Review: A Cottage by the Sea

A Cottage by the Sea by Carole Matthews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ella, Grace and Felicity (Flick) have been best friends since university days. Now over a decade later: Grace is a partner in an accountancy practice and married to Harry, an older actuary; Ella is an artist living with Art, a successful manager of heavy metal bands; and Flick reviews film scripts and is resolutely single and fancy-free with a penchant for married men.

Ella has inherited a holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire from her parents and invites everyone to spend a week there renewing their friendship which has seen them grow apart. Initially Ella and Grace don't think Flick will turn up, she's been even more unreliable than usual lately, but at the last minute she arrives with a new (single) man in tow, Noah. Grace and Harry have been distant with each other for a few months and she hopes that a short break will give them time to reconnect and get their marriage back on track. Ella wants to settle down, preferably in Pembrokeshire but is worried that Art is hanging on to his aged rocker status along with his flat in London for dear life.

So the party of six are divided between Art, Flick, and Harry, the heavy-drinking city-lovers, on the one hand and Ella, Grace, and Noah, the nature-loving countryphiles on the other. One group want to spend their days in the pub, the others want to walk along the coastline and explore nature.

I am a great fan of Carole Matthews but I have to say this book was a bit of a miss for me. First, it couldn't have been any more obvious what was happening if she had erected neon signposts. Second it reminded me strongly of the film Cousins starring Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini. Generally, I thought Grace was too much of a doormat (and proud of herself for it).

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