Anyone who loved Daniela Sacerdoti’s first novel Watch Over Me will not hesitate to delve into Take Me Home – and will not be disappointed.
Inary Monteith left home in the Scottish Highlands to make a new life for herself in London. It wasn’t an easy decision, or a nice one. Her parents are dead and her sister terminally ill and she has left her brother to deal with everything. But her fiance Lewis left her (almost) at the altar, when she told him she had the Sight and could see the dead, and she needed a fresh start away from the sympathy or pity or humiliation.
She has made a successful career and she has good friends including one in particular, Alex, with whom she steals one night of bliss before realising that she is not ready for commitment again and tells him it was a mistake.
The emotional bar is raised even higher when her sister takes a turn for the worse and she returns to Glen Avich to share Emily’s last days. After her sister’s death she is so traumatised that she loses her voice. Her brother, a hero if ever there was one, runs a shop in the village. She stays on to help out and there she meets an archaeologist who is working on the crannog in the local loch. As a younger child she fell in the loch and was dragged under by the spirit of a dead girl and now she is terrified when he invites her to come and see the dig. But with the loss of her voice, the Sight returns and as well as hoping to see Emily, she wants to find out what is behind her fears. With the help and understanding of Taylor, she visits the local history library to find out the truth about the girl in the loch.
It would be simplistic to call this a romance, though that is basically where it belongs. As in her other books, Daniela describes torturing emotions so well, without tipping into slush. By using, perhaps artificially, several viewpoint characters, we see how everyone tries to do what’s right, but it just doesn’t always work. Should you follow your heart and what happens if you follow your head, or try to?
Take Me Home is available in paperback or e-book from Amazon
