Windfallen
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3.6 • 25 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You, the basis for the major motion picture, comes a breathtaking drama of two women whose lives entwine through a lovely English seaside house.
For Lottie Swift, Arcadia has always been magical. The breathtaking art deco house perched above the shoreline of the well-ordered village of Merham seems to stand still throughout the years. It has never changed, not really, but Lottie's fate and fortune have been inextricably linked with that of the beautiful house, and it will forever be fixed in her mind as a symbol of adventure, youth, and of loves lost and gained. Even as her life—and the house—fall into disrepair.
Years later another young woman comes to Merham. A designer hired to make over the now-empty Arcadia, Daisy Parsons seeks a new beginning, as Lottie once did. Fleeing a broken relationship and now facing being a single mother, Daisy finds refuge in the house, and something more—a love she thought she would never know again and a friendship unlike any she’s experienced before.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Moyes, a young Brit, again proves herself a worthy successor to Maeve Binchy and Rosamund Pilcher with her second novel (after Sheltering Rain), a warmhearted drama. A magnificent art deco house called Arcadia, built on a seaside cliff in the stuffy English village of Merham, stands at the center of her tale. Lottie Swift was born in London's East End but evacuated during WWII to Merham as a child; she's eventually taken in permanently by the Holden family and brought up in their bustling household just down the road from Arcadia. When Lottie is in her late teens, an exotic clan of bohemians move into Arcadia, and Lottie takes to visiting, sometimes with Celia Holden, her best friend, but more often on her own. Then Celia goes away to school in London and comes back with a fianc a man Lottie believes is her destiny. Her love is doomed, but Arcadia provides unexpected solace. Half a century later, interior designer Daisy Parsons comes to Arcadia, hired by a successful but prickly London developer who has bought the house with plans for making it into a fashionable tourist destination. Daisy's longtime lover and design partner has just departed after their baby is born, but she conquers self-pity and determines to honor the contract by herself. She's befriended by Lottie, now an acerbic matron who scorns her village contemporaries but is charmed by the baby and volunteers to act as nanny. Moyes deftly handles her involved plot, skillfully exploring the different family dynamics; her thoughtful tone and light touch make this a delightful read.
