Tag: romance

From the author of the modern classic The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets comes a feel-good novel about hope, love, and the powerful bond between sisters.

It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a fifteen-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of the Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots for the poster of a new movie called Pretty Woman.

February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then one evening in May, she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in her. With the help of the bird called Yellow, Feb starts to feel her way out of her own private darkness, just as her aunt embarks on a passionate and all-consuming affair with a married American drama teacher.

THIS COULD BE EVERYTHING is a coming-of-age story with its roots under the pavements of a pre-Richard-Curtis-era Notting Hill that has all but vanished. It’s about what happens when you start looking after something more important than you, and the hope a yellow bird can bring . .

Eva Rice has written 5 novels and is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets – a post-war coming-of-age story that was runner-up in the 2006 Richard and Judy Book of the Year. It is currently being developed by Fudge Park (creators of The Inbetweeners) and Moonage Pictures (Pursuit of Love) as a major new TV series.
 
Eva has toured with bands since her early twenties. She has written the music and lyrics for Harriet a musical based on an early Jilly Cooper novel due to open in 2023. She has a geek-like fascination with pop music, and her party trick is recalling chart positions.
Follow her on twitter @EvaRiceAuthor.

My thoughts: I really felt for February, and not just because that’s a horrible name. She’s lost her parents and then her twin sister Diana, she’s drowning in grief and guilt, and thisclose to giving up completely. She’s got a place at a university in Texas, where she lived as a child, but doesn’t think she can go. The agoraphobia that’s engulfed her since Diana’s death in a car crash makes it hard to leave the house, so she doesn’t. Her aunt and uncle are kind and try to understand, but they’ve got issues of their own.

A canary finds his way into the kitchen, which leads to a boy called Theo, a musician who goes by Plato, finally leaving the house and realising she might just be able to survive after all.

Theres a luminescent quality to the writing, maybe it’s nostalgia, I was a kid in the 90s, maybe it’s the glow of Feb and Theo falling in love, the summer sun glinting off the pavement, the sticky heat we’re all familiar with. I don’t know, but it adds to the vividness of Feb’s slow reawakening.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

‘It’s not a fair world I’m afraid. Beauty or fortune carries the day. You have the beauty and I the fortune, so there’s every chance we’ll succeed’
In Regency England, marriage is everything. For young widow Sybella Lovatt, the time has come to find a suitable husband for her sister and ward Lucie. Male suitors are scarce near their Wiltshire estate, so the sisters resolve to head to London in time for The Season to begin.
Once ensconced at the Mayfair home of Lady Godley, Lucie’s godmother, the whirl of balls, parties and promenades can begin. But the job of finding a husband is fraught with rules and tradition.
Jostling for attention are the two lords – the charming and irresistible Freddie Lynwood and the preternaturally handsome Valentine Ravenell, their enigmatic neighbour from Shotten Hall, Mr Brabazon, and the dangerous libertine Lord Rockliffe, with whom the brooding Brabazon is locked in deadly rivalry.
Against the backdrop of glamorous Regency England, Sybella must settle Lucie’s future, protect her own reputation, and resist the disreputable rakes determined to seduce the beautiful widow. As the Season ends, will the sisters have found the rarest of things – a suitable marriage with a love story to match?
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Author Bio –
Jane Dunn is an historian and biographer and the author of seven acclaimed biographies, including Daphne du Maurier and her Sisters and the Sunday Times and NYT bestseller, Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. She comes to Boldwood with her first fiction outing – a trilogy of novels set in the Regency period, the first of which is to be published in January 2023. She lives in Berkshire with her husband, the linguist Nicholas Ostler.

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My thoughts: if, like me, you’re a fan of Regency romances and Bridgerton, then you’ll love this – trust me.

Sisters Bella and Lucie are headed to London, to stay with Lucie’s Godmother, “Lady God” as Bella’s hilarious son puts it, for The Season. Having lived out in the countryside, they’re both feeling a bit like fish out of water. Even with their neighbours Mr Brabazon and his cousin Lord Lynwood as acquaintances and increasingly friends.

Of course every man they meet has a reputation and most of them bad. Bella might be a widow but she’s a bit naive, not willing to just believe the things she’s told and besides, her husband was a paragon. A Dragoon captain he died in the Peninsula War (the endless fight against Napoleon’s global ambitions) and few could measure up.

And that brings us to my favourite character – Bella’s totally hilarious, very adorable little son, who loves horses more than almost anything else. He’s also the source of the funniest lines, having learnt most of his speech from the groom Gem and his late father’s batman George. Not exactly Society speech. But he’s brilliant. I want whole books featuring him and his many horse based interactions. He reveals the softer side of many of the dashing rakes the sisters meet, most of them are horse lovers too and can’t resist a small pudgy hand asking to have a ride.

This book was really enjoyable, lots of fun, and quite funny. So do yourself a favour and return to the Regency and the Ton.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.