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Dark Days at the Beach Hotel (Beach Hotel #3) by Francesca Capaldi
Genre: Historical fiction, Sagas, WW1
Read: 17th February 2024
Published: 15th February 2024
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Can she save the hotel... and her reputation?
Helen Bygrove is managing the hotel, now that her husband has been conscripted. Against all expectations, Helen and her team are doing marvellously, despite the shortages brought by war. Even the exacting Lady Blackmore agrees. But then the calm is shattered when poison pen letters are sent to prominent townsfolk and Helen finds herself the target of a police investigation. Is someone trying to ruin Helen, and the Beach Hotel? And can she rely on the handsome but taciturn Inspector Toshack to help her? When her husband, Douglas, is invalided out of the war he is determined to take back control of the hotel and things go from bad to worse.
How can she ever escape his bullying? Is she a fool to hope that she may have a second chance at love?
A captivating, emotional and uplifting saga set in World War One - fans of Elaine Everest and Ginny Bell will love this!
MY THOUGHTS:
Can she save her hotel...and her reputation...?
It's 1916 and war has been raging across the channel in Europe for two years. For Helen Bygrove, she has had a war of her own to battle. Six years ago, five years married and idealistic, Helen and her husband Douglas purchased the Beach Hotel with Helen's inheritance from her mother...wisely invested on the advice of her own mother. However, Douglas had one stipulation - that his name be solely on the deeds as the owner and manager and Helen, in her naivete, agreed. Although women were now allowed to own property Douglas was a little old fashioned like that...or so she thought.
Fast forward six years and the years have not been plain sailing. Douglas has single-handedly undermined everything Helen suggested in their joint venture of running the hotel, isolated her and the children and bullied her at every opportunity. Where was the man she had fallen in love with?
In the first two books we met the bullish Douglas Bygrove and laughed him off as incompetent and useless, always racing off to "important meetings" or the golf club whilst Helen stayed behind to manage the hotel in his absence. Any positive feedback on the hotel, Douglas preened and took credit whilst any bad decisions or publicity he thrust the blame firmly in his wife's direction. we rarely saw much of him and when we did he was issuing orders whilst preening to those he considered to be important.
In this book, however, we see a little more into Douglas' behaviour and it soon proves to be no laughing matter. Although I admit to inwardly chuckling when the tribunal laughed him out of court when he tried to be exempt from service due to his important position as hotel proprietor and manager. Thus he was conscripted much to his annoyance and obvious frustration. However, in his absence Beach Hotel could be run smoothly under the deft hands of Helen Bygrove and her hugely competent staff...regardless of whatever notion Douglas tried to portray.
But it seems someone else isn't happy with Helen's smooth running of the establishment either as libelous letters begin to pop up around Littlehampton, slandering many person with unfounded allegations whilst some may have bordered the truth. At any rate, the missives were insulting and seemed to originate from the Beach Hotel. Helen couldn't believe that any of her staff would do anything so underhand. But the new Detective Inspector, who appeared abrasive as first impressions go, requested handwriting samples from all the staff for the process of elimination. And then Miss Isabella Harvey, who has often shown an inappropriate interest in Douglas, arrives at the hotel with accusations directed at Helen as the writer of the abusive letters.
Soon, trade at the hotel begins to dwindle as news about Helen's possible involvement spreads and bookings are cancelled, leaving Miss Harvey crowing triumphantly.
And then Helen gets even more bad news. Douglas has been injured in France and will be returning home where he will surely stake his claim once again...undoing all of Helen's hard work. But can she save the hotel and her reputation before it's too late?
It was wonderful to be back in the company at the Beach Hotel once again with all the wonderful friendly staff and regulars who we've come to regard as a kind of family. I admit to Douglas frustrating me on more than one occasion in previous books but in his one he takes the biscuit! I cannot tell you more of my thoughts without giving anything away. But rest assured you will be entertained from start to finish and even come to like the new Inspector Sam Tobrash (I think I spelt his name correctly).
Whilst it is the third book in the series, it can be read as a standalone as each story surrounds one of the characters on its own. First was Edie's then Lili's and this time it was Helen. And I was thrilled to discover that Helen would have her story told because there was most definitely one lurking there dying to be told.
I have enjoyed all three books but this one did have a different feel to it. Helen not only has to face running the hotel in her incompetent husband's absence (in the knowledge that he will one day come back to stake his claim once again) but she has not one two hugely upsetting and dramatic turns of events that threaten her happiness and her livelihood. I would have liked to see a little more before it ended but it ended on a promise which was a nice touch.
Another fantastic read and addition to this delightful series. I look forward to meeting up with everyone again in the next book.
I would like to thank #FrancescaCapaldi, #Netgalley, #HeraBooks and #RachelsRandomResources for an ARC of #DarkDaysAtTheBeachHotel in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
A history graduate and qualified teacher, she decided to turn her writing hobby into something more in 2006, when she joined a writing class.
Writing as both Francesca Capaldi and Francesca Burgess, she has had numerous short stories published in magazines in the UK and abroad, as well as in anthologies. Four pocket novels have been published by DC Thomson, one of which, Danger for Daisy, is available as an ebook.
Her Welsh World War 1 sagas were inspired by the discovery of her great grandfather's war record. They are published by Hera Books
She is a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and the Society of Women Writers and Journalists.
Francesca currently lives on the North Downs in Kent with her family and a cat called Lando Calrission.
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