I actually read this book last year, just after New Year, and ate it all in just two days. It was my first read of 2021. A real page turner, first published in 2015 by Hachette Books Ireland.

Tilly a young lady with secrets, heads for Roone, a little island of the West of Ireland, three days before Christmas. She tells her adoptive parents that she is going somewhere else. Tilly, the eldest of three and the only adoptee, feels different from her siblings. After being told that they couldn’t have children Tilly’s parents were later blessed with two biological babies after Tilly. Having met her birth Mum, she wants to find the unnamed father on her birth cert and learns she has more than just a father off the west coast of Ireland, traveling with her suitcase and her teacher’s unborn child.

On the island of Roone is her biological older sister Laura, who not only doesn’t know Tilly, she doesn’t even know there is a Tilly. So, when this non-existent person comes to her door just before Christmas, it is a massive shock for her. Laura is struggling with her own issues and marriage hick ups, having bet breast cancer, the scare and the chemotherapy and mastectomy had an awful emotional effect on her. Laura and Tilly have an instant sisterly bond, both getting more than they expected for Christmas.

There is a lot more to the story and does Tilly and Laura’s father even know about Tilly? Or did he even care? Does this story have a fairy tale ending, or does Tilly get turned away?