Secrets on the Shore (Taylor and Rose mini adventure)

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Her particular skills see her posted to London and then to her home area of Helford and her working with the special units preparing for a distant invasion of France. The teams she must work with are drawn from several nations and departments. It is part of Merry’s duties to help weld those different parts into a single functioning team. The teams themselves are engaged in long-range supply to forces in Brittany and the landing and evacuation of specialist personnel. Set in the Second World War, the novel tells the Merry’s story. Merry is a mapmaker, and she also teaches at Oxford University where she hopes to continue teaching after the war. Her map making skills take her to London where she works in secret making and reading maps and aerial surveillance. This kind of work, and the women who performed it, is rarely mentioned in history books, so that alone was interesting. When you tie it in with Merry’s missing mother who happens to be French and thought to have defected, and Merry’s unwillingness to find love because it will ruins her career chances, you have an absolutely unputdownable book. I found it sad that an academic woman living in the 1940s would be forced to choose between her work as a lecturer and her personal life- if a woman married that was the end of her career and Merry was having to choose despite being every bit as intelligent as all the men around her.

Then there’s the romance – ah when she meets an American officer, her world opens up even further and this was a lovely part of her journey. Set in Cornwall, this book also offers great escapism whilst also having a compelling plot. A winning combo really. Merry meets Jake Russell, a handsome American Lieutenant, and despite her resolve to put her career first she gradually falls for him. Merry thinks to herself: ‘Any map of us would involve an ocean and that never made for happy endings.’The romance is important too! I didn’t realise how invested I was in Merry and Jake as a couple until I cried.

merry is such a wonderful character , finding her way during the war in Cornwall as a mapmaker whilst knowing her mother has disappeared. No, ‘Drowning in Secrets’ is not based on a true story. Its realistic nature can be attributed to the nuanced performances by the actors and the effective writing of Jacob Cooney and Jason White. However, the story suggests that the writing team seemingly took inspiration from numerous real-life incidents where women have gone missing while boating or at sea, like the disappearance of Sarm Heslop. She went missing while aboard a catamaran named the Siren Song in the US Virgin Islands. The vessel belonged to Sarm’s boyfriend, the Charter Captain Ryan Bane, who later informed the authorities. This is a story which is both heartwarming and tragic as Merry and Jake are living through a terrible war where no one’s future is certain. I loved the descriptions of Cornwall, obviously a place the author is very well acquainted with and it really made me keen to visit again to see some of the scenery and places described so well.. The Secret Shore was an incredible read. It awakened all my senses. It was a celebration of the women in war who were so very brave, whether on the home front or working. I am sad that it is now ended.Merry’s a fabulous character and carries the story oh so well. Making a choice to give up on love and marriage to forge her career in academia, her no-nonsense and pragmatic exterior hides a warm-hearted woman. Keeping in mind that this is a time when you couldn’t have both a career and a marriage, this is a huge sacrifice that she hasn’t made lightly. Prejudices are clear to see when she’s introduced to service personnel. Just when you think you have read every possible book about the Second World War and the role women played with it, you discover something you didn’t know anything about. Here is that book for me – mapmaking. Even better when it comes from an author who you love. But Merry is the sum of two strong parents with ‘one foot on the land and one on the sea.’ Her father said she was a strange mix of them, loving land as he did and the sea as her mother had. Merry learned a lot from her parents, particularly to never give up. The influence of family is evident in The Secret Shore including from a devoted sibling relationship. Merry and her brother, Ollie, are very close. It was he who inspired her to take up mapmaking. This bright and cheery airman has so much to offer but like others, becomes caught in the battle—doing his part in the war. Heartache will visit Merry again. And her moving statement will forever haunt my heart. ‘I already knew what it was like to love what death touched.’

The Secret Shore is brimming with exceptional descriptions that whisked me away to the daisy heads peering through fields of long grass and the well-hidden smugglers’ path overgrown—all the beauty of the Cornish coastline. We are reminded of the tales of the boats hiding in the creek and how it may have inspired Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek. There are other lovely literary references, too. And the Cornish people’s spirituality ‘that don’t require works or rituals but actions and belief’. Liz delivers not only unforgettable characters and a riveting plot, but the magic sprinkle of picturesque settings in stunning detail set my senses on high alert. I was drawn into the story and completely immersed to the point I forgot everything around me. Meredith's brother is convinced that their mother is dead after her bicycle and artists paint box are found .... and then a few weeks later loses his life when his plane is shot down . Cornwall was beautifully described and i recognised so many places of my beloved home county in this read , which always makes me happy .

Hartford, Connecticut

When her widowed French mother goes missing from their Cornwall home, Fleming sends Merry down to the coast to investigate and also to look into a group of his men who are performing missions transporting goods and people to and from Brittany from Cornwall. Merry wants some field experience and this seems the perfect opportunity. Other cast members of ‘Drowning in Secrets’ include Alec Nevin (Peyton Brown), Laura Poe (Emma Caldwell), David Chokachi (Stanton), D.C. Douglas (Caleb Brown), Jason London (Mayor Peter Sullivan), Forest Quaglia (Brayden), and Hannah Dannelly (Bree). Is Drowning in Secrets a True Story? Overall, I would have preferred the novel to be shorter and tighter and not have all these side issues that went nowhere. I would also have liked to have learned more specifics about exactly what Merry did for all those months in Cornwall, as I didn't get a real feel for her contribution.