Rachel Reviews: The Last Boat Home by Rachel Sweasey

This is what I call a nice book and that's a compliment. It's got a solid story which unfolds smoothly and with pace; the characters are believable and their trials and hopes are told in such a way that you are able to relate to them; the ending brings all the narrative threads together and ties them off in such a way that no room for misinterpretation is left for a reader to be perplexed over. I think books like this are undersold - it is, literally, a piece of escapism which takes you off into another life for just a bit, maybe a different time and lets you mosey about there for a bit as an entertained observer.

There are two narratives between which we move alternately: Felicity and Daisy. Felicity is married to Pete in the 1990s and lives in an English seaside town called Poole. She works at a library and has a very stable life, her gran living down the road with whom she spends a lot of time. Daisy lives in the 1930s before the war and is a pottery painter at Poole Pottery, a famous ceramics factory. She is an identical twin and has captured the interest of the boss' son, Alfred. She lives with her parents and her sister and she too has a stable life. However, for both of these characters, their worlds are about to change quite radically with everything that they hold dear either lost or threatened.

When Pete is lost at sea whilst diving, Felicity's whole world crumbles as her focus has gone. All seems dark. However, with Pete's death, Felicity's life takes a different turn and a trip abroad with some friends leads her to a place that has significance for her and her family, although she is yet to discover this.

For Daisy, with the advent of war, her days with Alfie are numbered and the tension of finding out when the day that he will be drafted comes hovers over their lives. But war brings many changes and Daisy is going to find that Fate can be cruel, especially in the confusion of war-time. It may also be that Alfie may not be the great love of her life that she thinks he is.

And so, we follow the lives of these two women, mainly through their forays into love, all very well-related by Sweasey with the right amount of passion, hope, conflict and suspense to keep us hooked to very end and leave us as sated and satisfied readers.

Rachel Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐