This title may be purchased from Amazon
When was the right time to tell someone that silver flames were shooting from their hair? And that your own tranquil green desired nothing more than to tangle with them, if only it could escape a malevolent orange flare hounding your every move?
Over-stressed businessman Charles Heyer is not like most people. With a rare medical condition that scrambles the senses, he experiences emotions as flashes of colour, giving them the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. Alone in his over-vivid world, a devastating bereavement leaves him mentally scarred and recuperating on the picturesque French island of Ré where, through a chance encounter and a good deed, he is introduced to Florian, a flirty local salt farmer.
What with trying to protect the island salt cooperative from a corporate takeover and keeping a watchful eye on his errant grandfather, handsome Florian is not as carefree as he appears. Falling in love with this odd Englishman is as unexpected as it is welcome. Both exploring new feelings, the lazy days of summer stretch out for miles until a visitor from Charles’s London life throws their peaceful idyll into a kaleidoscope of chaos. And, all of a sudden, the island’s glorious palette of colour turns several shades darker.
Rating: A
Fearne Hill’s Salt is book one in her new Island Love series of romances set on the beautiful Île de Ré off the western coast of France. It’s a gorgeous, slow-burn, May/December love story between a young French salt farmer and an Englishman who has come to the island to recuperate after an illness. The story deals with some sensitive topics, but as always with this author, the health and mental health issues are portrayed knowledgeably and sympathetically, the characters are likeable, the romance is heartfelt and very satisfying, and the whole thing is peppered with warmth, humour and insight.
Thirty-nine-year-old venture capitalist Charles Heyer has rented a house in the small village of Loix and retreated there in order to recuperate after having a breakdown. Thrown off balance by the sudden death (by suicide) of his beloved mother, Charles buried himself in his work as a kind of coping mechanism, but not pausing to properly process and grieve her loss meant he didn’t realise just how unwell he was becoming. Stress and overwork tipped his already fragile mental state over the edge into full-blown mania, and after spending several months in a psychiatric hospital, Charles has been advised to take at least three months to rest. He’s aware of the part his workaholic tendencies played in his illness and knows he can’t afford to go back to the way things were, but his business partner, Marcus, is subtly (or not so subtly – Charles can read between the lines of his frequent texts) pressuring him to return to work. Deep down, Charles wonders if he’ll ever be ready to go back to his old life, but Marcus has been single-handedly running their business for months, and the longer Charles stays away, the guiltier he feels.
Charles is walking back to the house late one afternoon when he notices an elderly man wandering around the village square looking lost, and goes over to ask if he needs any help. The man says he’s looking for Florian, who is drinking coffee at L’Escale; when the man doesn’t seem inclined to make use of Charles’ offered directions, he escorts him to the café himself. It’s not until the next day that he realises that Florian is the young man he’s seen working in the salt marshes on the edge of the village, and when Florian stops him to offer his thanks for helping his grandfather, Charles, momentarily dumbstruck by the man’s beauty, doesn’t immediately register Florian’s words of thanks. It’s been a very long time since anyone has turned his head quite like this – but then a teasing exchange follows about Charles’ good French but terrible accent, and when Florian invites him out for a drink – to say thank you properly – Charles is surprised to find himself not only agreeing to go, but for the first time in a long time, actually feeling like himself again.
You can read the rest of this review at All About Romance.
Caz's Reading Room 