The Guest House at Shingle Cove by Elise Darcy

Every family has its secrets . . .
Alice is coming to terms with selling her beloved family home in Cambridge to downsize and help their daughter on to the property ladder. Recently retired, she was looking forward to pursuing new hobbies and her passion for archaeology, not tripping over packing boxes and worrying about finding another place to call home.

Sorting through years of stored items in the loft, Alice discovers a box of letters addressed to her husband from a stranger. Who was this woman called Wendy, and why has she been corresponding with her husband from the place where they spent their honeymoon, the place Alice made a promise to herself that she would never return – The Guest House at Shingle Cove?

Jeffrey has harboured a secret for years, afraid that Alice would leave him if she discovered the truth. But now she has dumped a box of letters in his study that he should never had kept, packed a suitcase, and walked out.

Freya is engaged and looking forward to buying her first home with Theo, but all is not rosy. A new colleague at her place of work, a handsome young man whom she is attracted to, is shaking things up and making her question the future she thought she wanted.

When her mother uncharacteristically disappears, and Freya sets out to find out why, she starts to uncover a web of lies and deceit that makes her doubt everything she had taken for granted about herself and her family.

Emily has returned home to Shingle Cove. A newly qualified vet, she is hoping to settle down on the Suffolk Coast. Helping her parents run their guest house while she looks for a job, a new arrival is about to throw into question what she thought she knew about her parents’ past, and the guest house where she grew up.

As long-buried secrets resurface about the events that took place there one summer many years ago, Alice realises too late that she has opened Pandora’s box by returning to the place where it all began – The Guest House at Shingle Cove. And now, there is no going back . . .

This is the fourth book in the Sunrise Coast Series. It can be read as a standalone novel and enjoyed as part of the series.