Maddy's Book Blog

  One Cornish Summer with You by Phillipa Ashley Phillip Ashley is a fantastic author, and this novel doesn’t disappoint.   She often writes about Cornwall, and I always want to visit after reading one of her books. Tammy is an artist, and her medium of choice is sand art on the Cornish beaches. When she meets Ruen on the beach, she is initially very wary. Her mum left when she was young, and her father drank and gambolled, and then died – so her experience is that everyone she cares about leaves. Just as she is starting to trust him, she finds out a secret about him that may just destroy their relationship forever. A lovely story, evocative of the region, and you will be rooting for Tammy and Ruen and the power of love. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7581776215

  Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop by Jaimie Admans   Jaimie Admans has fast become one of my favourite authors. I love her books, which are full of quirky characters, romance and with a little bit of magic. That being said, this isn’t one of my favourites of her stories, as it took me a little while to settle into the characters. When 13 year old Ava comes into Mickey’s shop on Ever After Street to get away from her father she falls in love with the shop and is completely under the spell of the outgoing and gregarious owner, who is in complete contrast to her father, Ren, who is a very closed, and guarded history teacher at Ava’s school. When Ren comes into the shop, looking for his daughter, he immediately bangs his head on a birdcage, and proceeds to tell Mickey what he thinks of the shop – which is not great. Ren’s relationship with Mickey swings alternately from falling out to making up, and along the way they find a very old diary hidden in a chest. This bi...

  The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton I usually love Kate Morton’s books. She is a fabulous author with a great writing style, however I did find this book too long, and felt that it would have been even better with a bit of judicious pruning. The story is told in three timelines. In the present Cassandra was living with her Grandmother Nell in Australia, when her Grandmother passed away and left her a house in England. Cassandra knew that Nell was a foundling, and decided to come to the UK to research Nell’s story. In the past, Nell starts as a young girl being left on a ship and told to wait and hide, and takes you up to the point where she starts to find out a bit about her past – and then takes her Granddaughter Cassandra to live with her. In the very earliest timeline Eliza was living with her twin brother and mother in poverty in England, when she is found by her Uncle and taken to live with her Aunt and Uncle and cousin, and takes you up to the point when she decides she...