In the sleepy seaside sleepy town of Waverly, Rosie and Seb Kent are happily married. Now that Seb has achieved his dream of becoming headmaster of the local school, their lives couldn’t be any better.
Then Abi arrives.
Abi, a young, single mother, has come to Waverly for a fresh start. She plans to reinvent herself and give her children a new life.
Then she sees Seb.
As their complicated hidden past threatens to destroy them both, they try their hardest to keep it contained. But in a small town, secrets don’t stay hidden for long and soon, what should be their private business becomes a very public scandal.
How far will everyone – them, their
families and the whole community – go to protect everything they hold dearest?
After studying at Edinburgh University, Emily Edwards worked for a think tank in New York before returning to London where she worked as a support worker for vulnerable women at a large charity. She now lives in Lewes, East Sussex with her endlessly patient husband and her two endlessly energetic young sons. Her previous novel, The Herd, was a number one bestseller.
My thoughts: I went to school before the internet, if there was gossip about teachers it was confined to our theories on the playground, and to parents at the school gates, you didn’t really believe they had private lives and you certainly didn’t know anything about them.
Now of course that isn’t the case, quite a few of my friends are teachers and they work hard to separate their professional and private selves. Occasionally bumping into your students in the supermarket is one thing, but the kind of drama in this book is something else entirely.
Seb might have done something that will harm his marriage, but is it really anyone else’s business? The scandal that follows comes from his best friend’s wife, Anna. She’s the one that decides it should be everyone’s business and in doing so ruins relationships and lives, including her own.
The repercussions from her decision to tell everyone what Seb did are shocking and violent, her inability to keep things to herself lead to some very nasty reactions. But what emerges from the rubble are in some cases, stronger relationships, healthier ones with no secrets. Maybe small town living isn’t for everyone, in a larger place, where people don’t know you quite so well, you can keep your past private.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 
Thank you so much for being a part of the tour x
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