Summer at the Garden Cafe: A Novel

Felicity Hayes-McCoy

Sep 2018 · Finfarran Peninsula Book 2 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

The second in Felicity Hayes-McCoy's Finfarran Peninsula series, and the sequel to The Library at the Edge of the World—a heartwarming story about secrets between four generations of Irish women, and the healing powers of books, love, and friendship.

The Garden Café, next to Lissbeg library, is a place where plans are formed and secrets shared, and where, even in high tourist season, people are never too busy to stop for a sandwich and a cup of tea. 

But twenty-one-year-old Jazz—daughter of the town’s librarian Hanna Casey—has a secret she can’t share. Still recovering from a car accident, and reeling from her father’s disclosures about his long-time affair, she’s taken a job at The Old Forge guesthouse, and begun to develop feelings for a man who’s strictly off-limits.

Meanwhile, involved in her own new affair with architect Brian Morton, Hanna is unaware of the turmoil in Jazz’s life—until her manipulative ex-husband, Malcom, reappears trying to mend his relationship with their daughter. Rebuffed at every turn, Malcolm must return to London, but his mother, Louisa, is on the case. Unbeknown to the rest of the family, she hatches a plan, finding an unlikely ally in Hanna’s mother, the opinionated Mary Casey.

Watching Jazz unravel, Hanna begins to wonder if secrets which Malcolm has forced her to keep may have harmed their beloved daughter more than she’d realized. But then, the Casey women are no strangers to secrets, something Hanna realizes when she discovers a journal, long buried in land she inherited from her great-aunt Maggie. Ultimately, it’s the painful lessons of the past that offer a way to the future, but it will take the shared experiences of four generations of women to find a way forward for Hanna and her family.

Ratings and reviews

I loved the first in this series, and getting to know the people on the peninsula and through the town of Lissbeg. Now, with the grand opening of the visitor center at the Lissbeg library, loaded with tech and a gift shop, all to house the Carrick Psalter, an illuminated manuscript recently donated to the library for display. This medieval manuscript with its vellum pages, calligraphy and vignettes that illustrate a single thought of each psalm is historically relevant and of the area – as scenes in the illustrations are often taken from the landscape of the area. But the grand opening aside, Jazz has mostly recovered from her accident, but has been denied medical clearance to resume her work as a flight attendant, so she’s working for a local B & B with Gunther, Susan and their daughter Holly. Frustrated with her father and his affair, her mother and grandmother ‘covering it up’, and herself for believing in her father’s infallibility, she’s also struggling with the aftermath of her accident and her nerves about driving again. Add to that mix her paternal grandmother Louisa, coming for an extended stay from her large home in Kent, Jazz thinks that everyone is out to ‘reconcile’ her with her father and push her into a more ‘suitable’ career. But the B&B work suits her, and Susan {a local girl} and Gunther {her German tourist husband} are welcoming the help with the increase in business – while still having their goat’s milk products business that is a steady source of income, albeit much work. We get to meet a newer family with Ameena and her parents, and the challenges of being the only Pakistani family in the area, and Ameena’s application to work in the gift shop at the library, and her worries for her mother’s isolation: not confident in her English skills, but knowing that her daughter will soon be off to university and greener pastures, there is change in the air. Of course, we have Conor and his girlfriend / crush Aideen, partners with Brid in HabberDashery – the café that provides food for the Convent Café, catering and treats for all. Aideen and Conor have plenty of challenges, most self-inflicted, that will have to be sorted. Hanna is still butting heads with her mother, although her house is everything she wanted, and the bookmobile routes as well as her masterminding the Psalter’s donation to infuse capital into the Lissbeg end of Finfarran, and not just be spent on high-tourist areas already booming. Hanna’s tendency to hold on to grudges, overthink and play the push-pull game is better suited to a teen, but when she discovers an old, hand-bound diary left by Mary Casey, she’s finding answers and more questions to her father’s family history. Brian is still about, gently dithering, back and forth with welcome and keep away flipping back and forth like clouds scudding across the sky. There aren’t huge “aha’ moments here, for this tale winds through multiple people, all coming back to find a welcome, advice, sympathy and even tough talk – with plenty of moments from past and present, shame and sorrows, worries and celebrations. Unfolding quietly along with the season, there is a quiet calmness in between moments of strife, where choices, awakenings and beginnings find a way to find their light and set the characters on a path with new hope, or even new insight. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via Edelweiss for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

About the author

Irish author Felicity Hayes-McCoy built a successful UK-based career as an actress and writer, working in theatre, music theatre, radio, TV, and digital media. She is the author of two memoirs, The House on an Irish Hillside and A Woven Silence: Memory, History & Remembrance, in addition to an illustrated book Enough Is Plenty: The Year on the Dingle Peninsula. She and her husband divide their time between London and Ireland.