Review: Matilda Next Door

Matilda Next Door by Kelly Hunter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Matilda Moore has never been anywhere. Salt of the earth is Tilly, the sort of kind woman who batch cooks meals for her elderly neighbours and checks in on them while their only grandson is thousands of miles away in London.

Henry Church left small town Australia in his wake and lives in London, until his grandmother's ill-health requires him to return to Wirralong. In return for Tilly's kindness to his grandparents he offers her his swanky London apartment to stay in when she take a holiday of a lifetime to England to learn new skills at some exclusive cookery school. Tilly and Henry were friends all through school, heck Tilly still has a major crush on him, but her life is firmly in Wirralong and his is definitely not.

Then everything changes when a woman leaves a baby at Henry's door, claiming he is the father and the mother has died.

There wasn't enough (any) tension in this novel for me. Whatever happened Tilly would get upset and then shrug and decide she was being over-sensitive. Not matter whether she and Henry got their HEA she still came across as a complete drudge who just wanted to clean Henry's house and look after his child and cook him dinner. She thought Henry was superior to her and I couldn't see that Henry disagreed.

Also, if you set a book partly in England and have native English characters please, please, please make them use English words and not the US/Australian equivalent. We say crib/cot not bassinet, we say flat not apartment, we say nappies not diapers.

Overall, a pleasant, easy romance but lacked sparks for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher Tule in return for an honest review.

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