The Girl on the Beach by Morton S. Gray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The title, The Girl on the Beach, and the gorgeous cover promise a certain amount of intrigue. I was surprised and thrilled by just how much intrigue Harry Dixon held for me. Harry stayed with me after the last page and does still. Proof of an immensely satisfying read. We have suspense, drama, a burgeoning romance that you are desperate to see flower but with so many obstacles in its path you wonder, how? Harry Dixon isn’t who he seems to be. Forced to change his identity after an undercover drugs operation that saw him a marked man, Harry can never reveal he was once Ben Rivers, the carefree surfer found beaten and supposedly drowned on a beach with no memory of how he got there; no recollection of the heated sex with the girl on the beach preceding his assault.
Single mother to teenager Tom, Ellie Golden remembers Ben, though, the man who touched her to the core. And Harry Dixon is too much like Ben Rivers for her heart or mind to ignore. After an abusive marriage that left her physically and emotionally scarred, her son traumatised, Ellie doesn’t trust easily. She certainly can’t trust a man, now headmaster at her son’s school, who isn’t who he claims to be. Nor can Harry trust Ellie with his secret even though her suspicions threaten to expose him. They both need to forget their former lives and move on, but the arrival of Ellie’s abusive ex-husband, a stark reminder of their shared past, isn’t going to allow that. There is another superb twist here, but … I think that would be a massive spoiler. I suspect you might have gathered that I was definitely intrigued and enmeshed in Harry and Ellie’s story hook, line and sinker. If you like your romance with a bit of bite, this is a book for you. Highly recommended.