My favourite reads from March are:
Margaret Amatt - Stolen Kisses at the Loch View Hotel
This is a light-hearted romance set in Scotland, filled with a cast of interesting characters and lots of secrets to be uncovered. Briony has inherited a run-down hotel from her grandmother, who was never close to her. It's Briony's dream to make the hotel a success, especially now she's divorced from her cheating husband. But lacking the necessary funds, she needs to find an investor for it, or even a purchaser who will let her stay on as manager. Young American Zach has been sent by his boss, Mr. Beyer, to look over the hotel and see if it's going to be worth his investment. There are surprises in store when Briony and Zach discover that they met a few years earlier, when a series of misunderstandings damaged their original attraction to each other. Plus it turns out that Mr. Beyer has ulterior motives for looking at the Loch View Hotel. Lots of twists and turns, a delinquent soppy dog, local legends and family secrets in this enjoyable story told from the point of view of both Briony and Zach. Plus I learned some new American terms - who knew that on the other side of the Atlantic, 'walkers' aren't people who enjoy a pleasant hike, but are actually zombies!
Jenni Keer - No. 23 Burlington Square
This was a delight of a book! Agnes Humphries has lived all her life in the same house in Kensington. After her father died and the younger sister she brought up married, Agnes couldn't bring herself to move away from her memories. Eventually she decided to open the house to lodgers. But now, in August 1927, one of her lodgers has passed away, and she needs to find another tenant for the room. She has a choice of three - young Mrs. Mercy Mayweather, who lost her husband in the War; Stephen Thompson, a middle-aged bank clerk; and her sister's daughter Clara, who leads a wild life and has now been barred from her own home by her father. Each one of the proposed tenants harbours a shocking secret. Whichever one she chooses will lead to a vastly different outcome for Agnes and the other residents of the house. The author writes the story of the different consequences that would unfold, depending on who Agnes takes into no. 23. Fascinating, enthralling, and an engaging sense of time and place. I thoroughly recommend this novel.
Erica James - A Secret Garden Affair
It's some time since I read a book by Erica James, but this one reminded me how much I enjoy her writing. At first the novel appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, but as it developed I was pulled into the fascinating back-story. In the lead-up to Prince Charles and Lady Diana's much-hyped royal wedding, Libby discovers just weeks before her own wedding that her fiance Marcus has cheated on her. She flees to the place where she feels most comfortable - Larkspur House, and her beloved Great Aunt Bess. When Bess was a young girl, she started work there as maid to Elfrida, the daughter of the owner. As the years went by the two women became indispensible to each other, as they experienced love, heartache, and tragedy. As Libby begins to negotiate her changed circumstances, Bess and Elfrida's stories are also revealed to the reader, with the secrets that they share and never wish to be known. But somehow these begin to seep out, and the ripples upturn the lives of others connected to them. A beautifully-written tale of women's experiences in different decades of the twentieth century.
