Thank you to Beauty and Lace and Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage by Samantha Tonge.
This book has a wonderful central character, Lizzie. It is a story of family secrets, courage to be your own person, healing, and of course romance!
Lizzie is following her dream, she is a tattoo artist and happy in a relationship with Ash. She has achieved independence and wanted to show her parents her success.
Her Aunt Fiona arrives with shattering news. Lizzie’s parents have been killed in an accident. Realisation dawns on Lizzie that she has left it too late to reach out and reconcile with them. They had not spoken for 5 years, ever since the incident on her mother’s 60th Birthday.
Lizzie’s parents had acquired several properties and they are left to Lizzie. But there is another property that has been kept a secret from Lizzie. Streamside Cottage in Leafton, a small country village. Lizzie accidentally overhears that this cottage has been left to her Aunt Fiona and that she does not want anything to do with it.
One year later, her relationship with Ash is over and there are so many unexplained and unanswered questions about her parents. Lizzie decides to visit Streamside Cottage.
The locals believe the cottage to be haunted, but Lizzie feels at peace there.
She reflects on her happy childhood, her very overprotective parents and her estrangement from them. As she researches the history of the cottage, family secrets are exposed.
It is a lovely story with a surprise ending and the family secrets draw you in. It is an easy to read story, with the chapters switching from the past to the present. Uniquely, each chapter starts with a tattoo fact, adding another dimension to the book.
An excellent read. I hope there will be a sequel!
ISBN: 9781800241671
A selection of our club members are reading Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage by Samantha Tonge. You can read their reviews below, or add your own.
I love to read, any book on any topic. I now love ebooks as they are easier to store, I was running out of bookshelves! My other interests are family, gardening and our beautiful King Charles spaniel dog who is my reading companion.
I really enjoyed Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage. Thank you for giving me the chance to read it.
Lizzie is a great character as she grows from a very protective childhood to a strong adult. It’s wonderful to see her journey and to find out the family secret in the end. I was glad she reunited with Ben, her childhood playmate.
I recommend this book for an easy read.
Thank-you Beauty & Lace for giving me the chance to read & review ‘Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage’ by Samantha Tonge.
This book centres around the main character Lizzie an upcoming tattoo artist creating her own way of life, following her dreams and falling in love. However, there is a lost part of her life with Lizzie no longer having contact with her parents for the past 5 years. News of her parents’ accidental deaths rocks Lizzie’s world with many secrets left unanswered and her relationship also fails.
Lizzie decides to find out more about her parents and the secrets they kept by going to stay at Streamside Cottage which her parents once owned but never told her about. Strange as the cottage gives Lizzie the sense of peace that she has been missing. Over time secrets are revealed and hearts begin to mend, clearing the way to what looks like a promising future.
A great character read, with a twist at the end which explains so much of what went before. Thank-you ‘Beauty & Lace Bookclub’ for the opportunity to read ‘Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage’ by Samantha Tonge.
Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage but Samantha Tonge
Lizzie is a talented and successful tattoo artist living and working in London.
Everything is going well for her until she hears the news that both of her estranged parents haved died in a terrible accident.
Things start to unravel in her life and when she finds out her parents owned a cottage in a small town she decides to visit and see if she can find the reasons behind all of her parents secrets.
While staying in the cottage and meeting the people in the town Lizzie starts to uncover details of her life that had been kept from her.
I really liked the tattoo facts that are at the start of each chapter.
This is a very enjoyable book with unexpected twists that the cover did not suggest. I was expecting a Summer romance type of story but this book has so much more than that.
Thanks to Beauty and Lace for the chance to read this book.
Thank you Beauty and Lace for the opportunity to read Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage.
I loved Lizzie’s and all of the characters in this story, it was a heartwarming and enjoyable book.
Thank you to Beauty and Lace and Head of Zeus for this book. I absolutely loved it and the mystery with a fair few twists and turns kept me turning pages long after I should have been asleep. I also learnt a lot about the tattoo industry which I found very interesting.
The characters were so well written as were the descriptions of the world Lizzie lived in. I would definitely recommend this book but be warned, once you start reading it, you won’t be able to put it down!