The Sea Gate
by Jane Johnson
24 August 2026
I discovered that I could search the local library catalogue by the setting of the books and decided to pick out a couple of books set in Cornwall to read on my holiday there. I really enjoyed doing this!
The story begins with London-based Rebecca trying to sort out her mother’s house after funeral and discovering a letter from an elderly cousin in Cornwall asking for help. She decides to go off and see Cousin Olivia and the rest of the story flows from there and turns into a mostly two-threaded narrative with Rebecca’s modern day troubles switching turns in the limelight with the tales of Olivia’s teenage years during the second world war. It was a really engaging and well written tale, just what I wanted in holiday reading. Lots of good characters, and I definitely got what I was after from the setting.
There were also many happy endings (for the nice characters and not for the not-nice ones, Rebecca’s family were a hideous lot!) which also made it good holiday reading. I’d recommend it and will be looking for what else the author has written. And I’ll probably be searching for books by setting again since it was a novel way to uncover some different stuff and I often struggle to pick out and settle on a book to read.
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