Synopsis

Amy Perry is driven, ambitious and proudly unromantic. So what if she’s more passionate about her career than she is about her handsome boyfriend? It’s all about priorities when you’re young.

But when she is forced to leave the city and go back to the village she once called home, Amy faces her worst work nightmare – setting up a romance imprint for the publishing house she works for.

As Amy adjusts to life with no bars, boutiques or dairy substitutes, she also comes face to face with someone she’s spent years trying to forget. Before long she’s as swept up in village life as she is in the romantic manuscripts she has to read – and finds herself discovering unlikely parallels between the characters’ lives and her own.

Review

I don’t think I’ve ever hated a character more! What. A. Bitch.

Amy is a selfish, immature and rude individual who seems to have no concept of how to behave as a grown-up. I’m afraid she did not deserve her happily ever after, and why Sam even tolerated her, I can’t think. The course of true love never did run smooth, but there’s no need to be that rude to someone without any reason whatsoever. Yes she’d had a pretty tough life, having been abandoned by her mother and losing three men she was close to within a few years, but there is no need to behave like that towards other people.

That said, overall I enjoyed the story. Very much a Bridget Jones retelling (we even had a Hugh who worked in publishing), but there’s nothing really wrong with that. Some of the characters, like Meg, Nisha and Philippa were excellent and really helped to move the story along. Grace and Ken were very sweet and I do love a granddaughter-grandma relationship. Hugh was your typical privileged idiot, the epitome of what Amy thought she hated in Sam.

Despite enjoying it, I did find it entirely implausible. Kudos to setting up a large scale event in such a short time (I’ve worked in events); it sounded both amazing and quite lame so I would have liked more information on the event itself.

I did enjoy the writing (and Amy is clearly intended to be a marmite character); Starkey does not take herself too seriously, effectively poking fun at those who enjoy romance, the cheesiness of romcoms and briefly exploring its lack of respect in the literary world. There was no steam in this one, but otherwise it had all the marks of a good romantic comedy, complete with long car journey, one bed, emotional wedding, cute pet and a gay best friend.

Enjoyable, but I just couldn’t get over my hatred of Amy who needed a good slap. And what the hell is grit-grinning?

Thanks to Embla Books for my ebook. Opinions my own.