The Hidden Beach: A Page-Turning Summer Story of Romance, Secrets and Betrayal

I'm really torn about this book, on one hand I found the beginning a bit slow and I wasn't quite sure where the story was going, but then at about 40% (on my Kindle) the story picked up and I couldn't stop reading to find out what happened. The story was about Hanna and Max and their three children (10 year old Linus and 3 year old twins Elise & Tilde) along with Bell who was employed as the nanny and looked after the children, and the story revolved around Bell a lot of the time. She may have been 'just' the nanny but she did so much more for the family, and I think they did take advantage of that, but then again she let them. At the beginning of the book we find out that Hanna's husband, Emil, has been in a coma for 7 years, and a phone call out of the blue from the clinic he has been in gives the shocking news that he has come out of his coma. We also find out that Linus is actually Emil's son, but Linus doesn't initially know this. Then it jumps six months down the line when the family is off on holiday to one of the Stockholm archipelago islands where they own a house and have always holidayed over the years. So all quite cut off and a real get away from it all sort of holiday. The setting was just fascinating. I'd never even heard of the islands before but after Googling them they look really fabulous and something that bit different. Definitely a place to put on your unusual destinations holiday list. I'm not surprised some families have had holiday homes on them for years and spend their whole summers there. They look beautiful. This is when the story started picking up a lot. Emil, who has had six months to recover and is doing extremely well, decides he wants his son for the summer, even though he has never spent time with him before, and he is also summering on one of the islands (very rich/his family owns the whole island). Hanna persuades Bell to give up her entire summer, no days off, to go with Linus and be a chaperone. But there's something not quite right with Hanna's easy acquiescence, and whilst Emil initially sounded like a bit of a tyrant there are definitely two sides to the story, and Bell did get a bit of a shock when she saw him and realised she'd met him before. Over the rest of the story there are lots of undercurrents between Hanna, Max and Emil, with the children and Bell in the middle of it. Emil trying to get to know his son again, his son not really knowing what is going on, and 'poor' Max stuck on the outside. But there was definitely something not quite right, which is slowly revealed as the story goes on. The only trouble was I didn't really like many of the main characters in the book, especially Hanna, although I did really like Bell's friends, and even Emil's snarky sister, Nina. So I've got really mixed feelings as I just couldn't warm to the characters, but the story was definitely much more intriguing and interesting in the second half, and quite unpredictable with various happenings when you really didn't know what the final outcome was going to be. It's certainly a book I'll remember though as it was just that bit different..

it was lovely story, a little far stretched and dramatic in some instances but I finished it feeling good and that I enjoyed that read.