An Old Fashioned British Holiday
Starting Again In Silver Sands Bay by Karen Louise Hollis is a really fun contemporary read that delighted my senses.
The book is set over the six weeks summer holiday and in a caravan park in Lincolnshire in two caravans which are lacking modern conveniences. It awakened memories in me of caravanning when I was young.
Karen Louise Hollis assaults all the reader’s senses. Holidaying in Britain means alternating the sun and rain – I could ‘hear’ the raindrops on the caravan roof. Chip suppers could be ‘smelt’. I could ‘feel’ both the hot sun and the cooling rain. An old-fashioned holiday camp pub was easy to visualize.
All the characters were realistic and likable as the reader follows two single parent families. Raising a child alone was never a choice – but one lost her husband, and the other’s wife ran off with a richer man (both as the book opens & five years prior to the main story, so no spoilers here). We witness the guts taken to raise a child alone, and also the loneliness adults feel parenting alone.
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