A Malteser anyone?

Book Review – Summer on a Sunny Island by Sue Moorcroft



The first pages of this book transported me back 40+ years ago when I took my first holiday abroad.  I stayed in Mehelia Bay, Malta and visited both of my penfriends – one on the mainland and the other on the island of Gozo.  This memory came flooding back as I vividly remembered the scene Sue Moorcroft was describing of Sliema.



Before long I was swimming in the sea with Rosa and Zach as they and the local youth were on a plastic clearing mission.  As it was a very hot day I sat on a sun-bed in my garden during whatever day it was of this seemingly never-ending lockdown, I realised how much I was missing donning my swimming costume and being immersed in cool water.  The thought of holidaying abroad this year has long gone but even to go to my local leisure centre is curtailed for now.



So I read on with delight having visited Mosta, Valletta and Sliema I could imagine the streets, sounds, smells and tastes that Rosa and Zach would be experiencing, along with the tingling of a budding new relationship.



As the weather in my garden warmed up to the hottest May since records began so too did this sunny island tale.  Romance had not been on Rosa’s agenda when she escaped the broken relationship with Marcus in the UK.  A career break, with her mother who was engaged in making delicious food and writing a cook book, gives Rosa time to think about her future.



The apartment block in the book where Zach and his sister and niece live too, is very much in keeping with my penfriend’s home and every time the stairs and balconies were mentioned I was back there meeting Mary’s family, going up onto the roof space and having lunch with them in a dining room in their apartment.



Even when Zach’s other family members turn up I was transported back 20 years when on a New Year’s eve in Cyprus where I was living in a similar two bedroom apartment, like Zach, I had to find beds for friends and family members who had made a ‘surprise’ visit, which actually was more of a shock than surprise for me!



Weaved through the book is a character of suspect, a young man Zach cares about.  He turns up in unexpected places and holds an air of mystery.  He’s elusive and seems to be playing into the hands of an unsavoury gang leader.



Also sprinkled throughout the book are glimpses of castles, beaches, harbours and restaurants.  Zach gives Rosa a tour of historic places and explains their 16^th century lives or gruesome story of long ago battles.  I had thought they might have visited Mosta’s domed church where, in the centre, was an unexploded German bomb – no doubt made safe – and enclosed behind railings.  A sight I will never forget.



I slowed my reading towards the end as I didn’t want to leave Malta or the families I had got involved with.  Zach and his family get into quite a tangled mess and Rosa has some hard decisions about her future to make.  I crept towards the ending which certainly doesn’t disappoint.  You know when you cry at the end of a film you’ve been watching? - well it was like that for me.



Thank you, Sue Moorcroft, for another fabulous read.  2020 will be remembered not only for the Lockdown but for a fictional re-visit to Malta in a Summer on a Sunny Island.