By the end of this I had finally (I think) figured out all the characters and how they were related to each other. It would have helped if I had read the first book, I suspect. ( )

It's 1962, in the Suffolk countryside of England, and the Devereaux family is prospering and happy.

But Evelyn has a secret she's never told her beloved husband, Kit. Hope, Kit's sister, has never felt completely secure in her happiness, despite her loving husband, Evelyn's brother Edmund, her successful career writing children's books, and her adopted daughter, Annalise. Julia, married to the oldest Devereaux sibling, Arthur, has been trained most of her life, by her father and new by Arthur, to believe it's her duty to be obedient, and that anything that goes wrong is her fault.

The stepmother and matriarch of this family, Romily Devereaux-Temple, is a writer of crime fiction, and a former WWII pilot of of the ATA--the Air Transport Auxiliary. She's away, in Palm Springs in the US, to discuss a proposal to turn one of her books into a movie. Her housekeeper, Florence, is at home, though.

All of these women have secrets or insecurities. When poison pen letters start arriving, it disrupts all their lives.

Evelyn's secret dates back to World War II, and her time as a code breaker at Bletchley Park. Romily also has a secret, from her time in the ATA, that she has never fully faced up to herself, never mind revealed to anyone else. The other women are taunted with claims their husbands are unfaithful, and their insecurities make them vulnerable.

These are mostly good people, doing their best, and the bad guys are few, and, if not likable, at least recognizable and understandable. The network of relationships here is complex and strong.

This is a warm and satisfying listen. Recommended.

I bought this audiobook. ( )

A lot of viewpoint characters makes this quite confusing at first, though it would have been less so if I had re-read 'Coming Home to Island House' first. This is a sequel, set a couple of decades later (in 1962) albeit with a few flashbacks to the 1940s.

It basically involves one extended family, and other folk in their village, some of whom are receiving nasty letters. But there are a lot of subplots, including several romantic (or otherwise) relationships. It took me a while to get into the story and to remember who was whom, but by the time I was half-way through I was enjoying it and finding it hard to put down.

Recommended, if you like women's fiction and don't mind a large number of important characters.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2021/06/letters-from-past-by-erica-james.ht... ( )