Skip to main content

A Country Escape



A Country Escape by Katie Fforde

Published by Arrow, 22 February 2018


Fran leaves the bright lights and hot kitchens of London for a rustic farm in the Cotswolds after receiving a letter from the solicitor of a long-lost relative.


If Fran can make a go of the farm within six months, the owner Amy Flowers will leave it to her in her will. Amy is now in a nursing home but has a capable stockman to care for the farm's dairy herd.

It takes a while for Fran to find her feet but with the help from her bestie Issi she soon manages to sort the curds from the whey and hits on a couple of ideas to make the farm pay.

Dark clouds gather over the rolling green hills however in the shape of Australian Roy - another distant relation who hadn't originally answered Amy's letters. Just as Fran begins to feel at hope could it all go down under?

This was a light, entertaining read. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the farming life. Amy is a great waspish character (I pictured Dame Maggie Smith) and if you enjoy a bit of romance Antony Arlingham is an excellent knight in tasteful business suit ready to come to the rescue.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Scandinavian Christmas: festive tales for a nordic noel

  A Scandinavian Christmas: festive tales for a nordic noel  Vintage Classics 9781784877675 Happy New Year!  I have just finished this little beauty which I received as a Christmas gift and started the day after Boxing Day. It's a delightful collection of festive short stories (16 in total) from across Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden by some very well known authors and their translators including Hans Christian Andersen and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Although I already knew the Andersen works, this didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book at all - in fact it was a little like revisiting my childhood and so added to the reading pleasure. I can definitely recommend this as a treat for yourself to read during Advent or as a Christmas gift next year. The hardback is particularly snazzy with its foiling across the dust jacket.

Fantastically Great Women Who Made History

  Fantastically Great Women Who Made History  by Kate Pankhurst Published by Bloomsbury, 12 November 2018 This is a collection of wonderfully illustrated mini biographies of some of the most remarkable women who ever lived. Included in here are Harriet Tubman, Boudica, Flora Drummond, Qiu Jin, Noor Inayat Khan, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Pocahontas, Valentina Tereshvova, Ada Lovelace, Sayyida al-Hurra, Hatshepsut, Josephine Baker, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Each great lady has a colourful, playfully illustrated page (more often than not double spreads) of her life. Some of these women I knew but some I met for the first time within these pages.  This is a lovely children's non-fic book that is a joy for adults too. Great for a leisure read as well as curriculum support. 

The Lost Girls of Paris

  The Lost Girl of Paris By Pam Jenoff Published 29 January 2019 HQ I've read Pam Jenoff's books before but some time ago so when I came across this one and read the blurb I bought it. This one is set in the middle of World War Two and is about the SOE (Special Operations Executive). As you may know, I love to read hist fic so dove right in to this easy, pacy read of spies and resistance. The story begins in 1946 New York City where Gracie questionably discovers some photographs of women. On the back are their first names and some of the women are wearing uniform. The same day, an English woman is hit by a car and killed - the owner of the photographs. Something about those women, their faces, makes Gracie hold on to them and try and find out more about who they were and why this woman had them. The dual narrative takes the reader from 1946 to England 1943 where Eleanor Trigg has been put in charge of creating a very special unit for the SOE. Very hush hush. Over in France, the...