The Key to the Island House

Author(s): Amanda Lees

Location(s): Cairo

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical

Era(s): 1940s / Contemporary

As I turn the rusted key in the worn lock, I know the secrets beyond these faded walls might change my life forever… Can I breathe new life into the dusty corridors that my beloved aunt once walked?

The only things Sophie has left after losing both her aunt and her husband-to-be are a key and an old photograph of a beautiful house on an island in Cairo. All Aunt Nadia ever said about the place was that it saved her during the war. And now it belongs to Sophie.

Now standing in front of the door, the bright paint peeling, Sophie hopes that solving the mysteries of her aunt’s past will heal her broken heart. Until she finds a note in her aunt’s handwriting, tucked away in the villa’s library. And it leaves her questioning everything. The torn, yellowed paper speaks of a wartime betrayal and a long-lost love.

Sophie had dismissed her fiancé’s hurried scrawl on the back of the faded black and white photograph. But clutching the two fragments of the past in her hands, it’s clear her husband-to-be knew this terrible family secret all along…

Will the truth from the war tear Sophie apart, just as it did her aunt? Or will facing her aunt’s secret help heal not just her own heartbreak, but also one from decades ago?

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