I’m delighted to be joining the Isabel Ashdown blogathon, where, over the next few months, I’ll be celebrating her work, reading and reviewing her books. Today I’m reviewing Homecoming, with thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me on the blogathon and to the publisher for my copy of the book via Netgalley.

Blurb:

Welcome to The Starlings… sun, sea and neighbours to die for.

Security, a sparkling sea view and the best kind of neighbours – The Starlings gated community has it all. Here, doors are left open, children run free, and at the heart of it all is the entrepreneurial Gold Family, who first dreamed up this aspirational vision of ‘Dorset’s Safest Community’. To the outside world the popular family appears glitteringly blessed… until an idyllic party takes a dark turn and one of their number is found slumped at the foot of the clocktower. Who knows what really happened? And what answers are harboured within the old building, the former Highcap Mother and Baby Home?’

PREORDER ONE GIRL, ONE SUMMER NOW – A BRAND NEW EMOTIONAL PAGETURNER SET IN THE BEAUTIFUL COASTAL TOWN OF HIGHCAP, DORSET.

Review:

I’m really excited to be part of this project and reading Homecoming has only made me more excited to read more of Isabel Ashdown’s work. Homecoming is a complex, well plotted story with plenty of twists and I became completely lost in it as I was reading.

The greatest strength of Homecoming is the characters. I became hooked by their different stories almost instantly and was extremely keen to see how they would overlap. I loved that Isabel Ashdown chose four of the female characters to narrate the chapters as it showed the importance of female role models and highlighted that families can still be strong even if they are not conventional. I felt totally immersed in what was happening and was eager for the mystery to be solved as I tried to work out the answers. I did guess a few of the twists but this in no way affected my enjoyment of the novel.

Interwoven in the central story, there are lots of different social issues that Isabel Ashdown addresses through Homecoming. She does this in such a sensitive, emotional way and this means that parts of the novel are actually very poignant and adds even more layers to an exceptional story.

Homecoming is available from Amazon.