Book-Mad-Mum

  Estate agent Blythe lives in Holly Cross, and is just one sale away from being Agent of the Month, so when Sam comes to town looking for the perfect house in the perfect location she him his dream house which he promptly buys. The thing is, Sam hates Christmas and what Blythe hasn’t told him is that in December, Holly Cross transforms into the most festive village in the whole of the country! This was a really fun, easy read and definitely one that should be enjoyed during the festive period, with the tree lights twinkling, a glass of mulled wine or a warming hot chocolate and so Carols playing in the background! This will leave you with a smile on your face and a warm feeling in your heart!

  The festive season is fast approaching and with that the Fairway Players in Lower Lockwood are preparing for their pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk in order to raise money for the church roof. Sarah Jane (joint Chair) is trying her best to keep things together, but she’s heard that the beanstalk may contain asbestos and someone wants to ruin the panto before it’s even began (booooo – hisssssss!) During the performance, it all starts unravelling and a body is discovered but who is the victim and why are they there? Lawyers Femi and Charlotte try to get to grips with what has happened and why as they navigate their way through all the festive round robins, emails and police transcripts. I read the first book – The Appeal and absolutely loved it so when I hear that a Christmas book was also coming, I was delighted. It certainly didn’t disappoint and was great fun and the pages seemed to turn themselves. I love books which are written as emails or diary extracts as it gives a ...

  Christmas At The Chateau by Annabel French   Lawyer Naomi Winters is at a turning point in her life – her husband Ollie filed for divorce twelve months ago, she hates her job and now she’s due to spend the festive season on her own. When her best friend Mia suggests that Naomi spends Christmas at the Chateau in the Swiss Alps, she decides that now is the time for a change, and agrees. When she arrives in Switzerland, she’s surprised to bump into Mia’s big brother Gabriel who she hasn’t seen for years. I loved this book and raced through the story, it had gorgeous descriptions of the Swiss countryside during the festive season and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy!  

  Hannah and Finn formed their friendship when they met in their first year at Boston College. Both of them stayed at the college dorms during the Christmas break, as neither had a family to go home to. From that moment on The Christmas Orphans Club was formed and the tradition continued even when they moved cities and two other friends Priya and Theo became members! This is a lovely book about Christmas and told from a completely different perspective. This story is told Hannah and Finn who both find the festive season difficult, which was a breath of fresh air. A fantastic book which lovers and haters of Christmas will enjoy!

  Lucy and Sam are a couple who are selling their recently renovated house. When the estate agent rings to book a viewing, Lucy is asked to show the prospective buyer around as the estate agent is running late, but despite her crippling anxiety, she agrees to do it.   When the would-be purchaser arrives, something in Lucy’s gut feels wrong and when she asks him to leave, he simply refuses. This is where the real story begins…   This is a psychological thriller which will fill you with anxiety (sometimes in a good way, and in other places not so!) I must admit I absolutely loved the first half of the book, but when the story was being explained to us, and it was revealing what had happened I felt it was flawed and there were too many holes for me personally, but I am sure that other people will absolutely love this book as it is gripping and will have you on the edge of your seat (especially if your house is up for sale!)

  Wow! Wow! Wow! I want everyone to read this book that so we can talk about all the twists and turns as I am so worried about inadvertently giving away a spoiler!! Instead I’m going to try and tell you about the story line, as best as I can without giving too much away!   James and Eva met, fell in love and got married ten years ago and they planned their lives to include children until three years ago when everything changed one Christmas and since then, things just haven’t been right between them. Reluctantly attending a friend’s Christmas party at a manor house in Cornwall Eva’s mind is elsewhere as she is desperately trying to launch her new shop back in London, all the while her marriage with James is teetering on the edge. In a series of events, Eva is forced to look at Christmas day from the perspectives of the people closest to her. Phew! I hope I haven’t given too much away!! Although this book is centred around Christmas Day, I think it can be read all yea...

  Dee, Minnie and Roo have all been friends for longer than they care to remember! Now all in their 30s, they have to deal with grown up adult issues like parenting and fertility. Dee has just learnt that her biological clock is ticking faster than other women of her age and has been advised not to put off having children if that’s what she wants. Having just split up with her boyfriend Nat, she either has to face life without a child or look into the possibility of co-parenting. When she meets and befriends Andy, a chef at her local cafe, they look at life in the same way, or do they? I loved the characters in this book but there were times when each of them individually drove me insane! This book looks into some hard hitting issues but handles them well and sensitively but all in all it didn’t give me a soft, warm feeling when I finished it. I think I would have probably enjoyed a story about Dee’s mother Alice and her partner Ines more than this one!  

  This book has been one of my favourite reads in a long, long time. I am a massive fan of Michelle Frances’ books having read all but two of hers but this one just knocked everything else out of the park! When Nancy and Lara move to a new village buying a big house, they could be accused of drawing attention to themselves when in fact all Nancy wants to do is to give her asthmatic daughter the chance of a less polluted lifestyle in a rural setting. They just want to blend in and become part of village life, however, the other residents have different ideas. On Lara's first day at her new school, they both realise that “fitting in” is going to be quite a challenge especially when she is later accused of trying to drown another child at a birthday party. This is when the bitching and backstabbing of the “mummy mafia” on the class Whats App group goes into full throttle and other people get drawn into the drama. As someone whose primary school life was made miserable by a bully t...

  Esme has run The Willows guest house for as long as anyone in Ballycove can remember, but as her eye sight fails and she has a fall just before the start of the summer season she is forced to sit back for the first time in her life and let her friend Marta take charge. From her chair in the entry hall, not much passes Esme by and she shares her pearls of wisdom with the guests who are staying for many different reasons. There's Cora, the wife visiting indefinitely... without her husband; Niamh, the city professional with a life-changing decision to make; and Phyllie, the grandmother whose family is slipping away from her. Esme's guests provide the colour that helps her keep her grip on the world. All of them have something they want to escape – or to hold on to. But Esme can help them find their way before the summer is over? Although Ballycove is a fictional coastal village in Ireland, this story took me right back to my childhood holidays in Ireland with my family and...

  Beca left her hometown in Pembrokeshire as a teenager because she was sick of everyone knowing her business and she moved to the “big smoke” to seek her fortune. Returning to her hometown many years later Beca buys a farmhouse from the proceeds of her successful cleaning company, with plans to foster children so that she can give them a taste of the countryside. Picking up where she left her friendship with her best friend Griff, Becca starts to put her plans in action. When she makes a visit into town, she is saddened to see that the Icecream café once owned by her grandparents has now been sold to her nemesis Ed Wilde who has turned it into a coffee shop.   Jo Thomas’ books always feature fantastic scenery, glorious food and a love story to die for and this book certainly doesn’t disappoint!    

  When Adeline receives a wedding invite to her mother’s fourth marriage on the island of Corfu, she despairs and makes the decision not to go, until her father, talks her round! Adeline’s half sister Cassie lives life through the pages of a romance novel the type that her mother, bestselling romance author Catherine Swift writes and she can’t wait for the nuptials. The invites though hold a secret…who is the mystery groom and why all the secrecy behind him? This story is told from the perspective of the two daughters and their mum, and although you will probably guess the twist (I did!) it certainly doesn’t distract from the story and the wonderful description of Corfu and it’s scenery. I initially started this book and then stopped it and read another book in between and now looking back I’m not sure why I did that because when I returned to it, I couldn’t stop reading it!! I also read this when I was lying in bed with Covid, and it transported me on a holiday to Corfu exac...

  Doctor Alison Wilson has moved to a new seaside town from a London hospital to take up the role of Medical Officer at failing hospital Saint Margaret’s. Tasked with shaking things up, she quickly learns that things are worse than they initially seem: patient records are in disarray, staff morale is low, and there’s something afoot that she can’t quite put her finger on… As Alison starts to dig into the hospital’s past, she gradually discovers a trail of lies that runs deeper and darker than she could have ever imagined.   I absolutely raced through this book and really enjoyed it until it got close to the end. There felt to me like a few things were put into the book but were never explained – exactly why Alison left London, it was hinted out that there was more to the story, and that we would find out later but we never did. Also Ed, the ex husband seemed to know a lot of what was going on, and I felt there was more to that story line, but again it was never explain...

  The year is 1896 when life was more complicated than it is now especially for women. Aged 28, main character Violet is seen as an old spinster and her father is concerned that she won’t settle down and get married, but Violet isn’t interested in that life – she wants to work and be independent – which didn’t really happen in that era. Violet sets out to discover what happened to her mother who disappeared ten years previously, and as this is no job for a lady, Violet hires a detective but is this the best thing to do, and is she taking the lid off Pandora’s box? This was a nice gentle read, something that you’d pick up on a Sunday afternoon with the rain beating down outside – it will whisk you away to another lifetime with characters that you will warm to.

  I have always been a massive fan of Catherine Alliott’s book and so was very excited about reading this. Initially I found it quite difficult to get into the story – the first few chapters seem to feature lots of character names and to be honest I struggled with the family dynamics for a bit until I settled into the story. I also found that similar names for characters added to my confusion – we had a Sally and a Susie and then a Rupert and a Rorie! This didn’t help my menopausal brain and I often had to stop and think “Sally? Is she the sister-in-law or the friend?”   The Pink House is a book about love but starts with Emma having a love affair with her husband’s parents country house. It always held a special place in her heart, and when her in-laws divorced, Emma and her husband Hugh made the move from London to the country to start a new life. But country living is not all roses around the door and although it sounds idyllic, cracks appear but we’re talking relationshi...

  Just by reading the first paragraph of this book you will be completely and utterly hooked and will instantly want to know more about the person that is "Strange Sally Diamond". Sally has always been very different from the other children, bullied at school with no ability to make friends she lives on a remote farm with her elderly father. When she does have to go into the village, she pretends to be deaf so that she doesn’t have to interact with anyone. Sally leads a very literal life, and so when someone asks her to do something, she’ll carry out their wishes, to the letter. She does not have the ability to read between the lines, and at the start of the story she doesn’t possess a lot of emotions, but this is something she works through.   Bought up by her adoptive parents, we learn more about Sally’s upbringing and what happened to her previously with her back story. This book will send shivers down your spine and make the hairs on your arms stand up, which is what we...

This felt like a book of two halves - the first was 50-something Alice coming to terms with an empty nest after her youngest daughter Robin leaves home and Alice is left with endless days ahead of her with no substance. She realises that she no longer loves her husband and so embarks on a different, secret life which brings excitement and love back into her life. The second half of the book is set around when Christmas when Robin returns home for the festive season but and never leaves and life takes a different twist and turn for Alice. Set in the 80s this feels like a book of its time - although Alice is in her 50s the way she is described she seems a lot older and quite dowdy and as I'm a woman in my 50s I hope to god, I'm nothing like her! I didn't like her as a character, she came across as being really spoilt and selfish and even her daughter Robin seemed to be quite similar in personality.

    The Village Vicar follows the story of Rosa Quinn who decides on a career change swapping her high flying London, City life and instead dons a dog collar and leads the flock in the Yorkshire village of Westenbury as their new vicar. This is no new parish for Rosa as previously her grandfather was the parish priest there and she was born and raised there alongside her triplet sisters Eva and Hannah.. We hear the back stories of the three sisters as they unfold and it’s amazing how three women who are connected in a very unusual, albeit, complicated way, live different lives. When I first picked up this book, I suppose I was expecting something completely different judging by the title and the book cover (that old adage of “never judge a book….”) I think I was expecting a cosy story of a parish in Yorkshire, a bit like the Miss Read books, however this book was punchy and captivating and I adored every word that was written. There are sad parts of the story, parts wh...

  When Evelyn Pringle’s husband Tony dies, her life it thrown into disarray and not for the reasons you think. When sorting through his possessions she comes across a piece of jewellery and a letter written by her husband to another woman. Evelyn knows she has a decision to make, ignore the letter and let the past gnaw away at her, or delivery the letter to the recipient who lives on the Isle Of Wight. Before she knows what’s happening, Evelyn finds herself waiting for a coach which takes her and others on an adventure no one could have predicted – least of all Evelyn herself. Making new friends in Joy and Cynthia, the trio discover that it's never too late to have a second chance at life. When I started this book, I didn’t really like Evelyn, she seemed grumpy and pushed away everyone who tried to help her, but over the course of the story, you see her vulnerable side and this is mainly thanks to Joy and Cynthia who are two people you would really want as friends. I would lo...