Review: Living your best life

Living your best life by Maxine Morrey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bee and Luca have been best friends since Infants School when he puller her pigtail then held her hand to stop her crying. Fast forward twenty-something years and Luca is a handsome, highly successful businessman, with a amazing home, who dates models while Bee is stuck in a job she hates, underpaid, undervalued, and living in a tiny flat. Yet they are still best friends.

Bee's friends love her just as she is (but they want to change her) but they are sad that she seems happy to be single for the rest of her life, so when Luca announces that he wants to find 'The One' to spend the rest of his life with, their friends challenge them to both join a dating website. Bee and Luca have a bet, she that the website is a waste of time, and he that one of them will find love through the site by Christmas.

I think it is fairly obvious to anyone who has read a romance that Bee and Luca are made for each other, and that Luca is in love with Bee, but because of the (perceived) disparity in their looks Bee has never thought of him like that. Part of Bee's lack of self-esteem comes from her parents who were totally absorbed in each other to the exclusion of everyone else, it also comes from not having a degree because she had to care for her mother after her father's sudden death - hence why she stays working for a company she hates.

Predictably most of Bees dates are a disaster, but they do start to give her confidence to change things in her life, starting small and moving upwards. All of that I really liked.

What brought this down from a four star review for me was a pet peeve in this type of book. (view spoiler)[Luca has been in love with Bee practically the entire time they have known each other and he has been content to be friends waiting for her to realise what is right in front of her. Or, looking at it another way, he has said and done absolutely nothing to let her know how he feels for close to thirty years, hoping that an introvert with low self-esteem will suddenly throw herself at a highly successful, wealthy, good-looking guy who has never given her any indication that he is interested. Anyway, although he loves Bee, Luca commits the cardinal sin of dropping the L-word bombshell and demanding Bee falls immediately into line with that classic 'I can't wait any longer' ultimatum. Whoa sunshine, you've just unleashed a huge surprise on the girl and left her no time to get her head around it before storming off into the sunset. Also, how egotistical, what if she said she didn't feel the same way? Was he going to trash a lifetime's friendship because she doesn't love him? (hide spoiler)]Luca came across as a sanctimonious mansplainer who spent a lot of time telling Bee what her problem was - its interesting that authors think this is okay from the hero but it's a red flag in every other relationship.

Overall, an enjoyable, if rather formulaic and predictable, friends-to-lovers romance let down by the hero's behaviour for me.

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

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Review: P.S. I Hate You

P.S. I Hate You by Sophie Ranald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Abbie and Matt were childhood sweethearts, friends have got together, had kids, split up etc but Matt and Abbie keep going, twenty years together and nine married. But lately Abbie has felt something is missing, they've lost that indescribable spark that let her forgive him for always leaving a dirty teaspoon on the side of the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher (and Matt forgiving her for never closing a cupboard door - which my husband also does).

Abbie's WhatsApp friends group suggest she tries to recreate some occasions from their past, first date, etc. Of course what they are forgetting is that first dates when you are sixteen or seventeen are at Burger King and Nando's - not exactly the romantic dream LOL. Nevertheless, Abbie does try, and revisiting some of their old haunts/memories does bring them closer together, but there are some big issues and secrets causing the rift between them - will Operation Memory Lane heal the rift or break them apart?

This is the first book I've read which neither ignores lockdown nor dismisses it as something that happened in the past. Instead, there is no mention of COVID, just the grim reality of Abbie and Matt working from home together, at either end of their kitchen table, for months on end, the inability to get away from each other or do anything else, albeit that in Abbie and Matt's universe things are starting to return to normal.

There's humour, nostalgia (how I loved those trips down memory lane with the music and the food and the TV shows), pathos and so much more. Loved it.

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

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Review: Retreat to the Spanish Sun

Retreat to the Spanish Sun by Jo Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Eliza is a divorced mother of three adults, all of whom had flown the coop but have now returned to her small two bedroom flat for *reasons*. Desperate for a bit of peace and quiet to finish her dissertation which might enable Eliza to get a degree and start a career is sports therapy (or something similar) and get away from her job as receptionist for a local estate agents, Eliza accepts a short-term hob housesitting in Spain.

The house which Eliza is looking after is famed for rearing the famous Iberico pigs, whose tender meat and delicate flavour are prized the world over. But things start to go wrong almost immediately, the local Gastronomic Society refuses to admit women, or foreigners, and the man who looks after the prized pigs has disappeared, sending a rather untrustworthy guy in his place. Eliza knows these pigs are worth a small fortune, but when the owner isn't answering her calls what should she do?

With the help of the ex-pat community, who call themselves the Spanish Language Class, although there is precious little Spanish being taught, and the young Spaniard who works in a tapas bar owned by an ex-pat called Juan (real name John), Eliza cares for the pigs herself.

I liked this but I didn't love it. I thought the start was a bit rushed in Jo Thomas' eagerness to get Eliza to Spain - don't get me wrong, I didn't want to waste half the book in England but this felt like Bish, Bash, Bosh, she's in Spain. Then the ex-pats felt a bit clichéd, would you really move to rural Spain if you were scared to try authentic Spanish food? I guess if you moved to one of the Anglicised coastal resorts that have British pubs serving a Full English maybe, but surely not in a small rural village? And then the madcap caper at the end ... I honestly couldn't get my head around the logistics and gave up trying. TBH, this felt like one too many plots, I would have preferred a plot centred around Juan's attempts to win the Tapas competition, the pigs, and slowly bringing the ex-pats and the local community together.

Having said that, it was a Jo Thomas novel, so full of great scenery, wonderful descriptions of food, and a slower pace of life, but I feel they are all very similar, very middle-aged, middle-class woman finds a new lease of life abroad, with help from the local women - maybe I shouldn't have looked at a couple of my previous reviews of her books?

If you are looking for a sweet, charming, feel-good, romance set in the glorious Spanish countryside then this is the book for you.

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

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Review: Mad About You

Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

Okay, its true I've morphed into a nicer version of myself.

Harriet is a wedding photographer, she' sort-of happy with her boyfriend Jon until he uses a weekend away with his family to celebrate his parents' 40th wedding anniversary to propose to her in front of his entire family. Harriet realises enough is enough, she's mistaken comfort and gratitude for love for too long, any longer and she'll end up married to a man she doesn't love.

But moving out of Jon's house forces Harriet to confront some uncomfortable home truths, about herself, about past relationships and about friendship. Not least because Harriet finds herself sharing a house with a groom who walked away from his wedding on the wedding day; how can Harriet like a man who could behave so appallingly?

I loved this, Mhiari McFarlane has outdone herself, creating a wonderful, flawed character like Harriet who finally finds the strength to what is right, and what is true.

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

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Review: The Christie Affair

The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF at 34%.

This sounded awesome, the story of what happened to Agatha Christie when she disappeared for eleven days, told by her husband's mistress.

Well I'm over a third of the way through and so far there's been precious little of Agatha. There's been her husband's scheming mistress Nan, there's been a retired police officer, there's been her husband wandering the streets of London blah, blah, blah but not Agatha.

Also, the writing is very odd. I'm sure some poor teenager will be forced to opine on why the book is written from Nan's point of view, even when she's describing her lover's feelings - as if she's the omnipotent narrator instead of one of the characters, but for the reader its very off-putting. I have to keep rereading to see who is taking and who they are talking about.

I wasn't enthralled but I kept plodding at it hoping it would get better - because I would love to read a story about where Agatha Christie was during those days (and why), but sadly that doesn't seem to be this book, which is more concerned with tawdry Nan.

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

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Review: The Catching Kind

The Catching Kind by Bria Quinlan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hailey is a very ordinary looking woman, a loner who loves writing for teenagers and hates meeting new people. Connor is a baseball player and voted America's sexiest sportsman. After being a bit of a diva at his old team he's moved to a new team and been accused of kissing (or worse) his captain's wife. In desperate need of wholesomeness makeover his agent arranges for a fake relationship to take the heat off and stop alienating the young female demographic. Hailey's agent loses a poker bet and ends up making Hailey the sacrificial lamb.

Understandably reluctant, Hailey is not impressed by her first meeting with Connor, or indeed her second where he sneers at the idea that he would ever date her. And as for the idea that she needs some kind of clothes and hair makeover ... keep walking buddy!

As Connor and Hailey are forced to pretend to date 'under the radar' they actually become quite good friends, Hailey doesn't stand any nonsense from Connor and she brings him back to earth. Also her tiny apartment is more cosy and comfortable than his million dollar penthouse with views.

Connor is convinced that he loves his single life and has no desire for a wife, kids, a dog, or a picket fence - but is he lying to himself?

I got this as a Kindle freebie - I note it is now £4.99 which seems a bit of a bargain! I enjoyed this, engaging characters, a makeover, and a fake relationship - what more could you want?

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Review: Twelve Days in May

Twelve Days in May by Niamh Hargan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lizzy Munro is a half-American, half-Scottish advocate for the Scottish Film Board. The team are at the Cannes Film Festival hoping to lure some big Hollywood director into their marquee and persuade them to shoot their films in Scotland, they don't have the big budget of some of their rivals but Lizzy hopes that the Ceilidh she has planned for the last night will help them stand out.

Having her lunch one day, Lizzy is horrified to see hot-shot Irish director Ciaran Flynn in the café, even more incensed when he totally blanks her when she waves. Their friendship twelve years ago when they were students in France may have ended really badly but there's no need to be rude.

Ciaran is riding high, bringing his film about living in Bordeaux as a student to Cannes to premiere at the Palais des Festivals, the most important venue. Then his film company is served with an infringement notice claiming that Ciaran's film Wish You Were Here bears a striking resemblance to a similar screenplay submitted to the film company two years earlier. Now the only hope Ciaran has of refuting the claims is to find someone who could confirm some of the aspects of the film are based on real life - and that someone would be Lizzy.

Lizzy doesn't want to help Ciaran, the man who not so much broke her heart as stamped all over it then set light to the remains, but her innate sense of fair play forces her to agree. Watching the film together reminds both Lizzy and Ciaran of their time together, both of them lamenting their relationship and how it ended.

This was a sweet and quirky romance about second chances, first love, and how things can appear very different from the other point of view.

Perfect holiday reading (if we get one in 2022), light, amusing, charming and with likable characters.

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

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Review: In Place of Fear

In Place of Fear by Catriona McPherson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Helen (Nelly) Crowther and her husband Sandy are living at home with her parents and her sister Teenie in their small apartment in Edinburgh. Having acted as an assistant to Mrs Sinclair (a wealthy do-gooder) during the war, Nelly has studied and become an Almoner (sort of like triage but financially assessing what a patient could pay and then sending them to the appropriate resources) prior to the inception of the National Health Service, now she has accepted a position with a local doctor's practice as the in-house unqualified nurse - basically giving sensible advice about childcare, pregnancy and the like. Nelly is evangelistic about the NHS, albeit as a newly-wed she finds some of the topics she has to discuss a little bit awkward, especially since Sandy hasn't wanted to consummate their marriage since he returned from a PoW camp.

Everything is going well, the dawn of a new era, Doctor Strasser even gives Nelly and Sandy their own apartment which has been recently redecorated and even has its own indoor bathroom. Then Nelly finds the half-naked corpse of a young woman in their Anderson air-raid shelter. In her determination to discover the identity of the woman and the cause of her death, Nelly uncovers some shocking truths about the seedy underbelly of her city (BTW, why do we always say seedy underbelly? Surely we only need to say one or the other).

I have enjoyed Catriona McPherson's other series and so I was delighted to receive an ARC of this new book, which is very different from those series, albeit still featuring a Scottish protagonist (and yes I know that Dandy is actually an Englishwoman living in Scotland).

I'm halfway through this review and I still haven't assigned a star rating because it is so difficult to think of it as a whole. First, as a working class woman Nelly has a strong Scottish accent which peppers the dialogue (even worse than Dandy Gilver and The Reek of Red Herrings), which can present some challenges to the reader.

Second, the information about the birth of the NHS was fascinating, particularly the way in which people didn't know to what they were entitled, and no-one really knew how it worked. But ... in and of itself it didn't have anything to do with the mystery and was maybe a bit too much of an information dump, as in I've done all this research and I must shoe-horn it into the book.

Similarly, the relationship between Sandy and Nelly and the relationship between Nelly and her family felt superfluous in a way, unless of course this is the start of a new series, although the postscript would indicate that this was a standalone novel.

The mystery, well that was clever. well thought through, no obvious clues being dropped but also no Sherlock Holmes-like deductions from absolutely nothing. All the little snippets were there and came together very cleanly.

Overall, I would say I enjoyed this, the new setting, the mystery, and the characters, there you go I've decided on four stars.

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Review: Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, just wow.

Jen is a middle-aged lawyer, married to Kelly (a self-employed painter and decorator) with an eighteen year old son Todd. On the Saturday just before Hallowe'en, on the night the clocks go back to mark the end of British Summer Time, Jen is waiting for Todd to return home from a party when she sees him accosted by an older man in the street. feeling deeply uneasy Jen and Kelly run into the street only to see Todd stab the man several times.

When Jen awakes the next morning, ready to go to the Plie station to get Todd a lawyer etc, she is astonished to find that Todd is at home. Neither Todd nor Kelly has any memory of the previous evening's events and it becomes obvious pretty quickly that Jen has woken up on the Saturday morning (again), before the stabbing, can she do anything to prevent her son possibly spending twenty five years in prison for murder?

With her lawyer's eye for detail Jen notices things as she relives the day that she never noticed before but each new clue is just a fragment - now she notices that her son has become thinner, less joyful than he was six months ago, is she a bad mother for not paying attention? Did something she failed to do lead to the stabbing?

Each day when Jen awakes she wakes a day earlier, then a week, going further back in time, discovering everything she thought she knew about her life and her marriage was a lie, but still no closer to why Todd killed the man.

I honestly spent several hours annoying my husband enormously yesterday by exclaiming at regular intervals over the latest twist in this book. What made it so enthralling was that I genuinely did not see half the twists coming, and yet they made total sense when they unfolded. I really wanted the Eastenders' theme tune to dum dum dum at the end of half the chapters as yet another truth was uncovered.

There are so many things I won't discuss because to do so might spoil the novel for the reader. Suffice it to say that I was not only 100% invested in the novel while I was reading it, but when it finished I was also fully onboard with the ending (unlike another book which was too clever for its own good which I read recently), as I sit here the whole thing ties together beautifully with no concerns about plot holes. This reminds me of that film The Usual Suspects (in a good way) as the reader is led one way, then another, in the search for the truth.

I have never read a book by Gillian McAllister before but if this is the calibre of plotting I will be looking up some of her previous books lickety-spit.

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

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Review: Tea for Two at the Little Cornish Kitchen

Tea for Two at the Little Cornish Kitchen by Jane Linfoot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Am I suddenly in a good mood for 2022? So many books are getting four stars from the queen of the three and a half star review.

Cressida Cupcake has a very popular YouTube channel where she makes gorgeous cakes whilst looking immaculate. Then a slightly underbaked cake on a national TV baking show is presented in the worst possible light. Suddenly Cressida is the butt of many an unkind hashtag, and she's losing her sponsors.

Wanting to (metaphorically) lick her wounds in private, Cressida agrees to cat/ dog-sit for her brother and his wife while they go to Switzerland for IVF treatment (I assume brother and sister-in-law were the subjects of the previous book in the series) at their cottage in St Aidan, Cornwall while she curates a new book on baking.

However, things don't go according to plan. First Cressy loses the publisher for her new book, then she discovers that her brother's best friend, and her first big crush, Ross Bradbury, is temporarily working as a vet locally. They have history, the absolute worst, and she can't imagine anything worse that being forced into regular contact with him in a small village.

Partially because of what happened between Ross and Cressy all those years ago, Cressy has always wanted to be totally self-sufficient (ie not accepting help from anyone, rather than aping The Good Life TV series), something that has been exacerbated by the success of her myriad elder brothers and sisters. At first she resists attempts by the local yummy mummies, who call themselves The Mermaids, to enter into the village social scene. But soon Cressy discovers that resistance is futile. Soon she's teaching piping skills at the old people's home, baking for St Aidan's singles evenings and feeding the livestock for a local farmer who has been forced by ll-health into the old people's home temporarily. And everywhere she goes it seems like Ross pops up, looking more handsome than ever, being reasonable and helpful and charming ... the nerve!

This book should come with the warning that just reading it could make you put on weight as Cressy spends most of her days and nights creating delectable brownies, meringues, and cupcakes.

This is a no-surprises, sweet (literally and figuratively), second-chance romance set in a picturesque Cornish village. Perfect for escapism.

I was offered a free review copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: Just The Way You Are: The perfect uplifting, feel-good read for 2022

Just The Way You Are: The perfect uplifting, feel-good read for 2022 by Beth Moran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ollie Tennyson wrote a Dream List when she was sixteen, fourteen years later none of her dreams have materialised because her manipulative mother won't let her have a life. Every time Ollie tries to go on a date, or on holiday with friends, her mother fakes a panic attack, or heart palpitations or some other illness to keep Ollie firmly by her side.

But when Ollie discovers her mother has ransacked her bedroom drawers, opened her diary and dug out her Dream List, proposing the two of them do many of the things on the list for Ollie's impending thirtieth birthday, something snaps and Ollie decides to move out.

Ollie's best friend has her own burdens (I assume she had her own book) and challenges Ollie not to swap catering to her mother's very need to do the same thing for a man, persuading her to sign a Man Ban until Ollie has completed all the things on her list (many of which she dreamt of doing with her dream guy) solo.

Ollie loves into a tiny end of row cottage, her two neighbours being an elderly, bad tempered, man and a single mother with a pre-teen daughter. Oh, and there's a hunky forest ranger who patrols Sherwood Forest which extends just beyond the cottage's shared garden.

Can Ollie become her own woman without a man?

This is a sweet, fun, contemporary romance. Ollie's Pollyanna-like charms soon help her befriend her new neighbours, foster romance between her adult-literacy clients, and melt the heart of the prim and proper local librarian.

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

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