Review: Strong characters seeing below the surface
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 8, 2013
When Nora's husband Joe, a soon-to-be-retired cop, is shot inexplicably during a bank raid when he's not on duty, that's not the end of her troubles. She discovers that he'd sold the dream cottage they'd only recently bought to see out their twilight years on Martha's Vineyard. She'll have to move out in a few weeks' time. Once she's over the shock, she realises that there has to have been some sort of mistake. And with the help of some Scrabble letters she starts to work out what's going on.Nora isn't the only one who's dealing with what looks like betrayal. Her daughter Meg, now separated from her husband, has met a charming man but he's not necessarily dating her for the right reasons.This book is about seeing below the surface and uncovering the truth, however unlikely and unwelcome it may seem. Nora realises, like Hamlet, that are more things in heaven and earth than we might realise.Nora is a tenacious person, who doesn't falter from confronting the difficult and disturbing truth. She makes new friends along the way and begins to fully value a lifelong one, Steve, who worked with Joe. Meg is also a strong character, stubborn and proud, but also very vulnerable. All the people we meet in the book are complex and believable.The book has been newly proofread to deal with the errors in tenses that another reviewer mentioned so this is now a very polished and extremely enjoyable novel.