Flora decides that she is going to join the family business. Nothing unusual in that expect that she needs to give up her lifestyle in London and descend into the country, to not just a small village where everyone knows everything and everyone but to a cottage which is in the middle of a field and hardly near a later night express shop but also into a business she knows nothing about – antiques.
Watching all those daytime programmes will be enough experience, Flora hopes.
Flora knew it was not going to be easy, but she really did not think it was going to be this difficult. Her distant cousin Charles is very reluctant to let her in to anything of the business and it seems that his strings are being pulled by his fiancée Annabelle, who has grace, class, standing and it turns out money. One thing the family auction house does not.
It is in at the deep end for Flora.
As well as learning as much as she can as fast as she can, she has a cat about to have kittens, and men flocking round her all trying to gain her affection. Handsome Lothario and naked eco-warriors Flora is encountering it all. Plus the locals have welcomed her into their choir and Flora becomes part of the community very quickly.
Can Flora really defy the expectations that Charles and Annabelle have about her? Of course she can, this is a Katie Fforde novel and strong female characters are a given but they also have a softer side, and in this book the whole gambit is shown.
This is one of my favourite Katie Fforde’s that I have read as I make my way through her catalogue, it has everything in it I wanted at that particular time when I picked up the book. Escapism, a bit of romance, some interesting family dynamics, a huge passion to succeed in this case in an auction house and turn everything around not just for herself but the whole community. A few gorgeous men, great friends, great food and of course fluffy kittens. I know this makes it sound all fluffy and girly but so what – I loved it. If you want that from your reading sometime then this is the book for you.
I think this is definitely one of my favourite novels by Katie. I think because I could really picture it all and the fascination with all the antiques but especially the holiday cottage that Flora has to take as her home. I would love to live somewhere that isolated, that you can’t just walk to the shop for a magazine and a bar of chocolate. That is the beauty of reading you can escape to places and dream about the things that you may want to do all through the power of words and a story and Katie Fforde does it well with her books.
I have three more of her novels on my shelf to read. And I am off to find out which ones I have yet to get and read!
The Book Jotter 