The Forever House- Veronica Henry

Veronica Henry is one of my favourite authors and I loved immersing myself in the history of Hunters Moon in Peasebrook. Sally and Alexander are facing the heartbreaking decision to sell their ‘Forever’ home due to personal circumstances and we hear all about their early courtship and the house that has been in Alexander’s family for a long time.

Sally agrees to use Belinda’s estate agency to sell their house because she likes to find the perfect house for her clients and  dresses them for their sales so that the full potential can be seen and they can imagine their lives in a beautiful house.

I loved the history of how the house came to mean so much to them- and the book was like my own little pocket of a magical escape into a dreamworld the whole time I was reading. It truly captured my imagination.

The story of the open weekend to allow potential purchasers to view the house reminded me of my personal dream of a ‘forever house’. My husband’s grandma owned the most beautiful house with it’s own coach house and every Christmas a huge stunning Christmas Tree would stand in the entrance hall and enchant me.  It had servants bells in the kitchen and had been most recently used as his Grandpa’s gp surgery. They had a tennis court in the back garden and his mum played at Junior Wimbledon, The whole history of the house just seemed so magical to me. I think I only stayed there once – but we had a room with patchwork quilts and that just completed the perfection in my eyes!

The neighbouring houses were nursing home and the owners snapped up his grandparents house when they decided they needed to downsize. When they decided to sell many years later , they held an open day and we tagged along to have a nose, luckily not having to prove that we could afford it! A lot of the people there were doing the same- as the architect was well known in the district. Unfortunately I didn’t win the lottery that weekend- so it was destined never to become our Forever House! But we can all dream

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My own personal dream home- our children enjoyed playing in the huge gardens and posing for photos on the huge sprawling staircases and even being shown up the little stairs to the attic rooms.

The back of the house overlooked magnificent sprawling gardens with steep slopes for little children to run down and well worn paths to sit down with cousins for even more photos to be taken. The drawing room had a piano which the grandchildren loved to gather round and the fires had embroidered fire guards which are presently sitting in my inlaws dining room!

The coach house which they once wanted to convert to a guest room. I was totally dazzled by this house when I first met my husband. Indeed his grandma let us have one of the antique clocks that hung on the walls because I so openly admired it!

I love books that transport you into a dreamworld and loved this chance to revisit many happy memories of a house that could become a Forever House for anyone who spent time there.