Review: Wild Designs

Wild Designs by Katie Fforde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

I'm slowly working my way through Katie Fforde's back catalogue - every time one of them is on sale at 99p I snap it up.

Althea is the divorced mother of three teenagers. Her ex-husband lives in Hong Kong with his glamorous girlfriend. Althea's younger sister Juno is Althea's opposite: thin, sophisticated, organised, childless and with a lucrative career. Althea on the other hand is expecting to be made redundant from her job as school secretary now that her school has merged with another one. Althea's true love is gardening and she dreams of turning her odd-job work for a few elderly neighbours into a full-blown career.

One of her last jobs is to accompany some of the school children on a trip to France where she is introduced to the new school governor, Patrick Donahugh, who has recently moved into the area and bought a large dilapidated house where Althea has secretly been growing plants in the ramshackle greenhouse/conservatory.

When opportunity strikes in the form of Althea winning a competition which might give her the chance to create a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show she pulls out all the stops enlisting friends and family along the way.

Of course Althea is the curvy, overweight, disorganised woman in a sea of athletic, driven women: her sister, Patrick's girlfriend, even her lodgers.

A word of warning, the book is quite old and so there are references to the old TV series Gladiators and what I believe is a Nescafe Gold Blend coffee advert which will puzzle younger readers. But otherwise the writing is fresh and lively and the characters are interesting.

Although I enjoyed the book I didn't feel Patrick's motivations were altogether clear, he seemed to blow hot and cold and ignore what I thought were Althea's quite real concerns about bringing a new man into her children's home. And it did seem to be a bit of insta-lurve without any real substance, they escorted teenage children on a weekend trip to France and boom! Love.

Nevertheless, I was engaged throughout.


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