The Oddest Little Cornish Tea Shop

by Beth Good

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK  / B&N

‘I love Beth Good’s quirky style!’ Katie Fforde

It’s a big day for Charlie Bell – the grand reopening of her Aunt Pansy’s long-closed tea rooms in Tremevissey, a quaint Cornish seaside resort. But not everyone is happy for Charlie. The locals say the tea rooms are cursed. For Pansy was cruelly jilted by her lover, and walked out into the ocean, never to return.

Charlie dismisses the ‘curse’ as superstitious nonsense, but by the end of the first day, her world is in tatters, and she’s not even sure the tea rooms can open again.

Then in walks a rugged, taciturn man with a sexy smile and everything he owns on his back, looking for a summer job . . .

Is Gideon Petherick an angel in disguise? Or is history about to repeat itself?

The latest novella in Beth Good’s quirky and popular ‘Oddest Little Shop’ romcom series.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

…‘are you having it off with that total sex god, Gideon Petherick? … Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re too shy to admit it. I’d be telling anyone who’d listen if I’d caught someone like that.’ Elsie wriggled oddly beside her, as though her knickers were too tight and she was trying to adjust them. ‘After all, look at him. It’s not like he isn’t the sexiest beast on two legs in this back-of-beyond village. If I was you, I’d have jumped his bones soon as he walked into my place.’

Elsie fell silent suddenly, then made a kind of strangled moaning noise in the back of her throat. She was staring at Gideon’s rear as he bent over the pool table to take his shot. ‘Christ, will you look at that? I bet that’s a mouth-watering parcel in tight, white cotton boxers… Like two hardboiled eggs in a hanky,’ she finished under her breath.

‘Maybe a little bit handsome,’ she ventured, careful not to let him see how sexy she found him. Even though she had probably given it away once or twice. Okay, definitely twice. ‘Definitely not as hot as Poldark. But you’re … passable. It wouldn’t be a hardship to be seen in public with you, let me put it that way. Especially in a posh car,’ she added shamelessly.

My Review:

I have come to the end of my Beth Good stash and am feeling a bit melancholy and rueful having completed this one as it is the last treat in the bag for me as I’ve now finished all the published installments of the Odd Little Shop series. I enjoyed the curiosity prickling storyline and adored all the colorful characters in this one. Poor Charlie, she had worked so hard to reestablish her family’s business but a string of disasters struck during the Grand Re-Opening the of the Cornish Tea Rooms, mainly due to personnel issues, like grossly incompetent ones. The locals had long claimed the Tea Rooms were cursed, but Charlie didn’t think so. Luckily, all was not lost as a very sexy knight in shining apron named Gideon arrived on her doorstep seeking a job. Gideon had the ladies all a flutter and overheating and caused Charlie to have recurring problems with concentration and breathing.   They worked well together and found their collaboration leading to a different kind of business after-hours, which produced high temperatures in other rooms besides the kitchen.

How unexpected and ingenious for a series to not overlap in some way. I personally believe the divine and sublime Ms. Good should continue this cleverly amusing series into perpetuity, and why not? Cornwall appears to be a treasure trove of quirky villages with which she could continue to apply her own distinct and special blend of witty wares. I have cherished each of her five uniquely appealing and mirthfully entertaining novellas and she has hooked me with her pleasantly addictive style, and like a crack-head on the pipe, I feel rather desolate with the inability to reach for more.

Author Bio –

Born and raised in Essex, England, Beth Good was whisked away to an island tax haven at the age of eleven to attend an exclusive public school and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Sadly, she never became rich or famous herself, so had to settle for infamy as a writer of dubious novels. She writes under several different names, mainly to avoid confusing her readers – and herself! As Beth Good, she writes romantic comedy and feel-good fiction. She also writes thrillers as Jane Holland, historicals as Victoria Lamb and Elizabeth Moss, and feel-good fiction as Hannah Coates.

Beth currently lives in the West Country where she spends a great deal of time thinking romantic thoughts while staring out of her window at sheep. (These two actions are unrelated.)

You can find her most days on Twitter as @BethGoodWriter where she occasionally indulges in pointless banter about chocolate making and the Great British Bake Off. Due to a basic inability to say no, she has too many children and not enough money, which means she needs as many readers as she can get.

Social Media Links –

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

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/BethGoodWriter

Designer You

by Sarahlyn Bruck

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She was sick with rage and fear that Nate had the audacity to be dead on today of all days. Insensitive jerk. Just the idea of getting up on stage by herself made her stomach cramp and she’d been in and out of the bathroom during the entire flight.

Pam thought her entire outfit didn’t cost half as much as the shoes the hostess was wearing. At once, she felt too young and unsophisticated, like the kid at the adult table at Thanksgiving who longs to be back at the kids’ table with her younger cousins eating turkey in front of a Disney cartoon.

She wasn’t sure what hurt more, the casualness with which Grace could just fling insults at her or the fact that so often those insults were based in truth.

Nate himself would never fade, but those little details would start to get fuzzy in the same way any memory blurs over time. She clung to the impossible wish that she could hold onto everything about Nate, save it all onto a disk or a thumb drive, and whenever she wasn’t sure about the details of an experience she’d had with him, she could pull it up on her laptop and experience that trip, that meal, that birthday, all over again.

My Review:

I grew increasingly restless as I pushed through this book – it really wasn’t to my taste. I should have stopped reading and pushed this one in the DNF pile. The premise had promise and while there were a few glimmers of entertaining observations, I found the overall execution to be mundane and morose. I kept waiting for the story to improve and sadly, it just never did. While it wasn’t bad, it was just middle of the road, real-life humdrum type of okay.   The characters were exasperating and annoying and weren’t people I could care for or about, nor were they endearing to me, as the mourning widow seemed to have bailed on everything except finishing her deceased husband’s projects. Her priorities were askew and in particular, she wasn’t parenting and selfishly leaving her grieving teenaged daughter fending for herself and growing increasingly resentful, defiant and obnoxious, and making extremely poor choices.   Like many neglectful parents, instead of seeking help or providing consequences, she threw money at it and little else until it was too late. By the time the mother finally gained some insights and their relationship had started to turn around, the story stopped. And I truly mean it just stopped, without an ending, which is something I find particularly irksome. But maybe it is just me, as this story seems to have tripped several landmines in the field of my pet peeves.

The Craft Room
by Dave Holwill

Goodreads

Sylvia Blackwell is tired. Her grandchildren are being kept away from her, and the expected inheritance that might finally get her middle-aged son to move out has failed to materialize – thanks to her mother’s cat. It is becoming increasingly difficult to remain composed. On a romantic clifftop walk for her 47th Wedding Anniversary, an unexpected opportunity leads to a momentous decision that will irretrievably change the course of her life.

The Craft Room is a darkly comic tale of sex, crepe paper, murder and knitting in a sleepy Devon town, with a ‘truly original’ premise and genuinely jaw-dropping moments. What would you do if unexpectedly freed from bondage you never knew you were in? How would your children cope? How far would you go to protect them from an uncomfortable truth? You can only push a grandmother so far…

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

His back prevented him from doing any heavy lifting (though not from swinging golf clubs or working on his vintage Aston Martin) so he was acting as driver, organiser and supervisor. He decided to exercise his supervisory skills, straightened his tie in the mirror, and hopped out again to rally the team. An hour of encouraging sarcasm, withering looks and occasional shouts of ‘come on!’ later, the van was loaded and they headed off… He made the best of it, helping them along with encouraging remarks like, ‘careful those stringy arms of yours don’t come out of their sockets son,’ and, ‘I think your mother’ll have to carry this one, it’s probably a bit heavy for you.’

‘It’s almost funny you know,’ Ron said, as the silence grew oppressive, ‘we probably won’t be out of debt now until one of us dies!’ ‘Ron!’ Sylvia exclaimed, ‘you shouldn’t even joke about that.’ She tried not to overdo her shock – in case Ron realised she had already started work on his eulogy.

Those people were incredibly dull, and refused to accept that Batman: Year One is credible literature – bloody snobs… I wanted to love that book group Frank, I have read all the Hardy Boys mysteries, did they care?

… looking at the sad, impaled remains of what to him would always be a tweedy, waist-coated, wise old friend (rather than a big, vicious bastard that would bite your hand off if you stuck it in the wrong hedge). Don was not really a country boy at heart, and his only experience with wildlife came from books and cartoons.

My Review:

This book and its main character were superbly crafty, in every sense of the word. Laced with wry wit and wickedly clever humor, this cunningly observant and insightfully written book was found treasure. I am having a hard time classifying the genre beyond literary fiction. The storylines were highly entertaining, well integrated and smartly paced.   While the narrative was skillfully written and slyly amusing, the humor was dark, furtively devious, and brilliantly stealthy. The pace was slow yet pleasantly relaxing while secrets were gradually uncovered and the body count quietly ticked up.

I relished this well-honed book from start to finish. The characters were well-drawn, fascinatingly flawed, and rather loathsome, even the ones I admired or pitied the most. Yet I was captivated and my curiosity was on red button high alert. I took great delight in the author’s artful handling of the inner musings of the undetected and repressed sociopathic characteristics of Sylvia.   Sylvia was the craftiest of the crafters, a dependable and stalwart community participant and longtime Sunday School teacher who had diligently plotted and schemed  while she  labored tirelessly to maintain her position as the reigning community queen bee for decades – until her latest entry was ranked as second place. Gasp! This painful slight seemed to signal the turning of the tide for Sylvia as her patience, and apparently, her conscience had worn thin. Soon thereafter, she seemed to be uncannily present during a series of accidental deaths. Not all of which were her fault, although she nimbly and resourcefully may have hastened them, just a bit.

Author Bio

Dave Holwill was born in Guildford in 1977 and quickly decided that he preferred the Westcountry – moving to Devon in 1983 (with some input from his parents).
After an expensive (and possibly wasted) education there, he has worked variously as a postman, a framer, and a print department manager (though if you are the only person in the department then can you really be called a manager?) all whilst continuing to play in every kind of band imaginable on most instruments you can think of.

His debut novel, Weekend Rockstars, was published in August 2016 to favorable reviews and his second The Craft Room (a very dark comedy concerning death through misadventure) came out in August 2017. He is currently in editing hell with the third.

Social Media Links –

https://www.facebook.com/daveholwill100

https://twitter.com/daveholwill

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15584279.Dave_Holwill

https://www.instagram.com/dave_holwill/

http://davedoesntwriteanythingever.blogspot.com/

The Oddest Little Chocolate Shop

by Beth Good

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK  / B&N

Treat yourself to something delicious . . .

‘I love Beth Good’s quirky style!’ – bestselling author Katie Fforde

When Clementine discovers that Monsieur Ravel’s beloved chocolaterie is about to close, she rushes to rescue it – without thinking through the consequences.

A lost Persian cat, a depressed but utterly gorgeous French chocolatier, an allergic shop assistant in search of true love, the oddest little chocolate shop Clementine has ever seen . . .

Can Clementine save them all, or has she bitten off more than she can chew?

A delicious, feel-good novella set in the world of chocolate-making from popular romantic comedy writer Beth Good.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… she was twenty-three and every chocolate she consumed seemed to find its way unerringly to her hips, thighs and squashy bottom. So she had sworn not to touch chocolate for an entire year, one of those absurd promises you make when you step on the scales after a long period of backsliding and wonder if cutting your hair would make a difference.

Her reflection stared back at her mutely: a too-tall blonde with flyaway hair that simply would not behave on this windy day, slanted hazel eyes and a generous mouth. Generous, her mother used to say, because it was forever opening and spouting words. And usually at the worst possible moments.

Clementine considered the very real possibility of throwing herself out of the window but then decided she would not fit through the narrow frame. Attempting a dramatic suicide and getting her hips stuck would not help matters. Or salve her wounded ego.

My Review:

In less than a week I have become an ardent worshipper at the altar of the comedic goddess known as Beth Good, no joke – I will fangirl her hard.   She is found treasure and a recent discovery for me. Her perfect arrangements of words fill me with rapturous glee and a cascade of giggle-snorts while adding a near-constant smirk and impish twinkle to my facial expression. Her cleverly amusing tales are packed with snappy humor, original and uniquely quirky characters, and a delightfully engaging and entertaining writing style. I adored her calamitous Clementine with her highly active imagination, clumsiness, death touch to mechanical devices, and riotous daydreams.   The Oddest Little Chocolate Shop was definitely a tasty treat from start to finish and the source for my latest Brit Vocab List entry of dogsbody, which Mr. Google told me was informal British for, “a person who is given boring, menial tasks to do,” what we Americans would call a gopher – someone to go-for whatever the boss wants. Despite my natural tendencies and preference for sloth, I have come to adore the divine Beth Good to the outlandish degree of giving wistful consideration toward enlisting as her ever-faithful dogsbody.

Author Bio –

Born and raised in Essex, England, Beth Good was whisked away to an island tax haven at the age of eleven to attend an exclusive public school and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Sadly, she never became rich or famous herself, so had to settle for infamy as a writer of dubious novels. She writes under several different names, mainly to avoid confusing her readers – and herself! As Beth Good, she writes romantic comedy and feel-good fiction. She also writes thrillers as Jane Holland, historicals as Victoria Lamb and Elizabeth Moss, and feel-good fiction as Hannah Coates.

Beth currently lives in the West Country where she spends a great deal of time thinking romantic thoughts while staring out of her window at sheep. (These two actions are unrelated.)

You can find her most days on Twitter as @BethGoodWriter where she occasionally indulges in pointless banter about chocolate making and the Great British Bake Off. Due to a basic inability to say no, she has too many children and not enough money, which means she needs as many readers as she can get.

Social Media Links –

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

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/BethGoodWriter

The Oddest Little Book Shop

by Beth Good

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK  / B&N

Escape to the gorgeous seaside resort of Port Pol, where love and laughter overflow in the Cornish sunshine.

‘I love Beth Good’s quirky style!’ – bestselling author, Katie Fforde

After ten long years away, television star Daisy Diamond is finally going home.

She’s not back at the gorgeous seaside resort of Port Pol in sunny Cornwall five minutes before she realizes the mistake she’s made. Her childhood sweetheart Nick Old – affectionately known as ‘Devil’ – is still living there, running the local bookshop, and he is determined to rekindle their flame.

Daisy is no longer the dewy-eyed romantic of her school days. Her life may not have gone according to plan, but she’s not afraid to show Nick how much she’s grown since he famously dumped her at the school leavers’ disco.

Even if it means bending her heart out of shape a little . . .

A charming summer novella from popular romantic comedy writer Beth Good and another entry in her quirky ‘Oddest Little Shop’ series.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Part of her wanted to dissolve in a pathetic heap after the verbal lashing he had just given her. Another part of her wanted to go and throw mud pies at the disappearing back window of his car.

‘I look appalling. Like I charge by the hour.’ ‘Oh, the half-hour, I’d say,’ Kirsty corrected her cheerfully…

Ha, you really look terrified now. Betwattled, as my great-gran would have said.

My Review:

I enjoy a clever second chance romance and score – I stumbled on one by my new favorite author, and thankfully, she has delivered an exceptionally thoughtful and amusing tale that kept me guessing. I am blissfully enjoying the pleasantly amusing and entertaining arrangements of words from the talented wordsmith known as Beth Good. With The Oddest Little Book Shop, I am three novellas in with her Oddest Little Shop series, and one of my favorite things about this installment was the wily and cunning name given to a despicable paparazzi photographer – Ron Scrotes. I’m just immature enough to smirk each time he appeared. Ms. Good’s wry wit may have caused an indelicate yet gleeful snort or ten, as Mr. Scrotes tends to pop up at inopportune moments for the main characters.

I adored the lovely Daisy Diamond, who became the biggest celebrity ever to have sprung from the small Cornish village of her youth. The same small Cornish village she fled ten years prior with a broken heart after being crushed by The Devil, AKA Nick Old – again – she is just so crafty with the clever names. The twists and turns leading to her painful teenaged heartbreak were finally explained to her and were quite compelling, yet there were many complications that presented a quagmire to unravel and make right. I didn’t think it could be done in a novella but Ms. Good miraculously made it happen and with a highly satisfying and happy ending for all parties, even the harpy who didn’t deserve one, but apparently Ms. Good is generous like that.

Author Bio – 

Born and raised in Essex, England, Beth Good was whisked away to an island tax haven at the age of eleven to attend an exclusive public school and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Sadly, she never became rich or famous herself, so had to settle for infamy as a writer of dubious novels. She writes under several different names, mainly to avoid confusing her readers – and herself! As Beth Good, she writes romantic comedy and feel-good fiction. She also writes thrillers as Jane Holland, historicals as Victoria Lamb and Elizabeth Moss, and feel-good fiction as Hannah Coates.

Beth currently lives in the West Country where she spends a great deal of time thinking romantic thoughts while staring out of her window at sheep. (These two actions are unrelated.)

You can find her most days on Twitter as @BethGoodWriter where she occasionally indulges in pointless banter about chocolate making and the Great British Bake Off. Due to a basic inability to say no, she has too many children and not enough money, which means she needs as many readers as she can get.

Social Media Links –

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

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/BethGoodWriter