Stevie‘s review of Now and Then Friends (Hartley-by-the-Sea, Book 2) by Kate Hewitt
Contemporary Women’s Fiction published by NAL 12 Jul 16
This series got off to a great start with a tale of sisters reconnecting in a small Lake District village, and we return to the village for a tale of childhood friends who have been estranged since their pre-teen years and whose lives have followed very different paths, until the outwardly more successful of the two suffers a series of setbacks and returns to her family home in order to reassess her situation.
Claire West grew up in Hartley-by-the-Sea and attended the village primary school, where she was befriended on her first day by Rachel Campbell. The two were inseparable until their final year before secondary school when Claire found herself surrounded by girls destined to move on to the same private school, while Rachel – whose family always struggled to make ends meet, and so would be attending the local state school – felt pushed out. The girls’ estrangement was cemented when Rachel was barred from Claire’s birthday party by other members of the Campbell family. Now, Rachel cleans the Campbell family home as part of her cleaning business while Claire’s parents live mostly in London and Claire and her brother have apparently successful jobs abroad.
Unknown to Rachel, however, Claire is struggling in both her professional and her personal life. After embarrassing her fiancé at a party, she has been checked into rehab, from where she runs home to the place she always felt least pressurised to live up to her parents’ high expectations.
Unlike Claire, who finished university with an undistinguished Third in art history, Rachel completed only two weeks of her first year studying chemistry at Durham before family problems forced her to return home and take care of her mother and younger sisters after their father walked out. Rachel is sometimes exasperated by the way the older of her sisters does less than she could to help, and pushes her younger sister towards the degree she herself never managed to study for.
When Claire returns, Rachel at first lets her childhood resentment get in the way of accepting either that Claire wants to help – or that Claire has issues of her own, including an invisible disability, which she has covered up since childhood. Eventually, however, the two find ways to resolve their issues with each other, and with their families – and also tentatively develop relationships with a pair of slightly unlikely heroes.
I liked this book, which also allowed us glimpses of the heroines of the previous book – although I’d have liked to see more of how their relationships with each other and with the men in their lives has progressed since the first book. I also appreciated seeing another heroine with hearing loss, as well as one who has to juggle being both the main breadwinner and the main carer for her family. I did have one small niggle though, relating to a fairly minor plot point. I can accept handwavium for the ease with which Claire is able to obtain a repeat prescription for her mother out of hours and well ahead of when it was due (though I’d be surprised if an emergency doctor would sign off on the drugs in question with as little suspicion over their loss as Claire seemed to have). However, even assuming that Claire’s mother didn’t qualify for free prescriptions on account of her disability, and hadn’t bought a prescription prepayment card, the cost to Claire would still have been around a tenner and not the two hundred quid the author uses to emphasise Rachel’s financial straits.
Rant over, I’m greatly looking forward to the next book in the series and another trip to Hartley-by-the-Sea, in order to meet more of its residents.
Grade: B
Summary:
Childhood best friends Rachel Campbell and Claire West have not only grown up, but after fifteen years, they’ve also grown apart…
After her father left, Rachel had to dedicate her life to managing her household: her two younger sisters, her disabled mother, and her three-year-old nephew. When Rachel’s not struggling to look after all of them, she makes her living cleaning the houses of wealthy families—inclulding the Wests, where a surprise now awaits her. . . .
A lifetime of drifting in other people’s currents has finally left Claire high and dry. First it was her parents, then the popular crowd in school, and finally her fiancé. Now she’s returned to Hartley-by-the-Sea to recover. But running into Rachel brings back memories of past mistakes, and Claire wonders if she now has the courage to make them right.
Soon Claire’s brother, Andrew, asks Rachel to keep an eye on Claire, which is the last thing either woman wants. But as their lives threaten to fall apart, both Claire and Rachel begin to realize what they need most is a friend. The kind of friend they once were to each other, and perhaps can be again. . . .
No excerpt available.
Other books in this series:
