WHEN YOU LOVED ME returns readers to Winthrop Island. Lucy has to face her past, and perhaps her future, that revolves so much around the island and the recent death of her father.
There's a story within a story as chapter flashbacks to colonial 1717 provide important context for the modern storyline.
Love, betrayal, heartache, and redemption are major themes in the story. A pirate's loot haul adds motivation, intrigue, and mystery as well.
Many times, readers will feel both crestfallen and hopeful during scenes. The end is exciting, and the momentum is retained throughout powerful scenes.
WHEN YOU LOVED ME displays Williams' prowess as an author and master storyteller. She deftly weaves past and present into a story that leaves no loose ends. She also uses a few repeated characters, as she explains in her helpful author's note.
A young widow returns to her late father’s New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life, in this thrilling and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Husbands & Lovers.“Utterly transporting . . . one of the most gorgeous love stories I’ve read in a long time.”—Emily Giffin Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: The property is mired in debt she can't repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.Thirteen summers ago, the teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy’s best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy’s life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career, Ben has returned to live quietly in the Peabodys' caretaker lodge. He’s also the last person who saw Lucy's father alive.As Lucy reconstructs her father's troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal from the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy's long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can.
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