Spotlight & Giveaway: The House of Hidden Letters by Izzy Broom

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Izzy Broom to HJ!

Hi Izzy and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The House of Hidden Letters!

Hey, everyone!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The House of Hidden Letters is a dual-narrative novel set on the small island of Folegandros in Greece. It follows Skye, a former teacher who leaves her London life behind after entering a €1 lottery and winning a crumbling house on the island. Her new home is one of five abandoned since the end of the World War II, now being offered as part of a restoration scheme. Soon after her arrival, Skye discovers a bundle of letters hidden inside the fireplace, writings from a time when Folegandros was under Italian and German occupation. As the island’s wartime secrets begin to surface, Skye must confront her own past and face an enemy every bit as real as those described in the letters. At its heart, The House of Hidden Letters is a story about love in its many forms – the kind that endures, the kind that heals, and the kind that asks for courage. It’s about finding light in the shadows of the past, and the strength that comes from connection and community.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

Before war arrives on Folegandros, our past heroine, Katerina, has an attitude that is defiance bordering on foolhardiness, as she belittle the occupiers and the armies behind them. Later, however, she writes to her absent lover about how her world view has changed:

There was a time when I believed that death marked the beginning of a journey, one that would carry the soul from this world to another. Today, I fear that I was wrong. How can death lead to beauty when it is this brutal? How is pain considered a pathway to any form of salvation?

My heart broke for Katerina as I wrote these lines.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• When my agent was negotiating the deal for this book, I was actually in Thailand, where I spent a month volunteering at an animal sanctuary. I celebrated the news not with a Champagne toast, but by chopping fruit at 5am for primates.
• When I chose the name Elpida for one of the only Greek characters who appears in both the past and present narrative strands, I did so at random, because I thought the name was beautiful. A few months later, when I visited Folegandros, the first thing I did was go to a café for coffee and cake, where I talked at length to the waitress. Her name? You guessed it – Elpida! Don’t you just love it when the universe serves up these magical moments?
• The island of Folegandros has a colourful history – including that it was once a place of asylum for political exiles from larger Greek islands, such as Crete. So, in a sense, it’s the perfect place for a runaway to end up…

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

For Andreas, the connection is instant. He sees Skye and is drawn in by her beauty and fragility. Both characters have suffered a great loss and recognise this in the other long before they’re aware of each other’s backstory. Skye’s affection for Andreas grows slowly. Nothing matters more for her than trust – and that has to be earned. Andreas, for all his stubbornness, positively radiates kindness. He is loyal yet pragmatic, strong but reserved. Not perfect by any means. Who wants a perfect character anyway? Give me all the shdes of grey, please!

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

It’s often not the big, emotional scenes that get to me. I think because I approach those in such a forensic way with the writing. Sometimes, however, a moment can pop up and surprise me with its power. For example, in The House of Hidden Letters, I have a scene where Katerina stumbles across the body of a woman who has starved to death:

She did not stir when the man knelt to untie her boots, did not flinch as the boy’s eager fingers tore a silver brooch from her shawl.

There is something so wretched and devastating about this scene. It reminded me of what war does to a place and its people.

Readers should read this book….

…to feel hopeful. Even in the darkest of times, there is always light – a chance to change things, to repair, to learn, to forgive. The world can feel scary and certainly does at the time of me writing this, yet I believe in the power of positivity and kindness. People are not inherently bad for the most part, and I know it’s a cliché to say we have more in common than that which divides us, but it’s true. Connection and community will always be a better path forward than isolation and divisiveness, and I hope this story teaches that. It will also give you a hankering to visit Greece!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m currently editing a second novel set on the island of Folegandros, featuring the same set of characters and plenty of new ones, too. The House Of Broken Promises, as it’s titled, will be out in spring 2027. In the meantime, I will be getting along with a third book in the series – and this one is shaping up to be bigger and more ambitious than anything I’ve written yet.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One finished copy of THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN LETTERS (U.S. only, 18+)

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Where would a $1 property lottery need to be located in order to tempt you into entering?

Book Info:

For sale: Greek cottage. One euro.

Skye MacKinnon is desperate for an escape. When she wins a lottery to buy a run-down cottage on a Greek island for only one euro, Skye jumps at the chance to get out of England and start over. As she unlocks the tattered blue door of her whitewashed new cottage, the sun-kissed sea glinting in the bay outside her windows, Skye immediately feels like she’s found her true home.

Skye and the other lottery winners—the first residents in these houses since the 1940s—form a tight-knit group, finding in one another the strong relationships they’d been missing in their own lives. When Skye and local contractor Andreas find a set of mysterious letters, they begin to unravel the history of the prior residents, and the truth about life on Folegandros during World War II.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Izzy Broom is the author of twelve romances and has been published in fourteen markets. In 2015, she won The Great British Write Off with her short story, The Wedding Speech, which was later adapted into a prize-winning short film. Her fifth novel, One Thousand Stars and You, was awarded Contemporary Romance Novel of the Year at the 2019 RNAs. Formerly a Book Reviews Editor at Heat magazine and Woman & Home, Isabelle still works regularly for a series of UK magazines. She lives in Suffolk.
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