Starting Over at Acorn Cottage

When Clara Maxwell discovers that her boyfriend and her best friend have been betraying her behind her back, she does the only thing that feels like moving forward: she quits her job as a London bank manager, packs up her life, and drives to the sleepy Wiltshire village of Merryknowe, where she has impulsively bought Acorn Cottage.

The cottage of her dreams turns out to be less charmingly ramshackle than an outright hazard — and fixing it up will take far more than good intentions. Enter Henry Garnett, a kind, capable, and rather handsome contractor who arrives with his small daughter Pansy in tow, and a village full of warm, eccentric neighbours who slowly begin to feel like home.

Warm, gentle, and full of heart, Kate Forster's Starting Over at Acorn Cottage is an uplifting story about fresh starts, second chances, and the quiet magic of finding the place — and the people — where you belong.