Jocasta's Journey (Rustmere Tales Book 2)

A Second Chance in the Heart of the Village

After a scandal forces her to leave both her job and her home in disgrace, Jocasta Sterling returns to Rustmere with a heavy heart and a past she can’t outrun. The once-proud heir to Sterling Hall is now just Jo — a barmaid trying to rebuild trust in a village that remembers her for all the wrong reasons.

Haunted by past mistakes and the emotional armor built over a lonely childhood, Jo keeps the world at arm’s length. But when she meets Jeff — kind, grounded, and unexpectedly understanding — her walls begin to crack. As new friendships take root and old wounds are reopened, Jo is faced with a choice: run again, or find the courage to stay, make amends, and believe she’s worthy of a new beginning.

Jocasta’s Journey is a gentle, redemptive romance about rebuilding your life, finding unexpected love, and discovering that it’s never too late to come home.

Return to Rustmere in the second book of the Rustmere Tales series — a heartwarming village romance by Jennie Rose Adams.

Excerpt from the book

After many long and tortured hours of soul-searching, there was no other way of looking at it, I thought miserably. I really had behaved like an absolute stinker.

“Way to go, Jo,” I muttered, my head in my hands.

Shame enveloped me as I considered my behaviour over the past few months.

What on earth had possessed me to write those poisoned texts, let alone send them? I felt colour flood my face as memories of my mega crush on Jake Baker, co-owner of Rustmere’s one and only garage, overcame me. It had been an infatuation; I recognised this now.

How I wished I had had the awareness to realise this at the time! Shuddering, I recalled the way I had thrown myself at the poor man, constantly clamouring for his undivided attention like some demented stalker. What on earth must he have thought of me? For his part, Jake had only ever treated me with unstinting kindness and courtesy—which, in my fevered state, I had misread—with disastrous consequences. Fired from my job at the garage and filled with self-loathing and disgust, I had fled Rustmere in disgrace to lick my wounds at the family home a few miles away. Some months later, I had heard that Jake was happily engaged to Briony, the former target of my evil electronic epistles and new head of Rustmere’s library. In this intervening period and away from Jake’s intoxicating presence, clarity had gradually reasserted itself in my previously befuddled mind and the full horror of what I had done had hit me—hard. Guilt, regret, shame, I had been through them all and still hadn’t come out the other side. I hoped that Briony and Jake had managed to put what I had done behind them so they could find lasting happiness together.

I sighed, aware that this miserable self-pitying introspection was serving nobody, and met my stepmother’s gimlet eye.

“You may as well make yourself useful by taking Dodo out, rather than hanging around here with a face like a wet weekend, feeling sorry for yourself,” Angelica barked at me in her usual charming sergeant major fashion. I narrowed my eyes at her, and cast a pleading look at daddy. Tragically, daddy was knee-deep in the Financial Times, so was unable to come to my rescue. I resisted the urge to make a face at Angelica and flounced out. I took care to let at least one door bang shut behind me and attempted not to kick over the buckets situated in the hall to catch the numerous roof leaks, which were one of the many unfortunate features of daily life at Sterling Hall.

I had forgotten what a disobedient little brute Dodo was, as he pulled at his lead, ploughing through mud, brambles and bog, heedless of my exhortations to “Slow down, Dodo!”

Dodo was also much stronger than I had remembered. A strangely detached part of my brain wondered that it was curious that such a small dog should display so great an excess of strength. It was perverse. There was no other word for it.