Review: Under a Summer Skye

Under a Summer Skye by Sue Moorcroft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in a new series featuring adopted sisters Valentina, Esmeralda and Altheadora Wynter. This first one features Thea, the youngest.

Thea was a gardener at a venue which was part of a reality TV show when she was involved in a car accident which had life-changing consequences for Fredek Kowski, the cyclist who was hit by her car, even though he was totally at fault by texting in the middle of the road just around a blind bend. Although Thea initially did everything she could to help him, including appearing in his road-safety videos, the dissection of her life by social media trolls and trial by the internet forced her to withdraw entirely and she ended up as gardener at Rothach Hall on the isle of Skye where her sister Ezz is HR manager for a wealthy Norwegian couple who have restored the Hall and gardens. But Thea's life is about to be overturned, Fredek is gathering a social media following as an influencer and he wants Thea to help boost his numbers, with or without her help.

Deveron Dowie had been co-proprietor of a sports news business until his business partner over-extended them, crashed the business and ran off with Dev's girlfriend. In an attempt to claw his life back from the brink, Dev accepts a commission piece for a clickbait celebrity website which is running a 'Where Are They Now' series. His job is to write about Thea, who is also the adoptive daughter of two relatively well-known musicians who died tragically when she was only a teenager. Dev travels to Skye and gets a seasonal job working as under gardener for Thea, but soon realises he wants nothing to do with the article. If only it were that simple.

I've said this before, I love Sue Moorcroft's Middledip series but when she leaves there I struggle. Unfortunately, this book fell into that camp too. I can't quite put my finger on what I don't love, maybe I found Thea a bit 'wet' for a forty-something year old woman, I could better understand her actions and behaviour if she were twenty-something. Also I found Dev's reasoning for not coming clean to be even weaker than it usually is in such circumstances - again something more forgivable in a twenty year old than a forty year old.

Overall, this was a pleasant enough, fade-to-black, romance set on the beautiful isle of Skye.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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