Review: From London With Love

From London With Love by Katie Fforde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Felicity comes to London to stay with her mother (Felicity is Alexandra from A Wedding in Provence's step-daughter) in Cheyne Walk (a very expensive part of London). She intends to be an artist and study in Paris but has agreed to spend a year in London getting to know her mother, improving her English, and attending secretarial school.

The woman who lives in a flat in the attic of Felicity's mother's house has persuaded her niece Violet to come to London and arranged a job for her at a nearby bookshop. Violet's father has suddenly (and unexpectedly) come into a title and money which has led to him being inundated with women hoping he'll 'put a ring on it', one woman has even gone so far as to persuade him to let her move into a wing of the house and Violet very much dreads that she could be her new stepmother.

Despite their age differences, Violet is in her thirties while Felicity is barely twenty, the two of them strike up a friendship, partly because Felicity's mother is one of those wealthy society divorcees with a lot of rules about what Felicity can and cannot do, and partly because they are both country mouses in the big city.

Whilst out walking one day Felicity bumps into a young man, Oliver, and they strike up a friendship, under Violet's watchful eye. Oliver is the black sheep of his family who are all military men. Oliver wants to make jewellery but his father refuses to hear of it and so instead Oliver scrapes a living with a multitude of low-paying jobs in bars and restaurants whilst also doing a bit of mudlarking (looking for treasure along the banks of the Thames when the tide is out).

But the course of true love never did run smooth and there's an added complication wheen Felicity's mother and Oliver's father become involved.

This is classic Katie Fforde and classic me. I moan about her signature motifs and then not only buy/request them every time but also devour them eagerly. There's insta-lurve, aristos, people who can live in London with practically no money, cranky old ladies with a heart of gold, etc. I loved it, sure I wish both Felicity and Violet knew their respective love interests for more than thirty seconds before they fell in love but hey-ho they did things differently in the 1960s ;)

You know I'll be back for the next one - they're like catnip.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.



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