Not All Farewells Are Forever
Evie Sutherland throws herself into everything. Like many on Scotland’s picturesque Orkney Islands, she works several jobs: managing her family’s shop, researching genealogy for tourists, and writing historical romance novels. Evie aces most challenges—except love. With a childhood diagnosis of Crohn’s disease and a disastrous dating history, Evie has convinced herself that guys won’t date the “sick girl” and the blame falls on the shoulders of her first love, a famous boy from London who spent his summers on her island.
To the outside world, Nikolai Balfour lives a charmed life. Starring in a popular British TV series as a teen, young Nick stole fans’ hearts from the Isle of Wight to Shetland. However, that was a lifetime ago, and the years since have been filled with “Didn’t you used to be…” moments, career wrong-turns, and empty relationships. Now finding success behind the cameras, Nick is still racked with regret and guilt over how things ended with the Orcadian girl he’d loved and left behind.
But when a television series filming in Orkney blows Nick back into Evie’s quiet life, they’re forced to face their heartbreaking past and revisit old secrets that should never have been kept.
Unfolding in alternating past and present timelines, A Smile in a Whisper is a touching story of first love and second chances, and the enduring summer memories that shape us.
Middleton (author of The Certainty of Chance) spices this dual-timeline teen and second-chance romance with heaps of Scottish character and a deeply compassionate approach to challenges in physical and mental health. On the Orkney Islands, shopkeeper’s daughter Evie Sutherland’s crush on television heartthrob Nick Balfour takes a jolting but delightful turn when she discovers that he has local family. More surprising still: despite her conviction that “dating me is such a freakin’ headache” due to complications from her Crohn’s Disease, Nick actually solicits her close friendship and eventually more. Her friends harbor mistrust about his behavior. That relationship ends badly, but years later, in the novel’s second timeline, Evie is forced to re-encounter Nick as the caterer for a television project he’s producing on the island, and both must decide if they’ll merely keep it cordial, or try to make it right.Middleton does a lovely job blending romance beats with the vividly realized setting, enticing readers with memorable local dialect and charming traditions like the annual Christmas ‘Ba game, all captured in brisk, buoyant prose that lights up the characters’ inner lives: “He strolled past the window, framing the sunset’s sherbet glow, and picked up the stuffed Loch Ness Monster from Evie’s desk.” She also rousingly dramatizes teen life for an adult audience, with aspects like the coveting of magazine centerfolds, group meetups at local events, rapid-fire changes in social dynamics, and lack of adult supervision all hitting a nostalgic sweet spot. Evie’s Crohn’s diagnosis is treated realistically in terms of teen embarrassment and implications for her social life, and nicely balanced with Nick’s secrecy about his own panic attacks.
The romance is sweet but politely lukewarm in both the teen and adult timelines, and readers will find it easy to move between the two story tracks. The two big mistakes Nick makes in the story get resolved without much suspense, but Middleton’s characterization stirs such fondness for the couple that the resolution satisfies.
Takeaway: Buoyant second-chance romance with Scottish flavor.
Comparable Titles: Jenny Colgan’s The Cafe by the Sea, Kerri Carpenter’s Come What Maybe.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
