Summary

“Country cottages, romance, humour and making dreams come true. The wonderfully romantic novel from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Recipe for Love, A French Affair and The Perfect Match.”

Three years ago Bella Castle left her home town nursing a broken heart over Dominic Thane, the man she fell in love with but couldn’t have …Now she’s made a new life for herself in the country, working as an estate agent.

Bella loves her job and she loves her boyfriend Nevil. But recently he’s been preoccupied, and she’s starting to question if his future hopes and dreams are a perfect match for hers. And when Dominic turns up unexpectedly in search of his dream house, she begins to wonder if home is really where the heart is. But she’s over him, isn’t she?”

Plot

Bella Castle thinks that her life has settled down. She has a job she loves at a local estate agency, she’s adores living with her Godmother, and she’s happy enough with her boyfriend Neville. And then one day Dominic turns up. And it just so happens that Dominic was the man she left her home town for, a man she had fallen in love with but who was unobtainable. Bella’s settled life, make become anything but settled…

Neville was quite slimy and annoying from the outset and made me wonder what Bella saw in him. Dominic was taciturn and grumpy but in a way that this disappeared as he spent more time with Bella, allowing the reader to grow to like him more. As for Bella, she was mixed character, content in her life and then trying to deal with the fallout her emotions feel when Dominic returns.  For me she took more of a back seat to Alice and wasn’t the lead character as such. There were times when I didn’t agree with her thought processes and when she appeared to be making more of fuss about things than were necessary.

For example, I didn’t see why she should have run away when she fell for Dominic rather than just getting on with things so that was very immature of her, and when she didn’t stand up to Neville but thought of the things she should say. On the whole she was an annoying immature character. There were some obvious mistakes and assumptions made by the characters in the novel but these lent themselves well to the story, making it bearable to anticipate them and see how the characters dealt with them.

The other characters were an interesting addition to the story. I enjoyed Alice most and her side story of meeting Michael, and the trials they faced as ‘older’ people stepping into the world of romance. In fact, their story was the only thing that kept me reading. It was lovely to follow the relationship between the two develop, to see how they got over the hurdles that could put a stop to their fledgling romance before it had really started. Even the way they met was lovely.  The Agnews, house hunting clients of Bella’s were quirky and Jane Langley lent a down to earth bent to the story, echoing the fears of some older people who are afraid of having to leave the place they love when they age.

Thoughts:

It felt rather dull, I really didn’t like the main character and there seemed to be more cases of characters repeatedly explaining things to the reader, instead of the author allowing us to make connections and infer motivation ourselves. The story was weak as there was a few different plot lines going on which should not happen in a book when it’s written like this. 1/5 stars.