I found this book to be something of a 'curate's egg.'.as they say 'good in parts'. We begin our tale as Gally and Mike drive around the countryside looking at houses for sale in the west of England. The couple are grieving for the child Gally has recently miscarried. She is a mass of anxieties and neuroses; some as a reaction to her recent experiences,and others she has carried with her since losing her father in a terrible accident. Mike is doing everything in his power to help her, at no small cost to himself. As they approach a hold up in the road caused by an elderly man narrowly avoiding being run over by a truck, Gally finds herself inexplicably overcome by distress and panic, causing them to take a rapid detour via a nearby village. This detour turns out to be a crucial event as they come across a run down cottage ..Mike can see at once how much work would be involved in making it inhabitable but for Gally there is something about the place that she is drawn to; something that makes her feel at home in a way she has never felt before. Looking around the old ruin, an elderly man suddenly appears..and for Gally it is a momentous meeting. She can't explain it even to herself, but she recognises something in him..something that calms her and intrigues her . This man, we learn, is Ferney.. In the course of the book we are told that Galley and Ferney have met before; indeed they have loved each other in more than one lifetime. We follow them through history as they meet and part and meet and part again..and we watch how Gally's present day marriage begins to be affected by her relationship with this outwardly elderly man. And finally Gally is reminded of a decision they made in the past..a decision that could change her future forever should she decide to honour it.. I loved the description of the countryside and the historical detail. I also am a sucker for the idea of the 'split-apart'; the couple separated by time and space,destined to be together. But where things slightly fell down for me was in the characterisation of Gally herself. I feel slightly guilty in that she was grieving and therefore entitled to be unhappy..but for me I felt she was self-centred and unsympathetic. I felt sorry for her husband who,out of love, had given up a dream job in the USA just to take care of her, and who,I felt was being totally short-changed. The difficulty with a love affair that the protagonists are 'powerless to resist' as Ferney and Gally's might be characterised, is that there's almost always somebody who gets hurt..and I didn't want that for Mike. He didn't deserve it.. As the book draws to a close Mike and Gally are still married, but it isn't as simple as that..I look forward to reading the sequel 'The Lives She Left Behind 'and finding out if they have a future together.

This is a review of both Ferney and its sequel The Lives She Left Behind. While Mike and Gally Martin are looking for a country home they stumble across a ramshackle cottage to which Gally feels strangely drawn. The whole village seems familiar to her and Ferney, an old man who wanders the local countryside, seems particularly keen to get to know her. Gally feels a mounting connection to the cottage and to Ferney, who must wait patiently until she is ready to hear and accept the truth about their relationship. The Lives She Left behind continues the story of some of the characters in the first novel and sees the underlying idea of Ferney come to fruition. These are really difficult books to write about as there is so much I could give away and I don't want to spoil them for future readers. Will do my best, but please forgive me for any accidental slips. The books don't fit into any single genre - a mix of romance, historical novel and ghost story is probably the easiest interpretation. But though I like, and read a lot of, these separate genres, I didn't that these books were a successful mix of the three as it meant there was too much going on for the plot and characters to remain credible - even when suspending disbelief as much as possible. My main problem with the books, from which my other issues spring, is that I didn't find the two leads likeable. I found them selfish and careless of the damage they do to the lives of others, so much so that I just wanted them to go off and leave everyone else alone. I didn't feel that we ever see what it is that these two characters love about each other - they seem to be together through force of habit rather than through choice. They are cruel to everyone else and rationalise this as being ok as it's due to the enormous love they have for each other. I couldn't agree. The setting of the books is well done, and I enjoyed the discussions that pop up from time to time about the pagan versus the Christian world, and the development of country life across the years into village and then town dwelling. I didn't find the historical flashbacks all that successful though, perhaps as we plunge into and out of them so quickly, meaning there's no time to acclimatise. I assume this is a device to bring home to us the relevant characters' confusion about the historical background, but I found it made me a little cross and meant that I started to skip the historical passages. I slightly preferred the second novel, The Lives She Left Behind, to the first as I liked some of the supporting cast of characters better and enjoyed the scenes at the archaeological dig. However, I found the ending a bit too pat, with too much effort to tie up all the ends. Some terrible, cruel things are done by some characters to the others, which to my mind would leave scars or at least grudges, but by the end much of it seems forgotten. This doesn't match what I know of human nature. All this makes me seem that I have no romance in my soul and that I have no truck with anything that isn't entirely rational. This definitely isn't the case, but I believe a great love such as that portrayed should make the lovers kinder and more understanding to those around them, rather than what I saw happening in the books. Those who like a bit of mystery and the supernatural with their romance will love these books. I struggled with them for the reasons given above and am glad I've finished having to read about the selfishness and cruelty of some of their characters.