My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… the door opened and the reason behind the little car’s lethargy was revealed. An enormous woman unfurled herself from the interior in the manner of an elephant escaping from a phone box.

‘Oh, look at them.’ Deirdre sighed as she stared from the window. ‘They have the faces of two beautiful gondoliers, and yet their souls are more akin to a bad case of gonorrhoea.’

Godfrey tutted. ‘This is most unfortunate,’ he said, ‘I hoped you would be able to see sense without my legal team becoming involved.’ His ‘legal team’ was actually a solicitor with questionable qualifications and the rumour of a prison record. He operated from a cabin near the old gasworks in the town where they lived, but Godfrey thought that the terminology sounded grander. To actually employ a legal team would have cost money… To him, spending money was like performing karaoke. It was something that other people did while you favoured them with a pitying look and a snide remark.

While Deirdre loved people, she also liked her own privacy. She turned the neglected collection of old stones into her own version of a fairy tale cottage, camouflaged by trees and only stumbled upon by ramblers if they had a faulty GPS and no natural sense of direction.

My Review:

I adored every word of this wryly penned and cunningly crafted missive. Each page was shot through with brain-tickling levity and diabolically clever wit. I was staggered, mesmerized, thoroughly entertained, and completely awed to realize that is was only the author’s second book. I had reams of favorite quotes and nearly perished with the pain of whittling them down for this review. The writing was slyly amusing and engaging storytelling at its best as sharp and vivid visuals were conjured that stayed with me long after I had put my Kindle to rest.

The premise was unusual and highly relevant and while it was exceedingly clever and brilliantly paced, the tale was extremely well-crafted and thoughtfully rendered while sneakily hitting all the feels multiple times.   I gasped, smirked, giggled-snorted, and gleefully laughed aloud in a manner that some might describe as cackling.   Andy Paulcroft is a true artist who paints with the most vibrant of words.