Return to Silkeborg

by Vanessa Benford

She thought the past was long buried. Now she's on a plane, hurtling toward it.

Over three decades ago, Abigail embarked on an intense affair with Mads, the father of the family she lived with in Denmark during her gap year in 1987. What will happen when she attends his funeral now?

Abigail has grown angry and bitter that this forty-one-year-old man started and ended their affair, especially now when she thinks about her teenage daughter. But did he start it? The more she considers their relationship - whatever it was - the more she questions her reasons for getting so close to Mads.

Return to Silkeborg weaves back and forth between the present day and the events that occurred during this gap year. Abigail must revisit her past and make peace with the twenty-three-year age difference and the clandestine nature of their relationship. She no longer views it with rose-coloured glasses. What unfolds is a journey of self-discovery and reflection as Abigail confronts the truth of their connection.

A reflective, immersive story of how love can change who we are that would suit fans of The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller and Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash.

What Readers Are Saying

'Return to Silkeborg is a love story, a coming-of-age story, and a story about friendship wrapped into one terrific read.' - Heather Hummel Gallagher, award-winning novelist of Whispers from the Heart and Call it Kismet.

'This fantastic book is a moving and introspective read that lingers long after the last page.'

'...the overwhelming feeling I had after finishing the book was that we all have choices, and those choices have consequences that can resonate for years.'

'This book is about the people who shape us and the versions of ourselves we leave in other countries, tucked away like pressed flowers in a book.'

'This is thoughtful, immersive fiction that trusts readers to sit with complexity and discomfort. '

'Forbidden love, the passage of time, and the fragility of memory echo throughout, making the book as much about self-reflection as romance.'

' Be prepared to get invested in this book. Be prepared to care deeply about Abigail, what happens during her time with Mads, and how she processes that time in the present.'

322 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2025

About the author

Vanessa Benford has spent three decades building a career in finance across the US, UK and Australia. Originally from California, she has lived and worked around the world, bringing a global lens to her storytelling. Now based in Melbourne with her husband and three children, Vanessa draws on her love of travel, culture and music to craft stories that explore connection, identity and the paths we take in search of meaning.

Reviews

[Wendy Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Return to Silkeborg by Vanessa Benford is a compelling, emotional read about an American eighteen-year-old girl, Abbey, who spends a gap year with a Danish family. While there, she has a secret affair with Mads, the father of the host family. Thirty-odd years later, she returns for Mad's funeral and explores how she comes to grips with the past. The dual timeline story unfolds at a measured, but not slow, pace. Beautifully written, the author assembles a group of relatable characters. I sympathised with the protagonist as she struggled to confront the past. The author's descriptions of the Danish countryside have an almost poetic quality. Benford has a gift for capturing feelings and emotions. This is a powerful, thought-provoking read, highly deserving five stars.

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a beautiful book about the complications of forbidden love and lust and how it can affect someone decades later. It was fascinating to see how Abigail works to come to terms with her past and make peace so she can find closure. It was also interesting to see how becoming a parent can change what you see as right and wrong. The character development was amazing and the jump between past and present was so well done to explain the backstory of Abigail and Mads. This book brought up a lot of emotions for me. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Lynette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Reflective and Emotional Read

I gave Return to Silkeborg by Vanessa Benford 4 out of 5 stars. It was an emotional and reflective novel with a steady, medium pace that allowed for a deep connection with the characters.

Character Dynamics and Core Conflict
My primary frustration while reading stemmed from the character of Mads. Given he was the middle-aged adult and Abbey was only eighteen, I felt he should have exercised more wisdom and restraint. His deliberate choices not to let the relationship continue for so long created unnecessary pain and tension, and I found myself angry at his decisions throughout the book.

Abbey's Journey and Emotional Depth
Despite my frustrations with Mads, I greatly admired Abbey's emotional journey. It was powerful to read about how she worked through her anger and ultimately resolved her feelings about the affair. Her growth was a definite highlight of the book.
Return to Silkeborg is a thoughtful and moving story that explores the complexities of love, responsibility, and healing. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys character-driven emotional fiction.

I received a free copy of this book from the author via Voracious Readers Only.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Return to Silkeborg is one of those novels that stays with you long after you’ve finished the last page. It’s a haunting, beautifully written story about forbidden love, memory, and the way our choices echo through time. Abigail’s return to Denmark for Mads’s funeral becomes so much more than a trip — it’s a reckoning with who she was and who she has become.

What I loved most was how authentically the book captured Abigail’s shifting perspective. Seeing her revisit the past through the lens of motherhood adds such emotional depth. The alternating timelines between 1987 and the present are handled with incredible grace, letting the truth unfold naturally. The prose is vivid and grounded, filled with small, honest moments that make the story feel real.

This isn’t just a love story — it’s about accountability, forgiveness, and the hard work of understanding yourself. A deeply emotional, quietly powerful read that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

[Deborah Wick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and the characters. I liked how the main character really looked back at events of the past, and saw them with a different perspective, and was able to reflect on her past in relation to now having a daughter of the same age, and compare herself with her teenage self of the past. She showed remarkable self awareness and personal growth.

[Anita Dow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Return to Silkeborg is a powerful coming of age story that reads like a personal memoir. Abigail, a successful fifty-something American woman, returns to Denmark for the funeral of a man who was significant in her life for just one year, over thirty years ago. The beautifully structured plot by author Vanessa Benford kept me turning the pages, and took me back to my own teenage years and the emotions of first love. The story is told in the first person detailing eighteen-year-old Abigail's gap year in the home of a Danish widower and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Anja. Woven through this narrative is the perspective of the now middle-aged Abigail, revisiting Anja and the town of Silkeborg for the father's funeral. The movement between the past and present narrative is smooth and feels effortless, making it a good reading experience.

Silkeborg is a small quiet town on the edge of a forest, which enables the author to use her writing talents for some evocative descriptive writing, which brings to life Denmark and its culture, and is one of the book's strengths. The plot is paced perfectly and, whilst some reviewers have debated the idea of a forty-one year old father in a romantic liaison with an eighteen-year-old, our perspective is somewhat different today than in the 1980s when the story takes place. Author Benford conveys the emotions of each of the protagonists so sensitively that I felt neither of them could be blamed for the pull between them, which was so much more than a physical attraction. The author steered away from giving too much detail about the sexual side of the affair, which to me enhanced the feelings of longing and bittersweet first love. Return To Silkeborg is a character-driven novel with a quiet emotional power that demonstrates how significant people or events can mould us and influence our life's direction, even if their presence is quite short-lived. I look forward to reading further books by Vanessa Benford.

[Caroline Hurry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satisfying as Smørrebrød
Vanessa Benford’s novel of first love and difficult choices is a nostalgic portrait of Denmark in the late 80s. As someone who has spent stretches of my life in Denmark, Return to Silkeborg left a lump in my throat and a few tears at the end.
Mads is an emotionally complex, well-rounded character. He’s steady yet conflicted, wise yet vulnerable in an enigmatic way.
The love between him and Abbey, the American exchange student, is fraught with the tension only two people caught between desire, social codes, and circumstance can understand. His maturity, his restraint, and his inner turmoil all ring heartbreakingly true.
Anja, Mads’s daughter, is pragmatic in that quintessentially Danish way. Her understated cultural directness anchors cool Scandinavian life, where emotions simmer beneath a surface of everyday routine.
Benford captures so much of the Denmark I knew: a place that, like the characters, has changed dramatically over the years.
I don’t want to give anything away, but the aftermath of the funeral made me cry as Abbey confronted the evidence of how deeply she was seen.
Photographs, paintings, and one of the most beautiful letters I have ever read reveal Mads’s emotional depth and restraint. Very Danish, indeed!
Benford navigates the power dynamics and ethical complexities without ever falling into sensationalism or flattening the characters into villains or victims.
Her novel offers something more honest: the understanding that two people can love each other fiercely and not be together.
This book is about the people who shape us and the versions of ourselves we leave in other countries, tucked away like pressed flowers in a book.
Return to Silkeborg is a stunning, tender, and immersive read that I can’t stop thinking about. I would love to read more from this author.

[Elle Sie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book was a rollercoaster of emotions. I can honestly say it's the first read in ages that had me gripped, and turning the pages, and enraged at the male lover/host-father, and feeling like my heart was weeping for both lovers at the ending. It's simultaneously romantic, but too dramatic to be a romance. It's a tale of vulnerability, and humanity, and of two hearts that can't be together. Let me break it down.

Abbey, an 18 year old American student, goes on a home stay in Denmark in 1988 with a 41 year old single dad and his 16 year old daughter. Anja and Abbey become friends as they attend school together. After a tragedy, involving boys the girls are seeing, Abbey while vulnerable, becomes involved with Anja's father, Mads. He effectively grooms her, and I disliked him from the start because of this, especially because he knew what he was doing was wrong. Their passionate affair ends when she has to return to the US, and he won't permit her to stay on as his long-term girlfriend. Abbey feels used and goes home heartbroken.

Fast forward to 2024 and Abbey, now a mother in her mid-fifties with a teenage daughter, and the wisdom of midlife, is going back to Silkeborg for Mads' funeral and to reconnect with Anja. What she discovers is so multilayered in spite of it's simplicity, and frankly blew me away, all through the writing and characterisation.

Kudos to the author. It looks like this is her first book, and what a debut. I will be checking back to see what else she publishes next, as this book was incredible. Loved it!

[Curious Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Return to Silkeborg is an involving novel about a woman who spent a teenage gap year in Denmark. She'd gone as part of an organization similar to the student exchange program and was hosted by a widower and his 16-year-old daughter. 

Abigail "Abbey" then becomes sexually involved with her much older host, "Mads." The story weaves the past and present together as Abbey--now in her fifties, married with a teenage daughter of her own--returns to Denmark for Mads' funeral. 

The current segments are in first person present, and Abbey's recollections are told in first person. While I'm not a fan of either style, this is among the best written examples I've encountered. 

Return to Silkeborg is compelling, but as the book progressed, I became more and more disturbed at the direction it seemed to be headed (and ultimately ended). Mads may not have initiated the first contact, regardless, it was his responsibility to MAKE SURE NOTHING HAPPENED. In essence, though the main character was eighteen, he was in a parental role, yet once she even thinks of herself as having been a boarder. The author expresses power imbalance concerns, yet ultimately what he did feels prettied-up and excused.

This is a well written novel, which is why I gave a rating of four stars. However, the story as laid out and Abbey's emotional conclusions may be triggering and deeply disturbing to anyone who's experienced sexual abuse or power imbalances in personal or professional relationships. 

[Ailsa Mellor · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Return to Silkeborg’ is one of those novels that quietly unfolds and leaves its mark. Vanessa Benford has skilfully woven a story, which at first I assumed was a memoir, and captured a moment in time beautifully. The premise is simple: an American teenager, Abigail, is placed with a Danish family in the small town of Silkeborg in the late 1980s before she decides on her future. And this is really where Benford’s skill as a storyteller comes to light. Her vivid descriptions—albeit small and seemingly inconsequential—of Danish life ignited my imagination. From the protagonist’s first introduction of a herring sandwich to how the sun filters through the trees in the forest she comes to love and the quiet descent into darkness in the depths of a Danish winter—adds richness and depth to her words. Benford takes care in immersing her readers and transporting them to a particular time and place. I especially appreciated the way Benford sensitively explored the relationship between the Au-Pair father, Mads and Abigail. There is an undercurrent of bittersweet inevitability to it, highlighting how feelings can be amplified when time is finite. This is not just a coming-of-age story though. It is also about those moments in life where we meet someone who leaves an indelible impression on us. If you enjoy character-driven stories, 'Return to Silkeborg' is the perfect read.

[Andrea Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bittersweet Dynamics between the past & the present
This poignant novel explores memory, regret, and how time reshapes our understanding of past choices. The story centers on Abigail (affectionately called Abbey), who as a teenager in 1987 spent her gap year in Denmark with a host family. During that time, she had a secret affair with Mads, the 41-year-old father of the household. Decades later, Abigail returns to Silkeborg for Mads’s funeral, and the journey forces her to confront the shadows of her youth and the effects of a relationship defined by secrecy and imbalance.

The narrative unfolds across two timelines, contrasting Abigail’s youthful passion with her adult reflections. There is a tension between memory and reality: what once felt intoxicating now seems filled with power struggles and moral complexities. The vivid prose captures the beauty of Denmark’s landscapes and the emotional depth of Abigail’s thoughts.

This novel offers no easy answers. Instead, it encourages us to sit with discomfort, nostalgia, and the ache of unresolved emotions. Forbidden love, the passage of time, and the fragility of memory echo throughout, making the book as much about self-reflection as romance. If you appreciate introspection, moral complexity, and the haunting persistence of memory, you’ll enjoy this novel.

[Chris Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vanessa Benford’s “Return to Silkeborg” is a stunning debut that tackles complicated subject matter with remarkable nuance and emotional honesty. The dual timeline structure works beautifully, weaving between Abbey’s 1987 gap year in Denmark and her return for Mads’s funeral decades later. What could have been a simple romance instead becomes a profound meditation on how we reinterpret our past through the lens of time and maturity.
Benford refuses easy answers about the relationship between eighteen-year-old Abbey and forty-one-year-old Mads. The power dynamics are present but never sensationalized, and both characters remain fully human rather than flattening into villain or victim. The Denmark setting feels authentic and atmospheric, grounding the emotional turbulence in vivid detail.
What lingers most is the novel’s exploration of how our youth shapes us, how memory reshapes truth, and how love can be both genuine and impossible. The funeral aftermath delivers genuine catharsis without tidy resolution. This is thoughtful, immersive fiction that trusts readers to sit with complexity and discomfort. Highly recommended for anyone who appreciates emotionally intelligent storytelling.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[Freya Kissane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its hard for me to put my finger on what it is exactly in this book that works so well. If I were to encounter an overview or summary of the plot I would be doubtful that it was enough to carry a novel length project, however Benford manages to string together a work of fiction that is reflective, immersive and grows on you in satisfying ways. It is fraught subject matter to tread, focalising a relationship where the protagonist Abbey is 18 and Mads is more than twenty years her senior. Abbey struggles to reconcile how the present day perception power imbalance in this relationship makes her feel, against her fond memories of a romantic and meaningful relationship. This tension while explored does feel a bit like it is picked up, mentioned, acknowledged and then put away again rather than confronted or really resolved but perhaps I am expecting too much of Abbey as a protagonist. At its core I think this novel tells a story of how a romantic relationship in our youth can shape the life we go on to lead.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one stuck with me long after I finished the last page. The author gives us a beautiful story about a past love, what we remember, and how our life decisions affect us through the years. When the main character, Abigail, returns to Denmark for Mads’s funeral, the trip becomes so much more than just a visit. It's a chance for her to understand the person she was and the person she is today. I love that the story spans two timelines, the 1980s and the present. It lets the truth come out simply, without rush. The writing is clear and paints a picture. It contains small, real moments that make the whole story feel true.

This book is about more than just a relationship. It explores responsibility, forgiveness, and the hard work of getting to know yourself. Seeing Abigail revisit the past through the eyes of a mother now her daughter's age gives the story so much feeling. The book captures her changing viewpoint perfectly. It is an emotional, quiet, strong read that I plan to think about for a long time. I would check out more books from this author. She wrote a fantastic debut.

[Karen J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, I expected an engaging, emotional read based on the other reviews of Benford's Return to Silkeborg, but I didn't expect to be moved to tears! Don't get me wrong: without giving anything away, the ending was satisfying, and I didn't cry because I was devastated. It's just that this story of love, friendship, and coming to deeper understandings of oneself and one's past were just that moving. I often gravitate toward love stories that involve an age gap, especially if the author goes out of their way to explore the power differentials, differences in perspective, and the ethics of such relationships. Benford handled all of these issues with sensitivity without ever devolving into moralizing or creating two-dimensional depictions of the characters. They seemed real, and I enjoyed the back-and-forth between memory and the present. Be prepared to get invested in this book. Be prepared to care deeply about Abigail, what happens during her time with Mads, and how she processes that time in the present. I hope to see more from this author.

[Tim O'Shaughnessy · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some books where you can tell from the structure that a tremendous amount of thought has gone into them. Return to Silkeborg is one of those.
What I loved about this book was how the story of Abbey’s return to Silkeborg in 2024 evolved over the length of the story, with interjected flashbacks to her first trip as a student to Denmark in 1987 through to 1988 and then snippets from her time between the visits, when she found her way to life and met her husband. The first visit to Silkeborg was clearly pivotal in Abbey’s development into adulthood and this is explored in a good amount of detail.
I know many people dislike stories that jump around timelines, but I found each flashbacks did an effective job of explaining the significance of the events on the return visit for the funeral of Mads, her older lover, in 2024. The love scenes shouldn’t offend and were necessary in the context of the overall story.

[Jagdish Arora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the book because it is quiet, thoughtful, and emotionally honest. The story explores memory, regret, and self-reflection in a mature way, showing how the past can feel very different when viewed through adult eyes. The back-and-forth between past and present is smooth and meaningful, helping the reader understand how Abigail has changed over time.

What stands out most is the emotional depth. The book doesn’t romanticize the relationship but instead examines it with clarity and courage. It’s a reflective, character-driven story that stays with you, making you think about choices, power, and personal growth long after finishing.

[Monique Vala · Rating 4 out of 5]

When we are young, we have a totally different idea of what Love is. Looking out of the perspective of an 18-year-old and then again as a 50-year-old.

Abigal, called Abbey, gets the chance to spend a year in Denmark, where she falls in love with her care father, he returns her feelings, when the time comes for her to leave again, he lets her go, she didn't understand why.

Now Mads is dead, she returns to Silkeborg, where she finally finds answers.

An emotional story with two sides of love.

[Simon Westerfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting, engaging read.

Really enjoyable, and informative. Reading about the Danish culture, and people was so interesting. Well done novel of self reflection and personal growth. Just a wonderful book!

[Hannah Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story tackles something very relatable but totally difficult to talk about and portray in a brutally honest way. What happens when a middle-aged woman revisits an affair she had with a much older man (old enough to be her father) when she was a teen? She has to come to terms with what it means from the perspective of 2025 and from being a mother herself to a teen daughter. The conversations she has with her husband are compelling. Was this an assault she experienced or grooming? Such ways of describing these things didn't exist back in the late eighties. I liked that it approached the subject from both the past and present perspectives. Fascinating topic to tackle in fiction. It reads a bit like a memoir!