Sun at Midnight by Rosie Thomas

From Goodreads

An epic love story and adventure set against the stunning backdrop of Antarctica.

Alice Peel is a geologist. She believes in observation and proof. But now she stands alone on the deck of a rickety Chilean ship as a stark landscape reveals itself. Instead of the familiar measurable world, everything that lies ahead of her is unknown and unpredictable.

Six weeks earlier her life was comfortably unfolding in an Oxford summer. Then, with her relationship suddenly in pieces, she accepted an invitation to join a group working at the end of the earth: Antarctica.

James Rooker is a man on the run. He's been running since his childhood in New Zealand. Now, there is nowhere further to go. He has taken a job working on the same small Antarctic research station.

Alice discovers an ice-blue and silver world, lit by sunlight. Nothing has prepared her for the beauty of it, or the claustrophobia of a tiny base shared with eight men and one other woman. The isolation wipes out everyone's past, and tension crackles in the air. But there is a jolt of recognition between Alice and Rooker that is like nothing she has ever known. And it is in Antartica that she discovers something else that will change her life forever … if she survives.

My thoughts

It's been ages since I read a Rosie Thomas book and it was like settling myself down into a comfy chair. 

This story tells the tale of Alice Peel and James Rooker, whose lives are poles apart.

Alice is in a relationship but as things go pear shaped in the relationship, she has the opportunity of following in her Mums footsteps by travelling to Antarctica.

James Rooker is a loner with a past and secrets that he would rather they were kept hidden in the past where they belong. He is running from his past and becomes part of the team working in Antarctica that Alice is set to join.

With the backdrop of the harsh environment in which they both find themselves, will attraction between them develop or will their pasts prove to hard to contend with.

I really enjoyed this well written story and felt that the characters were well developed. I could really sympathise with them all and most of us at some point in our lives would more than likely be keen to run from our pasts but probably not as far as they ran to though.

If you've not read any books by Rosie Thomas, I can thoroughly recommend them. If you like contemporary well written romance, as most of them are romance based in some way then these are the books for you.

I gave this a well deserved 9/10