HOMEQUAKE

Five children. One ex-husband next door. A house falling apart. And absolutely no room in the diary for falling in love.

At thirty-nine, Nóra Reilly has become exceptionally good at holding everybody else's life together.

She can manage five children, a complicated but remarkably functional relationship with her ex-husband, and a family emergency before most people have finished their morning tea.

Then the ground shifts beneath her home.

With her family suddenly displaced, Nóra turns to Fairview House, the ageing guesthouse overlooking Galway Bay that her late father left behind. It has a ballroom nobody can use, repairs nobody can afford, relatives with opinions about absolutely everything, and just enough safe rooms to offer the possibility of a fresh start.

What it doesn't have is a plan.

Enter Tomás Ward.

A sound engineer, devoted single father of three, and a man Nóra remembers from the days when she had dreams of singing onstage instead of organising everybody else's lives, Tomás arrives with a battered equipment case, a pink lunchbox, and a dangerously appealing ability to mind his own responsibilities.

Neither of them is looking for a complicated romance. Between eight children, two households, an impossible renovation and more calendars than any sensible couple should require, they barely have time for coffee.

But some people don't arrive to rescue you.

They remind you that you're allowed to want something for yourself.

As Fairview slowly comes back to life, Nóra must discover whether she can rebuild more than a house-and whether the fullest life might still have room for one more extraordinary love.

Warm, wonderfully funny and deeply romantic, HOMEQUAKE is a heartfelt Irish novel about blended families, starting over, finding your voice and learning that home isn't something one person has to hold together alone.alone.1