The Sea View Cafe

Fleeing a toxic marriage and a job that's killing him, Finn winds up in the forgotten seaside town of Carrickbar. It's winter and, like Finn, the country is frozen and in crisis, pre-BREXIT-blues hanging over everything. All the old certainties have been blown away, and America has gone mad. Things don't look good for anyone, least of all him. But then he meets Hermione Watts, owner of the Sea View Cafe, a woman with an eye for suffering and a heart ever ready to heal. If anyone can fix things she can.

But then there's Helena, Queen of Carrickbar, a beautiful, foul mouthed Georgian emigre, displaced by civil war, still carrying a bullet in her back. She sees something in Finn as well, though for the life of her she can't tell what, only that she wants it, except she'd never really waste a body like hers on a man like that. Would she?

Instead, much better she plays matchmaker to Hermione and Finn, before deciding it's Hermione she wants for herself. And Finn? Well, maybe he'd be better as an already amicably divorced ex-husband, so skipping the messy middle bit. It sounds mad, but then what's normal about the times they're living in? Anyway, she's played longer odds than that in the past and come out on top, so who's to say she can't pull this one off as well? Strong pain killers help her to ignore all logic to the contrary, and she ploughs on to the bewilderment of all around her, especially Hermione and Finn.

A quirky love story, a story of middle aged orphans washing up in a forgotten, washed up part of the world, building their own families from scratch by stitching together unfamiliar boundaries. But when living through extraordinary times, when all the simple solutions have been tried and found wanting, maybe you've got to throw away the old rules and embrace the impossible if you want a chance at survival, let alone happiness in a world so suddenly tipped upside down.