Surrender Bay by Denise Hunter

A surprising inheritance fills Samantha Owens with burgeoning hope and sickening dread. While the rundown ocean front cottage on Nantucket Bay could signal the end of her financial worries, it also requires Sam to return to the very place where her childhood dreams were shattered, leaving her scarred, fearful and alone.

Reluctantly, Sam returns to Nantucket with her young daughter Caden hoping she can restore the cottage quickly and sell it for an attractive profit. Sam hadn't anticipated that Landon Reed, her childhood confidant, would be living in his parents' home, unmarried and still so much in love with her.

Sam is drawn to Landon's generous heart and the security he offers and yet she knows all the professed love in the world won't last when her betrayal all those years ago comes to light.

To call Surrender Bay just a romance novel, though it is that, is to sell it short. It is a beautiful love story that I literally could not put down. The setting is enticing, the characters complex and their emotions and heartache palpable. Sam epitomises an adult whose heart and mind has been scarred by a traumatic childhood. Her first thought is to protect herself no matter what the cost to others and yet is so appealing that I wanted to comfort her myself! And Landon is compassionate, faithful and protective while remaining a realistic character, a tribute to Denise Hunter's talent as a writer. Sam's choices and their consequences are painful to read, Landon's constancy is a joy and the romance is simply mesmerising.

God's love, faithfulness and the heartache He endures to draw us back in to relationship with Him is powerfully told in this story by way of allegory. Without any overt reference to God, Denise has turned the spotlight on the depth of God's love for His children in a story that will remain with you long after the last page is read.

I was so taken with Surrender Bay I have chosen it as one of my book club's selections for 2008.

Available now from Thomas Nelson.