Bear With Me

by Jessica Redland

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA 

Jemma has the job of her dreams as curator for the children’s section of a museum in London. She spends each day surrounded by the one thing she’s absolutely passionate about teddy bears. When boyfriend, Scott, shows a genuine interest in her passion instead of laughing at her for “playing with teddies all day”, she knows he’s a keeper.

Returning home to the North Yorkshire seaside town of Whitsborough Bay to celebrate her birthday, Jemma thinks she’s heading for her happy-ever-after when Scott unexpectedly proposes. So, a few days later, why isn’t he returning her calls or responding to her texts?

Julie has always been a wonderful single mother to Jemma and her little brother, Sean. As the owner of specialist teddy bear shop, Bear With Me, and the creative genius behind the successful range of Ju-Sea Bears, she inspires Jemma with her ability to balance a demanding career with home life. So why is the shop now in disarray and why is Sean so upset?

Sam thought he had his future all worked out. With a promising neurology career, a home, and a devoted fiancée, life was looking good. But now he’s all alone in a strange city, far from everyone and everything he cares about, struggling to rebuild the tatters of his life. Did he do the right thing by running away? What does the future hold and is he strong enough to face it?

Sometimes love finds us when we least expect it. But sometimes love leaves us, just as unexpectedly. When you’ve loved and lost, can you bear to let love in again?

Bear With Me, as all will be revealed …

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Dad hated bears, Mum hated golf, and I was pretty certain they hated each other.

Kirsty begged me to take her back… It was a different technique each time from tears to seduction to pleading temporary insanity because she loved me so much and couldn’t bear being away from me. I never understood that logic. If you miss someone, you send them a text, you look at a photo, you sniff their clothes. You don’t play a game of hide the sausage dressed as a canine.

 

My Review:

 

I devoured this engaging and captivating tale, it was full of interesting and heart squeezing storylines that while tragic and angsty, were so well written and expertly tempered with levity and quirkiness that I didn’t seem to mind at all. I adored the main characters although there was a period where I wanted to give Jemma a few hard pinches and a much-needed kick to her posterior to dislodge her cranium. The path of this couple’s relationship was a zigzag route of false starts and bad timing, and I wanted to groan with frustration for them with each near miss. The writing was easy to follow, informative, well-paced, and held my complete attention throughout. I adored the gradual melding of Flash Gordon/Thor/Indiana Jones and the Deputy Head Bear-Keeper. And I scored two fun new additions to my Brit word list with tiddly which is slightly drunk, and nithered which is used in northern UK and Scotland to describe the effects of extreme cold such as intense shivering.

Author Bio

Jessica had never considered writing as a career until a former manager kept telling her that her business reports read more like stories and she should write a book. She loved writing but had no plot ideas. Then something happened to her that prompted the premise for her debut novel, Searching for Steven. She put fingers to keyboard and soon realized she had a trilogy and a novella.

She lives on the stunning North Yorkshire Coast — the inspiration for the settings in her books — with her husband, daughter, cat, Sprocker Spaniel, and an ever-growing collection of collectible teddy bears. Although if the dog has her way, the collection will be reduced to a pile of stuffing and chewed limbs!

Her passion for North Yorkshire is shared by fellow-writer and great friend, Sharon Booth and, together, they are the Yorkshire Rose Writers.

Jessica tries to balance her time — often unsuccessfully — between being an HR tutor, trying to re-learn how to play the piano, studying towards a Masters in Creative Writing, and writing itself. Who needs sleep?

Social Media Links

Twitter: @JessicaRedland

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessicaRedlandWriter/

Website and blog: www.jessicaredland.com