The Secrets of Harbour House by Liz Fenwick - following her father's death in a cycling accident, Kerensa returns to her native Cornwall to sort out his estate, help her grieving and ailing mother, and also wind up the estate of 2 women artists, who both died within a few weeks of each other, and whose work was little known, though when they did sell a piece it usually sold for quite a bit of money. Kerensa is fascinated by a portrait of a beautiful woman in the house of the title, and tries to find out more, especially her identity,and so we get the subject's back story, and the book follows two timelines, the present day and the mid 1930s, when we first meet one of the artists, Bathsheba (Sheba) Kernow, who travels on the Orient Express to Paris and Venice to follow in her late mother's footsteps. On the train she meets a woman who beguiles her, but it's when they meet again in Venice that their story really starts. At a time when such relationships were forbidden for both men and women, they have to be very careful, especially as Sheba's new love is married, to a cold controlling husband who is a poet trying to gain favour with Mussolini and Hitler, both of whom feature, thankfully briefly, i in thebook. Meanwhile back in the present Kerensa's return to Cornwall isn't looked on happily by her uncle, who ran the family auction house with her father, or her partner Paul, who wants her back in London as soon as possible as he can't live without her, but once she starts to find discrepancies in her father's financial affairs, she has no choice but to stay in Cornwall to sort things out. So the main themes of this book are family mysteries and dynamics, forbidden love and controlling men, and this was were the book fell down for me, for most of the male characters were so two dimensional I wanted to hiss whenever they appeared! It was an OK read but not that convincing though the settings are lovely and the artistic references , to both real and fictitious writers and artists, were also interesting. 7/10