I really loved this story of love and hope amongst heartbreaking events. It is truly a wonderful story and I know you will enjoy it as much as I did. I recommend this book. Amanda has such a unique gift of understanding and explaining everyday lives and events which makes the reader connect to the characters so easily. As I was reading the book I was matching some of the characters to people that I know in my life and the similarities were remarkable. Also some of the life experiences I have had were so well portrayed it was like the author could read my mind. The jilting is, quite simply, awful. She gets all spiffed up, takes a magical horse carriage ride to the church, where the vicar tells her Digby (! that's right - that's his name) isn't showing up. So, the groom let her get ready for the wedding - PAY for the wedding trappings, finery, and celebration, and then just didn't show up. When she confronted him later that day, his inadequate explanation hinted at his mother's meddling and highlights his immaturity and unsuitability to assume the mantle of marriage. Our devastated h is accosted by village people who simultaneously pity and chastise her for daring to think she'd be "living in the big house". The h, being very young, super sensitive, and self-conscious, knows she has to leg it out of there because she simply cannot stand to be the object of the town's attention, gossip, and pity. The sadness and grief is, at times, overwhelming. But it is also punctuated with some beautiful moments in Prowse's trademark style. Sometimes an author plops you down in an idyllic setting and surrounds you with a great cast of characters and it just feels right. In 𝐓𝐨 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 there isn’t a lot of action or steamy scenes, but once you meet Merrin and the Kellow family, you won’t want to leave the seaside village of Port Charles.

With a picturesque Cornish setting and strongly developed characters, Amanda Prowse delivers a story that soars through the peaks and valleys of the magnitude of love. Nineteen-year-old Merrin is happy in her beloved Port Charles, with its rugged Cornish coast and cragged shorelines. For generations, the men in her family were fishermen. She loves her special spot of Reunion Point and the village that faces the sea, and she believes in love. When her world suddenly falls apart, she bravely leaves her beloved community to heal her heart and escape embarrassment. The dialogue was fantastic! Thank you to Amanda Prowse for introducing me to some really fun new-to-me words! I've been laughing over "tuppence" ever since I read the book. 😆

Featured Reviews

Years pass as Merrin tries to regain her lost confidence. She has a relationship with a kindhearted, handsome chef, but her heart is still damaged, and she can’t fully invest in the relationship.

In principle, the plot is simple, the subject matter is nothing new, but it is so well written that it gives the feeling of reading something completely new. This is one of those stories whose reading leaves us with very beautiful and unforgettable emotional moments. This looks at various types of love. Merrin's parent's long-term love where they can't live without each other. The short-term love in the face of adversity that Bella experiences, the love that comes from Maturity (Ruby) and unrequited love with Mr & Mrs Mortimer. Each is a beautiful love story with some challenges that shows that love conquers all. This is one of the few times I don't have a favorite character because they all have something different to bring to the novel. They are varied, complex and unique in their characterization.

Initially, I loved this book, and I still do, but with some reservations. It is intense, emotionally. But, in places it is just too much. Was there ever a family as perfect as the Kellows? I would like to hope so, but probably not. When Ben dies the grief is overwhelming. There is no light, no laughter as the family shares memories. There are just copious amounts of tears. And the ending is very sudden, and for me was, considering Merrin's past, far too fast and unlikely. There possibly could not have been a better name for this one. We may, at times, take for granted the love we are surrounded with without realising that … "It is surely the best gift you can bestow upon one another: to love and be loved." Merrin was in love and excited to marry her beau, Digby. She could see her entire future with her family and Digby in Port Charles, Cornwall. It was her home, after all. But the day of the wedding leaves her shattered and vulnerable. Merrin leaves her home in the fishing village to rebuild her life. What worked for me: I am an unapologetic angst whore and there's a fairly constant stream of angst, largely coming from our h who seems to think that all anybody thinks or talks about is The Jilting. That assumption is supported to some degree by others in the story, but surely other awful events occasionally steal their focus?! Incidentally, that's also what *didn't* work for me because enough already. Shitty, horrible things happen and this was indeed one of them, but put on those big girl panties and move along. That level of self(h)-generated angst felt very YA/NA, which I have recently discovered I really just cannot stomach any longer. Another aspect that worked for me was the h's growth. Our delicate hothouse flower of an h does indeed grow and mature and her efforts are rewarded in the end. From a trusted advisor and devoted friend of Mother Teresa comes a “powerful” ( The Washington Free Beacon) firsthand account of the miraculous woman behind the saint and a book that is “rich in reflection on contemporary sanctity” (George Weigel).

Overall this book was about love. being in love and the consequences of love breaking down. The absolute heartbreak of a breakup was so well portrayed it brought tears to my eyes. I felt so much for the main character Merrin. I was hoping she would find her happy ending. How our roots and upbringing impact on our lives and choices were also beautifully explored. Merrin was madly in love, with her whole life mapped out with the man she adored, much to the envy of her older sister Ruby. However when he leaves her standing at the alter in her beautiful dress, and runs off, live in her gorgeous fishing village will never be the same. She can't cope with being the girl that everyone gossips about, so she leaves her beloved village and goes to work, and live, in a hotel several hours away. Her parents and Ruby are devastated, as is her best friend, although they do understand why she had to leave and make a life for herself elsewhere. THE AUTHOR: Amanda Prowse was a management consultant for ten years before realising that she was born to write. Amanda lives in the West Country with her husband and their two teenage sons. The happy ending was good, but bringing a new love interest in the last chapter somehow didn’t work for me. Given what Merrin repeats in the book, it felt surreal. I hold my hands up and say that Amanda Prowse as one of my favourite authors, she never fails to produce fantastic books and I’m always looking forward to any new books she writes..MY THOUGHTS: As with all of Amanda Prowse's books, To Love and Be Loved is a very emotional read. I had shredded a great number of tissues before I was a quarter of the way through! If only the worst Merrin had to worry about on her wedding day was the weather . . . This is my second book by the author which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I took my own sweet time because I wasn't ready to let go of the characters and their memories too soon. We love our pets. The relationship between a pet and its owner can also be symbiotic, especially when the pet shows the kind of attachment that comes so easily to some mammals. After I was widowed, my relationship with my bichon gave me something to replenish all the empty spaces that had been filled with love. In her Canine Cognition Laboratory, Yale professor Laurie Santos has demonstrated the unique bonds that dogs can have with their masters and mistresses; the Canine Cognition Laboratory at Duke has traced the sources of these bonds down to their chemical roots.

On the cusp of beginning the next chapter of her life, Merrin is convinced her life is headed in exactly the right direction. Merrin Kellow is young and vibrant. Merrin is marrying her person. The one that completes her. The one that makes her happy. The one that she loves, she is looking forward to marrying Digby Mortimer. Their families have a long history in their costal town town in Cornwall. She is the daughter of fisherman and Digby lives in the big house. In their community everyone knows everyone and it is the wedding of the year until it becomes something different. It changes everything for Merrin that she leaves the town she loves, the people she loves to rebuild all that she has lost. Due to the writing style you can feel yourself being immersed in the Cornwall scenery and the fishing village in which it is set, the story appears very slow at times and you find yourself lost at times within the timeline and how much time has passed, whereas the addition of a new love interest for Merry right at the end feels very rushed. Hurt and demoralized by the well-meaning village gossip, Merrin does the unthinkable and flees her home.I struggled to take a liking to the centre character Merry she can across as very self centred and self absorbed who was more worried about what others thought about her than anything else. The characters around her including her parents, sister Ruby and friends Jarv and Bella and their relationships were fantastically written and definitely added to the unfolding story and kept me reading till the end. Don't expect a fast paced book, you won't get it. To Love and Be Loved is a meandering and often sad read as Merrin spends a lot of time treading water, surviving rather than living. We love companions. The bonds of friendship are a special form of love, one in which we grow and share as our lives evolve. In navigating our mutual stresses and triumphs, sharing activities and tribulations, we come to appreciate each other’s strengths and grow from them. The “expansion theory of love” developed by Arthur and Elaine Aron can apply to friendships as well as romantic love relationships. Love is not something we "fall" into, claims Keen, but a complex art combining many skills and talents that take a lifetime to learn fully. At the center of his book are sixteen distinct "elements of love": ranging from attention --a precious gift we can bestow on co-worker, friend, child, and spouse alike--to more exclusive gifts like desire and sexuality . Combining stories, poems and quotes with insights from modern psychology and spiritual tradition, Keen brilliantly explores the elements of memory and solitude in love, the importance of both enjoyment and commitment , and how we can cultivate the essential qualities of empathy and compassion . Each piece ends with suggestions for strengthening our daily practice of the element, so that we constantly enlarge our ability to love in all our relationships. Author Jim Towey had been a high-flying Congressional staffer and lawyer in the 1980s until a brief meeting with Mother Teresa illuminated the emptiness of his life. He began volunteering at one of her soup kitchens and using his legal skills and political connections to help the Missionaries of Charity. When Mother Teresa suggested he take up shifts at her AIDS hospice, Towey realized he was all in. Soon, he gave up his job and possessions and became a full-time volunteer for Mother Teresa. He traveled with her frequently, arranged her meetings with politicians, and handled many of her legal affairs.