly in love with Viv. But as she is in a relationship, he ‘settles’ with just being friends. It’s enough for him to have Viv in his life, even just as a friend, than not having Viv in his life at all.
And when he learns about the hell Viv has been living in, I just literally swooned! He steps up as the perfect man, he gives Viv everything she needs, a home to stay in, all the possible help she may need, a shoulder to cry on but also he shows her that not everyone is like that scumbag and that there are good people that love her.

So while Viv’s background is a terrifying one, something I don’t wish to anyone, this story is not about escaping an abusive relationship. But it’s about finding the right person for you, finding the person that restores your trust in mankind again. And while this marvellous author did let Finn go through something terrible too, as obviously things don’t go as straightforward as we readers want to, what people are looking for, can be found easily closer than they thought. But some people are just a bit slower on catching up with this fact!

I absolutely devoured this book, is it really already the 11th part of the series??? I cannot just believe how much joy this series brings me! K.T. Dady once again showed what love truly means, what love makes you do, and especially what love isn’t.
But we also see that love is strength, courage and most important of all, the most beautiful thing in the world!