Book Extract: Coming Home to Penvennan Cove by Linn B Halton

Published October 9, 2020 | By Laura

A big welcome to Linn B Halton and the blog tour for her latest novel, Coming Home To Penvennan Cove.

Can Kerra’s Cornish hometown offer the fresh start she needs?

When Kerra left the quiet Cornish town of Penvennan Cove for the bright lights of London she didn’t look back. But after the death of her mother, she’s decided it’s time to face her past and return to the place she called home. Her father needs her, and perhaps she needs him more than she’s willing to admit?

Tackling town gossip, home renovations and a flame from her past, it’s not quite smooth sailing for Kerra. Ross is the bad boy she was meant to forget, not a man who still sets her heart aflutter. As he helps bring her dream home to life, they begin to break down the barriers that have been holding them back and in the process learn things about themselves they never thought possible.

As friends old and new come together, the future in Penvennan looks bright.

Linn and Aria have shared an extract from Coming Home to Penvennan Cove. Enjoy.

*****beginning of extract*****

When Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I travelled home every weekend so we could all be together during those final few months. We laughed, we cried and we reminisced. But it’s a mean beast and although she was ready to go when the time came, we weren’t ready to let go of her. What it did for me, was put everything into perspective.

Going back is never easy; going forward was all I knew, until now.

It eased my conscience a little to see my team through the transition, giving them time to adjust to the new regime. It was meant to be a period in which we’d all feel proud of what we’d achieved and I’d leave them with a sense of excitement about their future. But the last few months have been a blur of activity and, naturally, upheaval.

And now, Sy is right—I feel like a deserter, walking away as if I can’t already see the problems beginning to stack up on the horizon. Big business is fierce and while it was all smiles and handshakes at the start, it’s now deadpan faces and long emails detailing the new procedures. Did they really want the business, or just the ready-made audience to add to their already huge database? Equally as soul-destroying is the fact that I’m beginning to feel I’ve been disloyal to our customers, too. The press release put a very positive spin on it, of course, but some of the benefits seem one-sided to me. I’m hoping I’m proved wrong.

This little website I set up, working every evening and weekend while I was at uni studying for my computer sciences degree, began as a tiny seed of an idea. The experience I gained as a database administrator after I qualified, spurred me on. It became my sole focus in life to the exclusion of everything.

I vividly remember the day I handed in my notice at the day job, much to the horror of my parents and everyone I knew. All I had was a team of one to take my ideas forward. But every time I shut my eyes at night it took over my dreams. There wasn’t room for anything else in my life because I became obsessive. As it grew, and more and more subscribers signed up to pay their monthly fee, each member of staff I recruited knew their input made a difference; they counted for something. I lovingly nurtured it for nine years as it grew into a sapling and then into a little tree. But the handover has only served to make us all feel like pawns in a game of chess, overshadowed by the mighty castles and the knights who came sweeping in with solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had. So now I feel like I sold out and that’s my Achilles heel—for me it was always about the people, regardless of whether they were employees or customers.

Being faced with technical wizardry far beyond even my—not inconsequential—IT abilities was a sharp and timely reminder that I was doing the right thing. Of course, a multi-million-pound company can afford to pay for the brightest of whizz kids. And some are young, very young—making me feel old at the age of twenty-nine. The saving grace for my team is that I hand-picked the best.

It was a great idea that worked at a micro-level, as well as for much bigger things—everything from exchanging babysitting duties, to finding a local tradesman and being able to choose someone with a degree of confidence. Scanning through the feedback shows that it reflects a true sense of community, not least because of the launch of Help-a-neighbour, a free service. There are a lot of lonely, isolated people out there and a call to action by a member to rescue an elderly person’s overgrown garden, for example, can achieve a staggering influx of offers to help.

***** end of extract*****

About Linn B Halton…

From interior designer to author, when Linn B. Halton’s not writing, or spending time with the family, she’s either upcycling furniture or working in the garden.

Linn won the 2013 UK Festival of Romance: Innovation in Romantic Fiction award; her novels have been short-listed in the UK’s Festival of Romance and the eFestival of Words Book Awards.

Living in Coed Duon in the Welsh Valleys with her ‘rock’, Lawrence, and gorgeous Bengal cat Ziggy, she freely admits she’s an eternal romantic.

Linn is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Society of Authors. Linn writes feel-good, uplifting novels about life, love and relationships.

Say hello on Twitter and Facebook.

Coming Home to Penvennan Cove was released by Aria on 8th October 2020. Click to view on Amazon UK, Kobo, Google Play and iBooks.

Click here to visit Aria’s website or follow on Twitter.