The Cold Cold Sea by Linda Huber

Val Penny ♦ August 10, 2020 ♦ 2 Comments

I have always enjoyed books by Linda Huber and I had had The Cold, Cold Sea in my TBR pile for far too long. I suppose lockdown had to be good for something, I made a dent into the bundle!

The Blurb

Maggie stared across the beach. The tide was coming in. But where was her daughter?

When three-year-old Olivia disappears from the beach, a happy family holiday comes to an abrupt end. Maggie is plunged into the darkest nightmare imaginable – what happened to her little girl?

Further along the coast, another mother is having problems too. Jennifer’s daughter Hailey is starting school, and it should be such a happy time, but the child has become moody and silent. Family life has never seemed so awkward, and Jennifer struggles to maintain control.

The tide ebbs and flows, and summer dies, but there is no comfort for Maggie, alone now at the cottage, or for Jennifer, still swamped by doubts.

My Review

The Cold, Cold Sea tells two desperately sad stories, each is about the loss of a child and how it affects the families involved and how they react to their devastating grief and lives going forward. The school teachers become involved too and are crucial to the resolution for the families

About half way through this book, I thought the story was too obvious and nearly set it aside. However, I had read this author’s work before and guessed she would have a twist to come.

Indeed she did! What a twist it was!. I do not want to say anything that would spoil the story for other readers, suffice to say that every member of both families tries to make the best of the hand they are dealt. This is a clever book with a human touch. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it. I think this book would make an excellent book group read.

The Author

Linda Huber is an ex-physiotherapist who grew up in Glasgow but has lived over half her life in Switzerland, where she writes psychological suspense novels as Linda Huber as well as feel-good novellas under her pen name Melinda Huber.

The inspiration for her books comes from everyday life – a family member’s struggle with dementia, the discovery that a child in her extended family drowned in the 1940s, and more.

Val Penny