I Don't know much about the Cornwall area, so the opportunity to experience its unusual climate and surroundings was a delight. The character of Alice was so relatable, as she grappled with her crisis of faith, eventually finding her true path and calling. She was also challenging in her selfless love for those around her, especially her capacity to mother orphaned children. One can easily imagine her with a small orphanage years down the track! The descriptions were evocative and the internal dialogue was illuminating without being distracting. It seemed a natural element of the character's experience that only enhanced the narrative.
Overall, the novel was well written, suspenseful and uplifting.

Cornwall....World War II....this book had it all! I couldn't put it down. I love historical fiction and this book was very fascinating.

Cornwall, 1943, finds a young woman washed up on a beach in Mermaid's Cove. Rescued by a lord, she struggles to find her identity. A little romance, a lot of intrigue, make this a readable, sensitively written novel. Recommended.

3.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing for a kindle version of this book to review.

In 1943 a young woman (Alice) washes up on a remote beach in Cornwall - a survivor of a ship torpedoed by the Germans. She is found by Jack, who suspects Alice has been a prisoner of war as she has shorn hair and a number stitched onto her clothing. As Alice and Jack slowly discover each other’s secrets their attraction grows, against the backdrop of WWII and the French Resistance.

This book had an interesting storyline that I quite enjoyed. In saying that, it’s no secret that I’m not a fan of romances unless it’s happening in the background and not the main focus of the story. Although this book had plenty going on besides romance, I do feel that the romance was the main focus of the book. Obviously there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, however I personally would have preferred more of the historical fiction and less of the historical romance which was pretty predictable, as I find most romances to be.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read however I do wish there had been a bit more focus on the resistance storyline as this was definitely the most interesting part to me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

I was excited on the premise of this book! I am a big Historical Fiction fan. Unfortunately, for me, this book just didn't deliver. It seemed, to me, to be a bunch of stories put into one. The writing seemed slow and hard to keep my interest, took me forever to get through it!
I know a lot of people loved the book, so it probably was just not in my taste. It wasnt terrible, I just didn't care for it.
Book gets 3 stars
Lets read!!

This was a beautifully written historical fiction that takes place during WWII. This time in our history brings heartwrenching stories of such bravery for those who risk their lives to help so many. The author does a wonderful job of character development and it's so easy to be visually drawn to where the story takes place in Cornwall, England. I highly recommend this book.

I wasn't sure how much I would be able to get into another WW2 novel, however this story quickly drew me in. The author was able to blend history and fiction so well to create this wonderful story. The descriptions whisked me away and the characters were intriguing. Overall a very interesting story. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The House at Mermaid's Cove by Lindsay Jayne Ashford is a romance novet set in the World War 2 era. A woman washes ashore Cornwall in England, where she is rescued by a local Lord. She was on-board a ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat. She then leaves her old life behind and starts a fresh one trying to help the war efforts.

The premise is interesting, but the story is strictly average. Predictable romance takes precedence over the war efforts, and the intense war background, which is the part which generally appeals to me more, seems to have been lost.

Thanks the the author and the publisher for the ARC.

Verdict: Not for WWII lovers.

I received The House at Mermaid's Cove as part of a NetGallery giveaway.

One evening in the midst of WWII, a young woman, almost naked with hair shorn, washes up on the Cornish coast. To her rescuer Jack, who turns out to be local nobility, she reveals her name to be Alice, and that she is a nun who had served almost a decade in Africa, but intends on faking her own death after the ship she was on was torpedoed, having grown disillusioned with the religious life. Soon Alice is drawn into the life of the town and, finds renewed value in the war effort, being drawn in to Resistance activities across the Channel in France. Meanwhile her relationship with Jack grows, though despite his social status, he has his own demons to contend with.

This was a great book. It's not long, but it manages to carve out compelling characters and a well-paced plot. If anything, I wish the storylines could have been deepened, because I enjoyed reading it so much. Alice and Jack have great chemistry, and I wanted them to figure each other out more than any other fictional couple in some time. The conclusion and epilogue felt a little stilted, but this was overall a fast but engaging read.

Nothing supernatural going on. This is a unique and captivating historical fiction set around WWII. Loved the characters. Very enjoyable read with the perfect ending.

Thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

Loved it!!! Enjoyed the characters, story and writing style. Alice definitely lived an interesting life. It's hard to believe she made such a big decision at such a young age. She partly did it because of her anger towards her dad. She would never have chosen that life if he would have given his blessing. I would have loved to read a little more about her life in Ireland. There was a bit of a mystery about Alice when Jack discovers her on the beach. Until I found out what happened to her I did think- real life mermaid??? The story definitely takes a twist I wasn't expecting when Alice gets offered a different job than milking the cows. Honestly, I wasn't exactly sure what the book was going to be about when I first started reading it. I ended up enjoying it and knew what would eventually happen between Alice and Jack. Jack's house in Cornwall sounded beautiful with all the flowers and exotic plants.

Definitely recommend the book. Look forward to reading more books by the author.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Lake Union Publishing through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I love this author's writing style. I was sucked in from the first page and it never let go. Definitely a book I will reread again and again!

I'm very much that boring nerd who has a weakness for World War II stories and, in particular, the World War II love stories which any self-respecting historian would probably try to set on fire in my hands, to teach me a lesson I would not learn. Naturally I was excited for this story, which was filled with promising elements: 1943, Cornwall, shipwreck, mermaid ?? It wound up not quite delivering; for everyone's convenience I have chopped my reaction into pieces and arranged them in a numbered list.

1. Narrative voice. This is probably my least helpful criticism but unfortunately it also affected me the most throughout; the narration of this book seemed eminently modern. I'm not even talking about our very hashtag woke hero/ine, I genuinely do not care if an author writes modern sensibilities into their work, but something about the way the words were arranged on the page -- very modern! I went on a kick earlier this year of reading books which actually came out in the 40s, so my standards here might just be unrealistic.

2. Setup and payoff. This isn't a mystery story, per se, but it has a bunch of mysteries in it, and some of them are handled competently but most of them are handled weirdly. Alice spends the first two chapters being very mysterious about where she comes from and why she's hiding, in line with the blurb, and then at the end of the second chapter -- the book has 27 chapters, for reference, so this happens extremely near the beginning and I don't feel bad about spoiling it -- she reveals that she's a nun not only to the reader but also to the hero, which basically removed all the suspense from the situation. It seems genuinely nuts to me that you wouldn't at least keep that fact from your hero and use it to build more tension between them as he chafes to figure out her whole deal? And then they could have spent the first six chapters circling around each other instead of being blandly nice, which, I'm sorry, bored me. The other really bonkers example of this weird defusing-tension is in a moment where Alice is talking to Merle, a friend of the hero's, who refers to Jack in the third person as "his lordship". Alice's reaction to this is "who is she talking about??" which didn't, like, delight me, but I assumed it was setting up a mystery for later which would enrich our understanding of Jack's behaviour next time he turns up. Instead Merle says on the very next page "he's so modest for a viscount" and Alice gets it. I guess I don't understand why you would set up the reveal, have Alice misunderstand, and then actually reveal it all in the same conversation. Surely at that point you can skip the misunderstanding? I don't think the author intended for me to think that Alice was a little dumb, which is unfortunately all I took out of that interaction.

3. Research. This is both a pro and a con, in that I know the author did research, because there were a few things which were explained in solid detail. Settings were done well in my opinion, as was the religious stuff and a brief episode of bell-ringing. Unfortunately the downside to this is that I felt I could also tell when the author was trying to gloss over things; quotidian details suffered. Period details in particular seemed awkward and shuffled in; the author relied a lot on Alice reading a copy of Frenchman's Creek to remind us we were in the 40s. There was also one weird moment where Alice looks at a banknote and describes it mostly for the benefit of the audience, surely, but since she had spent the last nine years in a nunnery I have to give that one a pass. The one I won't let go is when she, in 1934, longed to see Saratoga, which came out in 1937.

4. Modern sensibilities vs. Alice's backstory. So I said earlier that I didn't care if authors wrote modern attitudes into their work, and I stand by that; I am fine that our hero clearly drinks a healthy dose of woman respecting juice every day, I am fine with what is probably a wildly progressive view of religion and wholesale nunnery abandonment for the 1940s, I am even fine that Alice goes out of her way to benevolently declaim that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. What I am less fine with, in the wake of all this, is a very one-note portrayal of Alice's backstory as a Christian missionary in the Belgian Congo. We only ever hear about this from her in the present, but it very much falls into the cliche of "evil witch doctors did bad things :(" and having "won" souls over to Christianity, which, well, I simply didn't love!

5. Theme and plot. I found myself returning often to a sort of baffled refrain as I read, which was "what is this about??" which is perhaps not a good sign. First it was the story of a nun who wants to start life anew, and then it became, hm, a society romance and family drama, and then a spy caper? The question mark means I do not think the genre mashup was entirely successful. The mermaid thing that gets mentioned ominously in the summary does not pan out to be anything more than a local myth, which was sad for me on a personal level but probably a decent choice to avoid crowding the story more. Alice's arc was mostly that she felt bad about leaving the religious order, but was insistent that she had not stopped believing in God, and this was a successful subplot throughout in that she felt bad a lot, and towards the end she received external validation from a better nun, I guess, and felt better. Sorry, I'm being very glib, I know. There were good elements to this; the fact that she was asked to use a nun disguise in the spy caper tied these things together nicely for me. Unfortunately, the negatives outweighed the positives. The romance felt generally bland and basically nonexistent unless it was a specified romance moment, and the filial drama didn't work for me at all. It annoyed me that Alice's stance never really changed or grew -- she starts out very sure that she can still be a good Christian and keeps being quite sure and then someone else validated this belief. It drove me absolutely bats that we only get the brief suggestion of a resolution to this, because it was the most consistent throughline of the book.

This list sounds like I hate the book, but I don't -- I think it could have been a lot better, but it works fine for what it is, which is a light, plot-driven drama. The writing went down easily, and I got through it fairly quickly over the space of a couple of days. I don't regret reading it, and I imagine that most people in the weird WWII romance niche would feel the same.

Thank you to NetGalley & Lake Union Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Another story with a World War II background set between the coasts of Cornwall, scenes of quiet rural life with hidden secrets and then moving across to France and all the turmoil there with German occupation.

Alice is a survivor of a ship torpedoed by the Germans and washed up on the Cornish coast. With her shorn hair and secretive speech, her rescuer knows that there are secrets behind the façade of the washed out, exhausted woman found at his doorstep. When her life story is told which in itself is intriguing (a convent in Africa, a questioning of faith, an idea of leaving the strict no feelings to be shown policy of the convent) and with her knowledge of French, Alice becomes a key person in the permanent quest of finding people who can infiltrate the French coast and bring back airmen and others who need to get back to England.

Following her adventures both in and out of France at great personal risk to herself and reading about her life in the convent in Africa, both the highs and lows - you can see how far the church has come since those difficult times of strict laws, and rules and nothing else. It was a tough time for anyone who chose a vocation unless you were devoid of any natural feelings.

The story of survival, of faith, and finally of a peaceful end and love finding a way is all told in this imaginative story.

Alice is a survivor of a German ship crash in 1943 that washes up onshore. She is found by Jack and they become close. Alice wants to starts a new life and escape her past. She tells Jack her secret and asks him to keep it and her safe. Jack also has a secret of his own. This was well-written and historically accurate. The storyline was kind of predictable, but the writing was good enough to overlook it.

5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book was such a delight. I had no idea It was about a shipwrecked girl during WWII. The romance had the mysterious feel of “Rebecca” for me, in the sense that I couldn’t figure out Jack’s feelings. He was mysterious and Alice misread all her surroundings, in part to her past.
I identified with Alice and her need to be authentic. I felt her struggle with God, and how everything she did was mechanically recited and done out of habit. She longed to have a heartfelt purpose in her life.
As the story progressed with the risks, I found I couldn’t put it down. I was holding my breath, anxious and thrilled at the flow of this wonderful writing.
This was more a historical, women’s literature book than romance. The romance was light and clean. I hope to one day visit the place this story took place. I very much liked the ending.
I highly recommend this and want you to read it.

Thank you NETGALLEY and the publisher for this ARC, in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed this book mostly for its beautiful setting in Cornwall which is one of my favourite places in the world! The author obviously knows the area well.

I would describe The House at Mermaid's Cove as historical romance because a lot of time was spent on Alice's emotional ramblings about whether Jack was interested in her or not. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and say "Of course he is interested in you - it couldn't be more obvious." But that's just me.

The rest of the book was a good story about the French Resistance in WW2. I could have wished for a bit more depth but it was interesting. Basically this was a light, enjoyable read.

I love books set during WWII and since I read so many of them, I love it even more when I find one that tells a different tale. The House at Mermaid Cove was unique enough to make it stand out from the crown.

The story opens with a girl with shorn hair and a number washing ashore in Cornwall. The dashing man who finds gives her food, shelter, clothing, and eventually a job. This beginning sounds a lot like everyone WWII romance. However, the woman is a nun wanting to leave a rather restrictive order. The regulations she describes do not look anything like what I see from the nuns in Call the Midwife. But then again she is Irish so it would be a Catholic order instead of an Anglican order that would be in England.

Her boat being bombed on her way back to Dublin from Africa seemed like a sign - a sign that she could start a new life where she could do good. The dashing man, Lord Trewella (but he prefers Jack), has just the job for her - working with the French Resistance and Allied Forces.

We get a little look at the life on the home front as Jack's estate is a working farm with Land Girls milking cows and tending the vegetable gardens. There's also a dance with the American Forces stationed nearby and regular village life. But we also get to see how the English helped the French Resistance by ferrying supplies and information to Franch and bringing back downed Allied pilots.

Ashford has also found an interesting legend in which to build her story - about a mermaid who lures men to their deaths. We also weaved into the story the lush, tropical-like, landscape of this part of Cornwall - providing a visual beauty that is matched by her beautiful writing.

The characters, the writing, and the setting all combine to give the reader a lush and enjoyable story that tantalizes all the senses.

My review will be published at Girl Who Reads on Tuesday, Aug. 18 - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2020/08/the-house-at-mermaid-cove-by-lindsay.html

When Alice is washed ashore on a beach in Cornwall in 1943 after being on a torpedoed boat set for Ireland she realises it is a chance to reinvent herself and start again. Rescued by Jack, the Lord of the Manor, she starts to have feelings for him but can she trust him enough to tell him her true story.....and what secrets is he keeping himself?

A lovely story that I couldn't put down with just the right mixture of romance, history and intrigue. The characters of Alice and Jack were both strong and likeable and so you were rooting for both of them. Perfect summer read.

Jack finds a young women who has washed up from the sea wearing a thin dress with a code sewn into it. He gives her shelter where she will work in the farm in exchange. A friendship blossoms, where they both share their deepest secrets.

I went into this book not knowing anything about it. I had requested it from NetGalley because the beautiful cover intrigued me. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a WWII novel, which is one of my favorite genres to read. I enjoyed the atmospheric scenes and the strong friendships between the characters but it feel a little lack luster and I wanted a bit more action. Overall I enjoyed it.