The Rose Petal Beach

I'venot read any Dorothy Koomson novels before so can't judge this against her previous books but I have to say that following The Rose Petal Beach I'm really keen to see what her other books have to offer.

The story begins when Tamia Challey opens her front door and finds police officers coming to arrest her husband for a crime he doesn't seem surprised about. Suddenly her world goes into freefall and she's left questioning everything about her husband, their life together and her friends around her. As she tries to keep her family together things continue to spiral out of control to the point Tamia begins to question what she herself is capable of in order to protect her children.

This book gripped me from start to finish, it truly did keep you reading as the story is told not just from Tamia's perspective but from that of her friends Mirabelle and Beatrix and the stranger Fleur who arrives in Brighton and enters their lives unexpectedly. All this is wound around a story Mirabelle brings fromher past of the woman who searched a desert island for her lost love for so long that her feet bled, turning into rose petals on the sand until she gave up and joined him in death - “the rose petal beach” of the title.

Wonderful writing and a great read - very highly recommended.