#LilyPondLane

The Cottage on Lily Pond Lane

Part Four Trick or Treat

by Emily Harvale

Goodreads

Amazon US/ UK

Mia Ward was amazed to inherit her great-aunt Matilda’s thatched cottage in the tiny seaside village of Little Pondale – especially as Mia didn’t know she had a great-aunt Matilda. She was even more astonished to discover she’d only inherit the place if she lives there for a year.

But a lot can happen in a very short time, and life in Little Pondale is not going quite as Mia hoped. She may have finally beaten one fear, but now heartbreak threatens to drown her.

And when at last, she starts to unravel the mystery of Matilda’s past, she uncovers an extraordinary plan for her own future. Now just who can Mia trust?

As the nights draw in and cold winds steal through Sunbeam Cottage, she turns to an unlikely source for comfort and support. But with the fortune teller’s warning still ringing in her ears, is Mia about to make the biggest mistake of her life?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 I was always saying to Hector, “You need to be more open, Hector. Keeping feelings pent up inside will be the death of you.” I was wrong about that, of course. The car hitting him, tossing him in the air, and him landing on his head was the death of him. But if the car hadn’t killed him, stress would have.

She sauntered towards him, which wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped, given that she was walking through water. Daniel Craig had made it look simple and ultra-sexy in the James Bond film.

Plus at our age, Fred and I can’t afford to wait. We could be dead at any time. And we’ve already told the vicar that if one of us dies before the wedding, we can have the funeral on the date instead. We’ll use all the same flowers and hymns.

My Review:

I quickly consumed this delightfully amusing and juicily informative installment from beginning to end, I believe I only put my Kindle down to refill my coffee cup, okay, I refilled like ten times, but still, I didn’t want to leave it longer than necessary as the secrets were finally, yes finally, being exposed and several mysteries were solved. And oh, snap! I could never have put so many deliciously scandalous details together. I was ridiculously impressed and nearly delirious with glee. What a clever girl that Emily Harvale, she definitely has an incredibly fertile imagination to have conjured up so many twisty and creative back-stories within a short novella.

This volume put a new spin on vicar and tart jokes and for an added treat, we were witness to a sweetly bizarre wedding where the elderly bride was given away by her constant companions – the ghost of her first husband and her beloved purple vest wearing pet rat, Prince Gustav, who sat upon a lavender pillow in his Cinderella carriage-like cage.   I had grown so attached to Ms. Harvale’s quirky characters and eccentric little village and was feeling a bit rueful as I neared the end as for some reason I was under the impression this was to be the last in the series but – oh happy day – there will be more!

Author Bio –  

Having lived and worked in London for several years, Emily returned to her hometown of Hastings where she now spends her days writing… and chatting on social media. Emily is a Member of the SoA, a PAN member of the RWA and a Pro Member of ALLi. She’s an Amazon bestseller and a Kindle All Star. Emily loves writing and her stories are sure to bring a smile to your face and a warmth to your heart.

Emily says, “I write about friendship, family and falling in love. I believe in happing endings.” When she isn’t writing, she can be found enjoying the stunning East Sussex coast and countryside, or in a wine bar with friends, discussing life, love and the latest TV shows. Chocolate cake is often eaten. She dislikes housework almost as much as she dislikes anchovies – and will do anything to avoid both.

Social Media Links – https://www.facebook.com/emilyharvalewriter

https://www.twitter.com/emilyharvale

https://www.instagram.com/emilyharvale

The Freedom Diamond – A Novella
by Tracie Podger 

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK  

Beginning with a journey upon the fated RMS Titanic to New York and then India, Lady Mountford embarks on a most exciting mission…

…an operation to right the wrongs of her father.

With the help of Ernest, Dorothy has decided the pain her father had caused needs rectifying. This endeavor takes immense courage from the young Lady, strategic planning, and many miles of travel.

Follow Dorothy on this adventure as she attempts to shed her upbringing and standing in society for the sake of freedom.

The Freedom Diamond is an updated version of Dorothy’s Journey and was part of Titanic Tales, a charity anthology launched to coincide with the Titanic signing, Belfast, 2018.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

The ship often creaked, and although I stilled to listen for the noise again, I wasn’t overly concerned. It was the shudder that followed the noise that had me sit upright. I watched pictures that hung on the wall sway from side to side. The lampshade on the side table shimmered, its tassels twirled for a moment, and then it all stilled. There was an eeriness; a calmness that took me a moment to understand.

I was a woman way ahead of her time and impatient for the world to change and catch up.

I was a Titanic survivor, a diamond smuggler, a righter of wrongs, and now patron of a women’s refuge and a children’s orphanage in India.

My Review:

I was fascinated by the premise and this cunning author’s word voodoo pulled me right inside her clever character’s cranium. It was an entertaining stay inside the lovely and feisty Dorothy’s headspace and I enjoyed being privy to her shrewd inner musings and astute observations. The atmospheric quality of the writing held me in place and I remained there throughout Dorothy’s adventure as she plotted her scheme, enjoyed the grandeur of the luxury liner, struggled with the cold to board a lifeboat, or made the quick and stealthy work of a cat burglar. The tale quickly flew by while whetting my appetite for more.

Author Bio

Tracie Podger currently lives in Kent, UK with her husband and a rather obnoxious cat called George. She’s a Padi Scuba Diving Instructor with a passion for writing. Tracie has been fortunate to have dived some of the wonderful oceans of the world where she can indulge in another hobby, underwater photography. She likes getting up close and personal with sharks.

Tracie writes in various genres, Contemporary Romance but likes to explore relationships that are not always easy and there isn’t always a happy ending, Romantic Suspense, Thriller, and Erotic Romance. She likes to have her books feel real with realistic timelines and with strong women who don’t run because the going gets tough. Sex is important between loving people, therefore all her books contain graphic scenes. However, the character’s relationship is more important.

If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact her, she would love to hear from you.

Social Media Links

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The Things We Leave Unsaid

by Megan Mayfair 

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK  / B&N

Is it the things we don’t say that haunt us the most?

Clare is anxious to start a family with adoring husband, Pete. When she takes on the seemingly simple task of obtaining her late mother’s birth certificate, she finds herself in a family history search that will challenge everything she thought she knew about her life.

Scarred by her parents’ ill-fated marriage, Tessa lives by three rules – dating unavailable men, building her café into a food empire, and avoiding her father. However, when her carefully planned life is thrown into chaos, Tessa is forced to decide which of these rules she’s willing to break.

As Clare and Tessa’s paths cross and their friendship grows, can they both finally unlock their family secrets in order to realize their futures?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Well, I’m very proud.” Pete’s dad lifted up a bottle of beer as if to toast his son. “Who would’ve thought that a kid that ate glue until Grade 2 would now be a doctor?”

She was straight off to Mass to pray for him. I’m sure Father Foley loved hearing all about the latest De Luca family drama. I’m not sure who she prayed to. I mean, who was the Patron Saint of Assholes?

She hadn’t been in love –he was right about that –but nor had she been electrocuted or struck by lightning or bitten by a snake, and she knew she had no interest in trying out any of those things. In the interest of risk management, some things in life were better not experienced.

Harry approached the counter carrying a large chocolate cake. Tessa longed to tackle him to the ground for it and then escape with it to the privacy of her office where she would just eat it with her hands and wash it down with a cappuccino.

Was this crazy? Was this bunny-boiler territory? She hadn’t seen him since the night she broke up with him… Where was he getting his coffee from now? She knew it wouldn’t be as good. Was he drinking crappy coffee to avoid her? That was a depressing thought. Life was too short to drink bad coffee.

I do know that it’s the things we leave unsaid that cause us the most pain.

My Review:

I had finished reading and was looking over my notes while letting my opinion settle and gel when I noticed this captivating tale was the author’s first novel. This was an eye-popping realization for me as the writing was exceptionally insightful, well-paced, and engaging whether factoring in the issue of first works or not, but adding in that information was a revelation and caused me to upgrade my opinion and rating as I found it an impressive accomplishment. The book contained several well-crafted and unique storylines featuring interesting and enticingly nuanced characters that captured and held my attention as well as piqued my curiosity. I was as desirous of unraveling their family histories and unanswered questions as the anxious characters themselves.

This wasn’t a fast-paced thriller or heavily laden with an aura of mystery or suspense, it was a realistic and relevant story that could easily happen anywhere, yet it was the shaping and telling of the tale that drew me in and belies the skill and dexterity of the author. I relished the concept of “mental revenge points” which one character secretly tallied, a behavior I may have been guilty of a time or ten but had never thought to define with such a creative label. Additionally, I find I now have a need for an Aussie Word List due to the lively notation of “stickybeak” which Mr. Google informed me was a nosy person. Those Aussies can be so colorful and fun 😉

Author Bio –

Megan Mayfair is a Melbourne-based writer who draws inspiration from her beautiful hometown and regional Victoria to create contemporary women’s fiction, containing a big dash of romance and a spoonful of family intrigue.

With a background in public relations, copywriting and higher education, Megan is passionate about words and loves to bring them to life on the page. Megan holds a Master of Arts in professional communication and is a member of Romance Writers of Australia and Writers Victoria.

Megan is married with three children, loves a good cup of coffee and believes you can never have too many scarves.

Social Media Links –

www.meganmayfair.com

https://www.facebook.com/meganmayfairauthor/

https://twitter.com/MayfairMegan

https://www.instagram.com/meganmayfairwrites/

Tiffany Blues

by M. J. Rose

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I tried to make my voice light. My mother once told me I had a silver voice that tarnished when I wasn’t giving her the whole truth.

I’ve just always viewed marriage as a job, and it’s not the job I want for myself in the foreseeable future.

I felt as if I’d stepped inside a jewelry box. Everything shone and sparkled and glowed in gemstone shades

We’re all broken in one way or another, but it’s through the cracks in our souls that the light comes through. And the light, Jenny, that’s our art.

My Review:

Tiffany Blues wasn’t at all what I was expecting, and more the better. This was my first exposure to M.J. Rose and I now count myself her newest fan. Her clever combinations of words deftly painted rich and opulent pictures, equivalent in skill and technique to any of the Old Masters. My curiosity was quickly snagged by the intriguing prologue and continued forth as an ominous and haunting ambiance of tension, danger, and potential exposure of long-hidden secrets remained throughout, which kept me on edge and nibbling at my cuticles. The writing was lushly detailed with colorful and lavish descriptions of the well-appointed accommodations, feasts, gardens, and elegant clothing and décor.   The storylines were gradually developed yet well-crafted, engaging, tragic, and captivating.

I cannot imagine the amount of research involved in such an undertaking but I reveled in the fruits of her labor as I enjoyed learning many interesting little tidbits and history of the time as I was unaware of the trendy interest in spiritualism, the history of Ouija boards, and of Thomas Edison’s Spirit Phone – which I Googled to be certain, and he had actually labored with other scientists of the day toward “a telephone that calls beyond this realm to reach people who have passed.”  Nearing the end, I began to fret with increasing alarm that my niggling questions would be left unanswered. Silly me, I sighed a satisfied and relaxing breath at the clever conclusion. Well-played Ms. Rose, “there is beauty even in broken things.”

About WILD WITH YOU

Lori

Planning weddings is my dream job. As a single Mom, I live vicariously through my brides. From picking the dress to cutting the cake, I’m there every step of the way.

When I meet the best man at the latest wedding, sparks fly. Graham Frazier is more than I bargained for. The charismatic soccer club owner is disillusioned with marriage after his divorce, so it’s part of my job to make sure he won’t slip any sarcastic jokes in his best man’s speech.

It’s not part of my job to notice his washboard abs, or that he kisses like a dream. Graham’s touch is sizzling.

Before I know it, he bosses me into accepting gifts and spending the night at his house (his excuse is good: I can’t possibly drive after working a wedding, can I?)

I say yes to both. There are no two ways about it. I have the hots for this bossy man.

Graham

Since my divorce, weddings aren’t my favorite events. But when my best friends decide to tie the knot, I promise to throw them a party they won’t forget.

I was counting on sitting through long hours of preparations, but I didn’t count on meeting someone like Lori Connor.

I pursue her relentlessly, wanting those long legs wrapped around me and her smooth skin under my lips.

Then I meet her son, and that boy charms me even faster than his mother did. Before I know it, he has me wrapped around his little finger.

But are Lori and I ready for our lives to intertwine in ways we haven’t even imagined before?

Get your hands on ANYTHING FOR YOU now:

Amazon | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | Audio

Add WILD WITH YOU to Goodreads!

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 I was sporting a grin that took up my entire face—the kind of photo dentists might display in their waiting room.

We’re not doomed to repeat our parents’ mistakes, you know. Or I’ll end up with a bad perm after the age of sixty, or a slight wine addiction. Or both. Imagine the horror.

My Review:

I adored this couple, and what a treat to read a story where the characters aren’t in constant conflict or turmoil but are happy and playfully enjoying and supporting each other instead. It was gratifying and a welcome respite for my bruised coronary muscle. The storylines were engaging and relevant while the characters were endearing, enticing, and bright and shiny. The writing was entertaining and delightfully amusing with witty and bawdy banter. The pairing of Lori and Graham was dynamic and vibrant as both characters were independent, strong, and successful and secure in their careers although lacking in their social lives.   Their attraction was instant, their chemistry was unmistakable, their passion was volcanic, and their story was pleasantly enjoyable and oh, so, sweet. I am simply loving her new series and can’t wait to see what this crafty scribbler does with the rest of the large Connor clan.

Want to win?

Layla Hagen has a great giveaway for running on her facebook page – head on over to check it out!

 About Layla Hagen

Layla Hagen is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance.

She fell in love with books when she was nine years old, and her love affair with stories continues even now, many years later.

She writes steamy and romantic stories and can’t wait to share them with the world.

She is represented by fabulous Louise Fury (The Bent Agency)

Website | Twitter | Facebook

A Recipe for Disaster

by Belinda Missen

Goodreads 

Meet Lucy, master wedding cake baker, idealistic school canteen crusader, and someone whose broken heart just won’t seem to mend…

Lucy is quietly confident that she has made the right choices in life. Surrounded by friends and family in a small country town, Lucy can easily suppress the feeling that something is missing from her life.

But when a blast from the past arrives in the form of her estranged husband, international celebrity chef Oliver Murray, Lucy’s carefully constructed life begins to crumble beneath her like overbaked meringue.

Is Oliver’s return all business or is it motivated by something more?

A Recipe for Disaster starts long after most love stories would have ended, proving it is never too late to offer someone a second slice of cake or a second chance.

Perfect for fans of Carole Mathews, Mhairi McFarlane and Carrie Hope Fletcher.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

A nervous Oliver was like Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket. You knew there was one out there somewhere, but you’d be hard-pressed to find it without some serious legwork.

A small crowd of adults gathered around the cake, like it was baby Jesus in the manger. Instead of offering me any kind of rare gifts, they offered my cake to the Instagram gods.

My vagina is depressed – that is officially something that can happen, mind you– and I don’t know what to do… It’s a thing… They waste away and die. God knows they probably drop off and run away of their own volition.

You don’t know this is for sure, though, so let’s not roll down worst case scenario hill, it’s right next to depression valley and crazy cat lady land.

I slipped across the road and into my car, all the while reminding myself there were no cakes in prison, nor were there any savoury pinwheels or cheese twists.

A local bookshop is, and I quote, going down quicker than a cheerleader on a Saturday night. Can we please stop by and buy some books?

 My Review:

I giggle-snorted my way through this delightfully witty and cleverly written tale. I have a new favorite author to fangirl as I treasured Belinda Missen’s cunning and irreverent sense of humor and would gleefully worship at her writing desk as her rabid acolyte. I had reams of favorite quotes to painfully whittle down to include in my review. The characters were quirky and endearing yet deeply flawed and I held my breath for them as a couple as I couldn’t tell what outcome this sly scribbler was going to choose for them. Lucy was a prickly pear and still nursing a grudge and tended to be defensive and pick unnecessary fights and fly off in a temper, yet I still adored her.

The writing was crisp and insightful and pulled sharp visuals to mind while tripping my salivary gland and whetting my appetite with the keenly detailed efforts of, and the sumptuous meals and delectable treats created and ingested by, Chefs Oliver and Lucy. For some reason, my clothes feel a bit tighter – as if my immense enjoyment of Ms. Missen’s crafty and delicious words had led my traitorous body to believe I had actually consumed the vast amounts of butter and sugar described. Curses! If this phenomenon were possible it would surely happen to me.

Author Bio –

Belinda Missen is an award-winning and best-selling author, screenwriter, and freelance writer from Geelong, Australia.

A reader from an early age, Belinda began writing her own stories shortly after her love affair with Steven Spielberg’s film Jurassic Park began. What began as fan-fiction soon took deeper root, and she was scribbling out strange little stories in empty notebooks she found laying around the house.

With qualifications in transport and office administration and a combined career of fifteen years in these industries, Belinda decided to uproot everything in 2013 and return to her first love of writing. She now writes full-time, between cups of coffee, binge-watching television, and feeding her cats and husband.

In April 2016, she was awarded the JOLT Courthouse Youth Arts Award in the Inspire 26+ Category for her pieceObsession.

In February 2017, her book Love And Other Midnight Theories clawed its way to the top of the Amazon charts in its category of Performing Arts, beating JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. True story – she has the screenshots to prove it.

When not dabbling in the written word, Belinda can be found mentoring other writers, beta-reading, reviewing, helping others to ready books for publication, and sleeping. In the digital world, she can be found online at Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest

Hotel on Shadow Lake

by Daniela Tully

Hardcover: 256 pages

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (April 10, 2018)

Suspenseful and compelling, Daniela Tully’s Hotel on Shadow Lake is at once an intricate mystery, an epic romance, and a Gothic family saga.

When Maya was a girl in Germany, her grandmother was everything to her: teller of magical fairy tales, surrogate mother, best friend. Then, shortly after Maya’s sixteenth birthday, her grandmother disappeared without a trace, leaving Maya with only questions to fill the void.

Twenty-seven years later, her grandmother’s body is found in a place she had no connection to: the Montgomery Resort in upstate New York. How did she get there? Why had she come? Desperate for answers, Maya leaves her life in Germany behind and travels to America, where she is drawn to the powerful family that owns the hotel and seemingly the rest of the town.

Soon Maya is unraveling secrets that go back decades, from 1910s New York to 1930s Germany and beyond. But when she begins to find herself spinning her own lies in order to uncover the circumstances surrounding her grandmother’s death, she must decide whether her life and a chance at true love are worth risking for the truth.

“An intricate read-it-in-one-sitting mystery–cum–family saga…this is a story about murder, greed, love (won then lost), and, above all, intrigue.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Tully offers the reader an epic story and emotional intimacy, with rich characters plunged into a mysterious thriller that spans continents and generations. I couldn’t put it down.” —Uli Edel, director of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Body of Evidence

“A fascinating tale of what it felt like to be a woman under the Third Reich and of one family’s long hidden secrets.” —Elisabeth Gifford, author of The Sea House

“Daniela Tully has written a captivating romantic thriller that spans decades, continents, generations and a world war. It’s a story of love, tragedy and intrigue that vividly illustrates the unyielding grip that the past holds in shaping the future…and the enduring power of love.” —Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author and the writer/producer of Diagnosis Murder, Martial Law and Missing

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Well, in the name of the German Federal Postal Services, we would like to apologize very much for the delay.” … She brought the envelope closer to her eyes. The postmark read December 27, 1944… “This letter was held up, and,” he started to explain, “now that the wall has come down, it finally found its way to you.”

 She had always known that the secrets were only sleeping. Now they had finally woken up and come back to haunt her.

 “Individuality”— a word that was as misplaced in Fascism as Martha was misplaced in this world. Martha had perfected the skill of letting her mind wander in unpleasant situations. During the incessant chatter about the duties of the German woman, she traveled to the faraway places she had read about in her novels.

 She must have been pretty once upon a time, but she looked like a woman who had been branded by too many blows of fate. The bags under her eyes harbored her grief for all eternity; the deep wrinkles were not laugh lines but had furrowed the face in those places where sorrow had constantly contorted it. The way she watched him made him feel like an intruder, the eyebrows deeply furrowed, a glint of suspicion in her eyes.

 It was December 1941 and I was standing in front of the building that housed the Office of the Coordination of Information, a name that brought to mind only bureaucracy and moldy folders.

My Review:

After the fall of the wall in 1990, a letter was delivered, forty-six years late, and it meant everything and changed nothing. This book gutted me, but in the best way. I didn’t fall in all at once as I initially struggled a bit with the foreign words used for food, towns, and landmarks; but I was sinking bit by bit and didn’t even realize I had become fully immersed in the story until I was startled by my husband tapping my shoulder, causing me to look up while expecting to see the trees of the Bavarian forest I had just left behind on my Kindle.   Gasp, it was brilliant! The writing was superb, I was sucked into a vortex that held me right there with them, in both timelines. I was enthralled and totally invested. The storylines were well-crafted, extensively researched, and maddeningly paced. I was taut with tension and consumed by the intrigue, I couldn’t have stopped reading if my hair was on fire. I love when that happens!

The character of Martha wasn’t fooled by the hysteria that consumed her addled mother and increasingly brittle twin brother during the late 1930s. Martha escaped the disheartening chaos and atrocities within her home and community by surreptitiously reading her stash of banned books, which is something that we fellow readers can totally relate to.   The wickedness of the public book burnings felt like murder to Martha, who had passed on her love of stories to her granddaughter Maya who was featured in the present-day timeline of the story.

I have always had a quick trigger revulsion for bigotry and discrimination, and in particular – Nazis. I distinctly remember being a pre-adolescent learning history in elementary school and fervently questioning my uptight parents about my ancestry and demanding to know if I had even a drop of German heritage and melodramatically stating with ardent conviction I would need a bloodletting and transfusion to rid myself of it. If it were only that simple… Nazis were and continued to be – vile.   Evil has always walked the earth but there seems to have been an over-concentration of it during that dark and demented period of Third Reich madness.   I’m not naive enough to believe the horrifying era in human history leading up to and during WWII was unique.   I see far too many frightening corollaries within our current regrettably imbecilic political climate to what occurred in the 1930s and 40s with the systematic loss of liberties, control of the media, messages of hate, and moronic leaders grabbing power.   History appears doomed to repeat itself. I can only hope we do a bit better in this century than the last.

About Daniela Tully

DANIELA TULLY has worked in film and television for decades, including with famed film director Uli Edel. She has been involved in projects such as the critically acclaimed Fair Game, box-office hits Contagion and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as well as the Oscar-winning The Help. She splits her time between Dubai and New York. Inspired by a real family letter received forty-six years late, Hotel on Shadow Lake is Daniela Tully’s first novel.

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