The Forest Hideaway by Sharon Gosling

Hidden away in Cumbria’s Gair Forest is the most romantic setting, a ruined castle. It’s a haven for local history lovers and a once in a lifetime project for architect Saskia Tilbury Martin. She’s finding it difficult to get a builder to take the project on so Owen is her last hope and she’s already running late to meet him. She knows that she’s overdressed for the great outdoors and she’s had to borrow her friend’s BMW sports car because her trusty Land Rover is in the garage. In a way this is Owen’s last chance too. Previously in the forces, he has been a builder for a number of years but the business is struggling and he knows he’s not pulling his weight with wife Tasha and their gorgeous little girl. They have debts and if he doesn’t take this job he’s looking at failure, but when Saskia turns up with her sports car, three inch heels and double-barrelled name he’s isn’t impressed. Especially since she’s an hour late. He dismisses her as a rich girl throwing her money around. However, when she gets the plans out he can’t help but be intrigued. Saskia assures him that she wants to preserve what’s here, to leave the ruin looking as it does now but create a number of platforms inside to house her living spaces. She even intends to leave the slightly dilapidated oak tree growing in the centre of the castle, with a glass roof that can open in good weather. She doesn’t tell him that she’s the architect because other builders have been unsure about working with an unproven architect before. Owen takes the night to think about it, but when she offers him ten grand up front to get started he knows he can’t turn her down. Saskia reflects that they don’t have to like each other, they just have to be a good professional team for the project and save this beautiful building that holds so many memories for her. 

Owen soon finds he has assumed a lot about Saskia. When he sees the cabin she tows onto the site with her Land Rover back on the road, he thinks it’s an affectation to need a whole kitted out living space for when she’s here in the day. The builders have to make do with bare sectional buildings with no comforts. When he’s there early one morning, he’s surprised to see her appear from the cabin in her old denim shirt and her hair tied back, all set to walk her dog. She’s living in the cabin when he’s assumed she had a boutique hotel booked for the duration of the build. I wouldn’t have blamed her, having half my house out of bounds for building work at the moment I’d give anything for a couple of nights in a nice hotel! The truth is Saskia doesn’t have many people or places she could say feel like home. Her inheritance is from a grandparent and she has no relationship with her mother, instead she has best friend Vivian. Owen isn’t doing any better on the family front, Tasha has put up with a lot and has decided that their relationship just isn’t working anymore and he’s bunking down with friend and fellow builder Stuart. I found Saskia interesting and loved that she had a dream she was seeing through. She seems very sure of her ability and has confidence in her design which I found inspirational because I’m not confident and I’m rubbish at finishing projects. I admired that perseverance because she isn’t just hanging around waiting for life to happen. Owen’s life path felt more passive, despite seeing different parts of the world his life hasn’t been his own, it belonged to the army. He’s also drifted in his relationship. It clearly hasn’t been right for some time and Tasha tells him that his long absences on detachment meant they never really built a life together. As soon as he left the army and was home full time, they could both see their differences. Neither of them have tried to address the decline and now it’s too late. Maybe he needs to spend some time with Saskia because her self-reliance and determination could inspire him. 

The setting is absolutely stunning. I love the Lakes, a love that was awakened again on a recent visit. I loved the idea of taking such a romantic ruin and making it into a home without taking away any of the decay that makes it so picturesque, the beauty being tied up with its imperfection. The isolation is fascinating too. I used to live in a large house in the middle of nowhere and friends would be aghast that I didn’t shut my curtains or check that all five doors were properly locked every night. Saskia isn’t afraid of the isolation either and I liked that about her. The history of the site is important too, both Saskia’s link to it but also the local history buff’s attachment to the building. So far they haven’t even given Saskia a chance, stating they want Gair preserved as it is without realising that’s exactly what she’s trying to do. I loved the idea that there are:

‘Two types of history here […] the castle ruins, the ancient oak tree. They both have worlds within them”.

This is so true because they hold the history of many people over centuries, enduring every new generation and what they bring. When we think about it like that it’s clear that making it a home again is exactly the right thing to do, reintroducing humans to the building and the nature surrounding it. I thought the added intrigue of Roman ruins under castle was fascinating and I was again impressed that Saskia had thought of this and ordered drone scans of the castle and underneath to see what the layers of soil revealed. I was hoping the local history lovers would give her a chance if she tried to her plans to them. 

There is a ‘will they, won’t they’ to this couple’s relationship and while a touch of romance is always nice it isn’t the main focus here. Owen slowly comes round to Saskia once he’s realised how much of his assessment of her was based on assumptions. She isn’t a rich girl playing at property development. Owen doesn’t know himself as well as Saskia does and part of that is because of his years in the army. It takes time after coming out, to get to know the person inside and decide what you want the rest of your life to look like. I imagined that if Tasha hadn’t been brave enough to say something that morning, Owen would have drifted along for years in an unfulfilling marriage never knowing any different. His growing inner world was very well written as he learns to read other people better and how to be a responsible co-parent with Tasha for the future. Whereas Saskia has worked on herself and needs Gair to be her home, somewhere to feel grounded. When she needs support she checks in with Vivian and I loved this idea of ‘found family’, the people you choose to support and sustain you in life when the family you’re born with can’t. They aren’t an obvious match and this is not one of those books that ends with a big fairytale wedding. We just have the sense that they’re gradually moving towards each other as the build progresses and they learn how to be a team. The oak tree felt like a metaphor for both these people, but also for life in general. It’s not the most beautiful tree, in fact part of it has been hit by lightning and someone had an abandoned attempt at pruning it once, very badly. Despite these setbacks the oak has kept growing, not in the most beautiful shape but still reaching for the sky. This is the perfect, cozy, autumnal read.

Out now from Simon & Schuster Uk

Meet the Author

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, which is now a distressingly long time ago! I started out as an entertainment journalist – actually, my earliest published work was as a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books. I went on to become a staff writer and then an editor for print magazines, before beginning to write non-fiction making-of books tied in to film and television, such as The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful and Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film. 

I now write both children’s and adult fiction – my first novel was called The Diamond Thief, a Victorian-set steampunk adventure book for the middle grade age group. That won the Redbridge Children’s prize in 2014, and I went on to write two more books in the series before moving on to other adventure books including The Golden Butterfly, which was nominated for the Carnegie Award in 2017, The House of Hidden Wonders, and a YA horror called FIR, which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year Award in 2018. My last children’s book (to date) is called The Extraordinary Voyage of Katy Willacott, and was published by Little Tiger in 2023. 

My debut adult novel, The House Beneath the Cliffs, was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. Since then I’ve written three more: The Lighthouse Bookshop, The Forgotten Garden, and The Secret Orchard, which is out in September 2024. My adult fiction tends to centre on small communities – feel-good tales about how we find where we belong in life and what it means when we do. Although I have also published full-on adult horror stories, which are less about community and more about terror and mayhem…

I was born in Kent but now live in a very small house in an equally small village in northern Cumbria with my husband, who owns a bookshop in the nearby market town of Penrith.

From Sharon’s Amazon Author Page 28th August 2023