Sweet Home Summer: A heartwarming romcom perfect for curling up with
Sometimes, home really is where the heart is…Leaving behind her hi-flying career in London, Isla Brookes has had enough. Burnt out and tired of an unfulfilling profession and lousy boyfriends, it’s time for her to go home.Arriving back in cosy Bibury to stay with her grandmother, Bridget, everything is charmingly familiar. Even her childhood sweetheart, Ben, is as handsome as she remembered…And when she discovers a stack of long-forgotten Valentine’s Day cards, Isla, with the help of Ben, begins to realise exactly what is most important in life.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Michelle Vernal 2018
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Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Michelle Vernal asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008226541
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008226534
Version: 2017-12-04
Table of Contents
I am a Matchmaker, and I’m a long way from what was once my family’s home. Us Sullivans were put on this earth to bring together two halves of a pair and make a whole. I’ve been here drifting through these brutal but beautiful Badlands for a long time now, and I’m half a world away from where my great-grandfather once roamed the equally rugged lands of West Cork.
He rode the seas before you or your parents; even your grandparents were born to the Land of the Long White Cloud, Aotearoa. He came to New Zealand on a ship with billowing sails and a cargo of Irish folk seeking a better future and a sniff of gold. Only he knew that some wouldn’t get either without his help. You see, we know something, us Sullivans, something I’ll share with you now. It’s not a fortune having been made that makes the world continue to go round – oh no, it’s love, and that’s our business.
The years have gone by, and the book we carry has been passed down with many a successful match made between its pages. You, yourself, might be a product of a Sullivan’s meddling, you just never know. It’s all there, inscribed in our book if you care to take a look.
This last wee while, I’ve been keeping my eye on a right pair; young Isla Brookes and her grandmother Bridget, the two most stubborn women I’ve ever witnessed walk the West Coast. They’ve both got it wrong along the way but it’s not too late, it’s never too late to call the Matchmaker, and when they do, I will come.
That’s enough about me and mine though; now it’s time I told you their story.
Two weeks or thereabouts earlier…
Isla Brookes was a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The fact she was teetering on the brink of something terrifying was not common knowledge, and she intended to keep it that way. She’d told anybody who’d asked or needed to know that in a couple of days she’d be off-grid for a few weeks. She was taking a much-needed sabbatical from her job as an Interior Design Consultant for Upscale Development, a high-end London property development company. The reason? Stress – she needed to step off the corporate ladder and take some time to heal, because the collapse of her relationship with Tim was still so very raw.
Maura and Henry, whose flat she’d fled to when she’d found the strength to finish things with Tim, or Toad as she now thought of him, had made her very welcome. However, she had no wish to become a permanent fixture on their couch. It was a couch upon which she’d spent too many afternoons pondering what she was supposed to do next. What did you do when you were told you were on the verge of a breakdown? She wondered, fingering the packet of anti-depressants she’d been prescribed, it was all new to her. She needed to remove what was causing the stress from her life – that’s what the harried NHS doctor had told her. Well, she’d done that by finishing things with Toad and taking an extended leave of absence from work. There was more to it than that though, Isla knew. Toad and her job were symptoms, neither were the full-blown illness.
