The Last Summer: A wild, romantic tale of opposites attract (Paperback)

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Effie Gillies has never known a world beyond St Kilda. The island’s remoteness shapes her days, its freedom and hardship inseparable. When Lord Sholto arrives one summer, curious and out of place, their connection unfolds quickly, carried by long walks, shared silences, and the intensity of a place where time feels suspended. For one week, the future seems briefly malleable.

Then the island empties. With the evacuation of St Kilda, Effie’s life is dismantled along with her home. An unexpected offer takes her to the Earl of Dumfries’s estate, and back into Sholto’s orbit. What once felt simple now bristles with difference. Class, expectation, and restraint crowd in where ease once lived.

The Last Summer moves between loss and longing, attentive to what is left behind when a way of life disappears. Set partly on St Kilda and partly within the confines of mainland privilege, the novel explores love strained by history and circumstance. Some attachments survive distance. Others are altered beyond recognition, even as they refuse to fade.