(Blog Tour) Book Review: Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace by Kate Forster

Today I’m excited to share my stop on the blog tour for this wonderful book, Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace.  This is such a wonderful uplifting story and I hope you enjoy my review of it below. 🙂  A big thank you to Aria ficiton for a chance to read this book and be a part of this blog tour, and don’t forget to check out the others stops on the tour too!

Title: Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace
Author: Kate Forster
Publisher: Aria
Genre: Romance
Book format: Pre-publication digital proof
Sweet Strawberries:

Desription:  Love comes when you least expect it…
Tressa Buckland likes her quiet life in Port Lowdy, with its cobbled streets and colourful terraced houses overlooking the sea. Her job at the local paper allows her to pursue her art in her free time, with no one but her tabby cat Ginger Pickles to mind her in Mermaid Terrace. But then the owner of the paper is called away on an emergency, and it’s up to Tressa to run the paper for six months. Her first task: find a new part-time journalist.
Dan Byrne is the angriest man in Ireland – or so the readers of his very successful column, ‘Dan takes on the world’, think. But after a story goes south and he loses his job in Dublin, Dan has no choice but to start afresh. When an opportunity comes up in sleepy Cornwall, Dan and his Golden Retriever Ritchie set off for a new adventure.
For Tressa, Dan’s arrival to Port Lowdy changes everything. Tressa tries not to look too deeply at her own life, but Dan sees a story to uncover in absolutely everyone – even her. The two of them couldn’t be more different… yet, if they can find a way to work together, they may just breathe new life and joy into this sleepy seaside village.
Finding Love at Mermaid Terrace is a heartwarming new village romance about the power of love and kindness, from the bestselling author of Starting Over at Acorn Cottage.

*Free copy provided by publisher for review…

Review:  This is such a wonderful and heart-warming novel! Tressa Buckland loves her life in Port Lowdy where she spends her days enjoying the beautiful views, taking photographs for the local newspaper where she works and painting the sea. But when the owner of the local newspaper has to go away, Tressa is tasked with finding a temporary replacement journalist to help out until the owner can come back. Tressa ends up hiring Dan Byrne, the angriest man in Ireland, but when he arrives along with his dog, it isn’t long before his presence starts to get under Tressa’s skin.

I have enjoyed this story so much that I read it all in just one day! Tressa’s life in the small sleepy seaside village of Port Lowdy seems a happy one. But despite the fact that Tressa spends her days doing what she loves, she has some deep rooted problems with her own confidence and her family, problems that affect the way she ends up interacting with others especially Dan. The chapters in this book alternate between different characters and I like how easy it was to follow everything that was happening, even though there were more than just the two points of view of Tressa and Dan. Each chapter is written in the thrid person perspective and we soon start to learn about the life of some of the others people like the postmistress Penny and another new face to the town, Remi.

I like how everything unfolded with these individual’s stories and how they ended up being connected. I enjoyed the dynamic between Tressa and Dan,  their relationship seems simple at first but soon becomes a complicated one, with them sometimes getting along and at other times annoying each other. I’ve come to love this sort of dynamic between characters in romance stories and so I just loved watching how this played out between these two! I liked how these two had their own individual problems and how these were slowly revealed to us along with their backstories which made them feel like charcters with a lot more depth. Penny’s story and Remi’s were also ones I loved following, especially with what happens towards the second half of the novel for both characters. Their own individual tales overlap with Tressa and Dan’s story and I just love what happened to these two characters and how things ended. This book and those stories had me smiling more than a few times as I read this.

I have to admit I really loved the setting of this book.  The small seaside village of Port Lowdy felt quaint and special.  Not only did the local characters make it wonderful but I just loved the whole feel of the seaside town, with its hidden stories, quirky locals and the mystery around the mermaids.  It felt like a place I want to visit and I loved some of the traditions and history which is revealed in the later part of this book and which plays a part in the story.

Although the tale was predictable in some parts, in others I was surprised with what happened, and at times even shocked. The book in general has a wonderful feel-good atmosphere to it with things working out in the way I had hoped. But even though this book was predictable in certain parts, which isn’t a bad thing as I expect it in these sort of cosy romance stories, I still found myself shocked and my heart on edge when a couple of things happened, especially a heart-breaking moment in the second half of the book.

There are a few occassional uses of the f and s swear words but nothing else I’d consider offensive of triggering. The ending was good and satisfying and I like what happened to the different characters and the little newspaper extract at the end. Although the tale is predictable in parts, in general I didn’t know what would happen, and was pleasantly surprised, espeically with Penny and Remi’s stories. The animals in the book made reading this all the more special, I especially loved Ritchie and his silly antics as well as Ginger Pickles’s haughty, but funny, cat attitude.

I have really enjoyed reading this book and I can’t recommend it enough for anyone looking for a bit of escapism as well as a lovely and fun romantic read. The village of Port Lowdy really made this book feel special, and I loved getting immersed in it and the stories of all the locals. The overall story is really lovely and I just love how everything worked out in the end. It’s certainly a book I want to read again, and even though this was my first book by this author, it has made me want to read more of her work.

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About the Author

I live in Melbourne,Australia with my husband, two children and dogs and I can be found nursing a laptop, surrounded by magazines and talking on the phone, usually all at once.  I am an avid follower of fashion, fame and all things pop culture and I am also an excellent dinner party guest who always brings gossip and champagne.

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What do you think of this book?  Do you like romance stories?  What about ones set in lovely seaside towns?  Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂

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