Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Minnie and her sister Clara, spinsters both, live in a dilapidated country house in the middle of a housing estate, built when their father sold off the family's land. Now in their seventies, their days follow a well-established routine: long gone are the garden parties, the tennis lessons and their suffocatingly strict mother. Gone, too, is any mention of what happened when Minnie was sixteen, and the secret the family buried in the grounds of their estate.
Directly opposite them lives Max, an 11-year-old whose life with his mum has changed beyond recognition since her new boyfriend arrived. Cast aside, he takes solace in Minnie's careful routine, observed through his bedroom window.
Over the course of the summer, both begin to tell their stories: Max through a Dictaphone, Minnie through a diary. As their tales intertwine, ghosts are put to rest and challenges faced, in a story that is as dark as it is uplifting.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Handsome young chef Zach Docherty is feeling the heat. Following an exposé in a national newspaper, his fiancée Poppy Dunlop has broken their engagement. Heartbroken at the thought of life without Poppy, Zach drowns his sorrows and, when his agent suggests that Zach becomes a contestant in a reality TV show, Jungle Survival, he reluctantly agrees. Plunged deep in the jungle, into a bizarre mix of talent and trials, Zach meets glamour model Cleo Petra, and the cameras go crazy.
Will Zach survive and be crowned Jungle King? Or will his latest exploits push Poppy further away...
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Can she make room for love?
When wedding planner Carrie Archer inherits the crumbling Avalon Inn where she spent her childhood summers, she knows she’ll do whatever it takes to make it home. With no money for renovations, that means finding investors if she ever hopes to turn the Avalon into a dream wedding venue.
But Carrie has been left more than the inn—she’s also inherited its occupants, including three senior citizens, a single-father chef with childcare issues, a panicky receptionist, and one very gorgeous gardener.
So when her cousin Ruth declares her intention to get married at the Avalon on Christmas Eve, Carrie finds herself juggling decorating with dance nights, budgeting with bridge games...and sabotage with seduction.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Career minded, Natalie Spencer, had never been in love. She could never understand what all the fuss was about. But when she met Jackson Humphries during Fresher’s Week at university, that all changed.
Utterly infatuated, Natalie quickly discovers the meaning of love and, before she knows it, she's heading up the aisle – for the first time, that is.
This is a tale about four wedding dresses, a runaway groom and a girl who got so carried away, she couldn’t see true love staring her right in the face.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
From Cumbria to the Caribbean...
Flying solo again in their middle years, can life really begin again for Jo and Hattie? Is there hope for the newly single baby boomers and can romance happen?
Continuing the Coffee Tea... series, join Jo and Hattie as they romp into their future and prove that anything is possible!
Today it's our stop on The Stylist blog tour with a debut spotlight feature for journalist and author Rosie Nixon including a review of The Stylist from Kelly.
Rosie Nixon has been joint Editor of HELLO! for the past five years where she relishes the role of hands-on editor with a love of all things celebrity, royal and fashion-related. She previously held senior positions at glossy women's magazines including Grazia, Glamour and Red. In her career she has been lucky enough to attend a multitude of glamorous award ceremonies, premieres and showbiz weddings all around the world. Ever discreet and protective of the big stars she has worked with, Rosie's experience has undoubtedly enabled her to write her debut novel, The Stylist. @Rosie_Nixon
When Amber Green, a shop assistant in an exclusive London boutique is plucked from obscurity and mistakenly offered a job working with Mona Armstrong, the infamous, jet-setting 'stylist to the stars', she hits the ground running, helping to style some of Hollywood's hottest (and craziest) starlets.
As awards season spins into action Mona is in hot demand and Amber's life turned upside down. Suddenly she catching the attention of two very different suitors, TV producer Rob and Hollywood bad boy rising star Liam. How will Amber keep her head? And what the hell will everyone wear?
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Love can drive you crazy… in more ways than one!
When Abby met Simon, a drink in the uni bar lead to keeping in touch, late-night phone calls and intimate catch-ups. It was the start of something special, a love Abby believed would last a lifetime.
A wedding, two daughters and fifteen years later, Abby’s world is falling apart. Having discovered Simon has had an affair, her normally ordered mind is spiralling out of control. Crushed by the betrayal and shocked by her own reaction, she knows she needs to get herself together; she’s just not sure where to start.
She wanted all the pain and angst gone from inside her. Would meeting someone do that? She was one lone person in a world of people. Who would notice her? Nobody had in the last fifteen years.
With Simon on a mission to win her back and a close friend hiding a secret that could push her further over the edge, Abby finds strength and support where she least expects it. But as she attempts to gain control of her life and make decisions about her future, it may be more than the limits of Abby’s mind that are put to the test!
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Ever thought about recycling your ex?
Best friends Catherine, Rachel & Sarah are fun, smart, successful and single – just like millions of women with a low tolerance for idiocy in their dates.
Mr. Right hasn't turned up yet, and Mr Right-Now isn't worth booking a wax appointment for. So when Catherine, London’s finest matchmaker, gets Rachel and Sarah to join her dating site where they can recycle their ex-boyfriends in exchange for an upgrade, they soon realise that anything could happen...
Three best friends, proving that sometimes it really isn't you… it's him.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
How could everything that seemed so right suddenly have gone so wrong for Mia? Snow is on the ground and Christmas lights twinkle in the German Christmas market. The warm, spiced wine is just right, but there's still one key ingredient missing from her romantic dream. Will Mia's Christmas turn out to be sugar and spice and all things nice - or a deflated soufflé of loneliness and regret?
-- Christmas Cravings is a festive romance standalone episode from the Greedily Yours series.
Kelly has become a fan of the Greedily Yours series by Emma Hamilton so when we were approached to be part of the blog tour for the Christmas episode, Christmas Cravings, she didn't hesitate at the chance to ask Emma a few questions. So I'll hand you over to Kelly and Emma.
How could everything that seemed so right suddenly have gone so wrong for Mia? Snow is on the ground and Christmas lights twinkle in the German Christmas market. The warm, spiced wine is just right, but there's still one key ingredient missing from her romantic dream.
Will Mia's Christmas turn out to be sugar and spice and all things nice - or a deflated soufflé of loneliness and regret?
Christmas Cravings is a festive romance standalone episode from the Greedily Yours series.
About the series: Mia Maxwell loves food. She loves it so much that she's made it her career. She owns a food PR business that fills her days, and by night she's a food blogger with a burgeoning audience. With her 'Culinary Confessions of a Greedy Girl', Mia takes the reader on a delicious journey, searching for top dishes and the perfect man.
What was your inspiration for the Greedily Yours series?
I was inspired by lots of things really for the series. My love of food, my love of Cornwall, growing up in London and travelling to the places I wrote about. My friends and family, things people said, things that have happened to me, it all fed in to thinking about the story and the characters as I was developing it. But that actual flash of inspiration happened whilst I was riding my bike to work one day. The countryside through which I ride really reminds me of Cornwall, it was the middle of summer, and the sun was glinting on the water and the flowers were out in the field and Mia and Tom just appeared to me really in my head and I knew that these two had to be my star crossed lovers. They sort of burst in on my thoughts and they wouldn't leave me alone for the whole period of writing. I would find myself slowing down on my ride or whilst running, to consider how they would act and what they would do next. As soon as I got to work, I jotted down as many ideas as I could and that evening I prepared a pitch to the publishing company and went for a meeting with them about a month later when we elaborated a bit on how it would all work and then I went off to Cornwall on holiday and got started. The funny thing is that I knew I wanted both Tom and Mia to have curly hair and I started it all before Poldark on BBC started airing, but when I saw the character Ross in Poldark, I was like, oooh, he looks a bit like how I imagined Tom might. I guess he's the classic romantic hero, hidden under a layer of grumpiness.
What made you write Greedily Yours as a series instead of a novel?
Good question. In my head it was a novel, just spread out over 8, then 9 episodes. But the simple answer is that that's what the publishers wanted, a serial book. I'd never read one before, and certainly never written one, but I actually found that way of writing very helpful because it meant that at the end of each episode, you were aiming for a kind of high point which leant a bit more drama to the story and hopefully worked to whet the readers' appetites to want to read more. It was also helpful with structuring the writing, as an episode is much more manageable psychologically than thinking, right, now I have to write a whole book. I think as a first time writer, it would perhaps have been easy to get lost in a plot, whereas the discipline of planning out each episode, so it worked alone and led into the next one, made the whole structure much easier for me to deal with .
Mia Maxwell is one of my favourite fictional characters, where did you get the inspiration for her character from?
That is lovely to hear, thank you. ;-) Well, Mia did sort of spring into my head as a persona in her own right, and she doesn't look like me. (Perhaps she's the me I would love to be, I'm not sure; or maybe truer to say she's an amalgam of many different people I've known ) although she's also her own person really as well. Psychologically, she is quite close to how I was in my early thirties. As I think most writers tend, at least at first, to write what they know. So many of her insecurities and ways of acting and being, I share, or shared back then. So I guess all that helped with the inspiration, but then it's weird, these characters just start acting of their own accord almost. You think you're going to write one way, and then they demand that something else happens to them and I just followed her really and took my cues from her.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Ashley Davison is desperate to spend the holidays with her mother in Seattle. Dash Sutherland has an interview for the job of a lifetime in Seattle and must arrive by 23 December. Both frantic to book a last-minute flight out of California, Ashley and Dash collide at the airport to learn that there are no flights and only one rental car available. After a rocky start, the two reluctantly agree to drive to Washington together. But their journey isn't without obstacles, and a misunderstanding with the law threatens to ruin their holiday plans altogether.
Will Ashley make it home in time to surprise her mother? Will Kevin report to duty as expected? And most importantly, will they both have the opportunity to discover the greatest gift of all?
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Last Christmas, when Livvy was knocked down in the supermarket car park she certainly wasn’t ready to actually be dead! For months now she’s floated on the edge of the afterlife, generally making a nuisance of herself.
And she’s not ready to go just yet! She’s furious about the new woman in her husband’s life and she’s worried about her beloved son who doesn’t seem to be adjusting to life without her at all.
This Christmas, Livvy is given one last magical chance to make everything right. Will she take it and give her family the perfect Christmas?
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Festive fervour takes over and it isn’t all seasonal peace and goodwill as expectations rise and it soon escalates from cosy dinner for two, to all the trimmings for ten!
With missing turkeys, loose horses, troublesome terriers and randy huntsmen, Lottie is hard pushed to find time for a kiss under the mistletoe, let alone find the opportunity to woo Rory with her sexy Santa costume.
But there is only one thing Lottie really wants for Christmas, and only one man can deliver it…
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Poppy Penfold desperately wants a career in television. After months of dead-end applications, she gets her big break with a temporary job as a runner for RealiTV. But to land a permanent role, Poppy will need to go head-to-head with fellow runner Rhidian: arrogant, highly competitive - and ridiculously good looking.
Poppy goes all out to impress, but somehow things don't go to plan. Whether failing to prevent a washed-up soap star from becoming roaring drunk during Scottish game show Last Clan Standing, or managing to scare the horses during the filming of Strictly Come Prancing, Poppy gets noticed for all the wrong reasons. With highly strung presenters and distractingly handsome producers in the mix, it's Poppy's determination that will see her win or lose her dream job, and maybe her dream man too...
Sue Moorcroft, author of The Wedding Proposal
My favourite book is 'A Town Like Alice' by the late, great Nevil Shute. I first read my late father's copy when I was nine - my very first foray into adult literature. I fell in love with Nevil Shute's writing and between Dad and I we collected the entire set. I have them on my shelf today.
A Town Like Alice is a sweeping love story that moves Jean and Joe across continents, through war, through personal suffering, to a place where they can build a life together. It gripped my imagination and began my love affair with romantic fiction. It's amongst Nevil Shute's most famous works, and deservedly so. It also reminds me of Dad and long interesting chats about the books we loved.
Vacheli from Books & Strips
Well 1Q84 is one of my favourite books but I think I'll talk about one of my local (Indian) favourites, The Immortals Of Meluha.
I'm not sure If anyone has heard of The Immortals Of Meluha but it is a book written by the Indian author Amish Tripathi about a god, Lord Shiva.
The book is based on the mythology surrounding the god but it also toys with the idea that gods didn't start off as gods but as ordinary men and women who were so great that they were brought up to a god like status by the generations after them. It appealed to me a lot because while I was always a religious person, I had been raised in a very strict household. This playful approach to these gods was so refreshing that I fell in love immediately.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
LOVE, LIFE AND A CHRISTMAS DUE DATE
Ellie is fresh back from her honeymoon and can’t wait to share her news with her best friends Katie and Jane. To everyone’s surprise, mother-of-two Jane has news of her own… The women are due a day apart and Katie can’t wait to be an honorary auntie to the babies.
But it’s hard to keep your sense of humour, not to mention your self-esteem, in the face of hemorrhoids and elasticated waistbands. Add a clingy mother-in-law, a career in cardiac arrest and a sex life that makes Mother Theresa look lusty, and soon their lives are as out of control as their bodies.
As the co-founders of The Curvy Girls Club, where loving yourself is the only rule, will the friends be able to practice what they preach?
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Can the curvy girls have their cake and eat it?
Meet best friends Pixie, Ellie, Katie and Jane. Fed up with always struggling to lose weight, they start a social club where size doesn’t matter. Soon it’s the most popular place to be – having fun instead of counting carbs. And the girls suddenly find their lives changing in ways they never imagined.
But outside the club, things aren’t as rosy, as they struggle with the ups and downs of everyday life.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Episode 8 of 8: Mia Maxwell would never have guessed that her summer trips to Cornwall could become more of a regular affair. But as she and her man pursue their own culinary ambitions, will sharing plates - or dinner for one - be on the menu for Mia?
Greedily Yours is a serial novel about the quest for top dishes ... with a dash of accidental love.
Mia Maxwell loves food. She loves it so much that she's made it her career. On the surface Mia seems to have it all sewn up. She lives in trendy east London with her best friend. By day she runs her own food PR consultancy, and by night she's a food blogger enjoying a burgeoning audience. Mia has a banker boyfriend who enjoys travelling the world, enabling her to taste the globe's culinary delights. But Mia is still hungry and, when she heads down to Cornwall to run a food festival, she doesn't realize that her entire life is about to be cast adrift.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Greedily Yours is a serial novel about the quest for top dishes ... with a dash of accidental love.
Mia Maxwell loves food. She loves it so much that she's made it her career. On the surface Mia seems to have it all sewn up. She lives in trendy east London with her best friend. By day she runs her own food PR consultancy, and by night she's a food blogger enjoying a burgeoning audience. Mia has a banker boyfriend who enjoys travelling the world, enabling her to taste the globe's culinary delights. But Mia is still hungry and, when she heads down to Cornwall to run a food festival, she doesn't realize that her entire life is about to be cast adrift.
Reviewed by Kelly Spillane
Episode 6 of 8: Mia Maxwell is eating her way around Palermo when an old flame invites her to a Sicilian wedding. But can she find her own romance on a moonlit night in amongst the vines on Sicily's coast, or will a series of misunderstandings derail Mia's chance at love?
Greedily Yours is a serial novel about the quest for top dishes ... with a dash of accidental love.
Mia Maxwell loves food. She loves it so much that she's made it her career. On the surface Mia seems to have it all sewn up. She lives in trendy east London with her best friend. By day she runs her own food PR consultancy, and by night she's a food blogger enjoying a burgeoning audience. Mia has a banker boyfriend who enjoys travelling the world, enabling her to taste the globe's culinary delights. But Mia is still hungry and, when she heads down to Cornwall to run a food festival, she doesn't realize that her entire life is about to be cast adrift.
