I actually had a break from reviews yesterday! It was actually really strange for me, but it was a super nice break. Now I’m back and I hope you guys are excited to read some of my thoughts on this book. Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources for hosting this blog tour and for having me on it! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the blog posts!

Two women. Connected by heartbreak, separated in time. Can Charity save the man she loves, or will Lydia’s vengeful spirit prove too strong?

Two haunting love stories and a hundred and fifty-year-old curse …

When the beloved grandfather who brought her up dies, Charity is left struggling to cope. Alone and rootless, she’s drawn to the sleepy fishing village of Beaumouth near Lyme Regis and begins to research her family tree. A chance encounter with attractive boat-builder Matt sparks a chain of mysterious and unsettling events and leads Charity to uncover the story of a young girl who lived in the village over a hundred years before.

In 1863 all Lydia Pavey wants to do is follow in Mary Anning’s footsteps and become a ‘fossilist.’ Instead, she is being forced into marriage to a man she barely knows.

Charity’s obsession with Lydia becomes all-consuming and she risks losing everything. With a longed-for family tantalisingly in reach, will Charity find the happy ever after she’s yearned for and, most importantly, can she save the man she loves?

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Georgia Hill writes best-selling romcoms and historical fiction with romance at the heart. Although she writes in two genres, they have more in common than you might think; she puts serious issues into her romcoms and lots of humour into her historical novels. She lives by the sea in the south west of England with her two beloved dogs – a spaniel and a delinquent cockapoo puppy, her husband (also beloved and not at all delinquent) and a ghost called Zoe. She loves Jane Austen, elephants, Belgian chocolate (all donations gratefully received) and Strictly Come Dancing. Her stories come from everywhere and anything, so be careful what you tell her as you may end up in a book.

She also finds inspiration in the folklore and history of the many places in which she’s lived. To put it politely, she’s had a portfolio career having worked in the theatre, for a charity and as a teacher and educational consultant before giving in and finally acknowledging that making up things was what she really wanted to do.

She has a nasty addiction to moving house but is trying to overcome this. After one house move too many, she lost all her notebooks and decided to stop talking about writing and actually do some. She’s been happily creating believably flawed heroines, intriguing men and page-turning stories ever since.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources, and BLKDOG for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

A lot of the people that reviewed this book described it as “atmospheric” and boy if there was ever a book that I had to label as atmospheric, it would be this one. I am not one that reads a lot of time slip novels, or ghost story romance novels that span different eras in time, and I really ended up liking this one. I think the ghost story aspect of it is what made it atmospheric to me, and gave it that sort of long lost, trying to figure out what really makes a true love story span the test of time type of feeling, and it was something that I was thoroughly impressed with.

While Charity is trying to cope with the death of her grandfather – the man who practically raised her, not just a man that she would see every once in a while – she starts to do some research on her family tree. This is something that has always made me a little jealous, when someone can actually trace back their different ancestors throughout their tree without many gaps or questions, because I don’t have that kind of experience. I’ve always wanted to do something like that though, to see where my family came from, the kind of people they were and how their past ended up shaping our present and futures. I had a little soft spot for Charity’s quest to do that, and it made sense that she would end up doing so after her grandfather passed away. It made me think of my own grandfather that I miss terribly, and I know I was in a lot of pain when he first passed away. He didn’t raise me like how Charity’s grandfather did, but I feel like if he did, I would be in a state of grief similar to Charity’s.

I also thought it was interesting that of all the people that Charity could have become “obsessed” over, it was Lydia. Whether it really because of the mental health struggles that Charity was having after the death of her grandfather, or something else that she related to in Lydia’s life, I won’t spoil it for her. But the “visions” that dealt with Lydia, and how it was very fluid and could very well feel like Charity was really going back to Lydia’s time to witness what she was going through was well done and very interesting. I said interesting a lot in this review, but I feel like that gives the gist of what I’m trying to say. I don’t know whether or not I feel for Lydia or Charity more, and whether or not I have to feel for one woman over the other, but I had strong feelings about both of their struggles while reading this novel and I am glad that the ending was pretty satisfying for me.