When Poppy Kirkbride purchases a house in a quiet village in rural France, she expects her boyfriend to move to France with her. Instead, he breaks up with her, and Poppy decides to make the most of her new life, her three trusty dogs Peanut, Treacle and Pickwick by her side.

Her broody neighbour, veterinarian Leo Dubois, is the only fly in her ointment. The house used to belong to his beloved sister and niece, and Leo isn’t happy about someone else moving in and making changes.

How can I resist such a premise? How often have I dreamed of taking a break from “real life” and, like Poppy, setting up shop in a small town where I can write stories and be with animals all day? Add in a hot French vet, and Poppy’s basically living my dream.

And indeed, wish fulfillment is much of the appeal of Poppy’s Place in the Sun. She goes on adventures around the countryside with Leo, and despite all the drama around their will they/won’t they relationship, it all feels very idyllic and pleasant. I enjoyed reading about how Poppy adjusted to her new life, and how she had to overcome her fears about all the changes she had to face.

I have a soft spot for medical romances, and particularly when the doctor is a vet who loves animals. The romance in this one fell a bit flat for me. Despite Leo’s good looks and the hot sex scenes, I never really got sucked into their relationship. Poppy’s fears that Leo was using her to get to the house were genuine enough, as was Leo’s difficulty in moving on from his sister and niece’s deaths, but their HEA never quite seemed truly in danger to me.

Still, if you’ve ever had a hankering to move to rural France yourself, this book is worth a read. Poppy’s journey to find herself and figure out her life is relatable, and the location is beautiful. The best part is that the dogs also play a prominent role in the story, and I love how real they felt as characters in their own right.

About the Book

‘She had me at Bonjour! Warm, funny, deliciously French…this lovely story filled my heart with sunshine’ – Jane Linfoot

Sometimes you need to lose yourself to find your way home…

With only her trusty dogs Peanut, Treacle and Pickwick by her side, Poppy Kirkbride could be forgiven for having doubts about her move to a quiet village in rural France. But as the sun shines down on her ramshackle new home, Poppy knows she’s made the right decision. A lick of paint, and some TLC and her rustic farmhouse will be the perfect holiday retreat – Poppy’s dream come true.

Poppy is welcomed by her fellow villagers, except for brooding local vet Leo Dubois, who makes it clear Poppy isn’t welcome in his village – or his life! Leo might be gorgeous, but Poppy won’t be told what to do by an arrogant Frenchman – no matter how kind and gentle he is to her dogs!

Determined to stay, Poppy tries to understand the enigmatic Frenchman better. But as the two get closer, Poppy sees another side to Leo – a man with heartbreak of his own. Falling in love with Leo is easy, but can he ever return Poppy’s love? And what would this mean for her dream life and place in the sun?

Purchase the book at: hyperurl.co/poppyinthesun

About the Author

Lorraine Wilson writes flirty, feel-good fiction for Harper Impulse – a Harper Collins imprint – and is unashamedly fond of happy endings. She loves hearing from readers and feels incredibly grateful to be doing the job she always dreamt of.

She splits her time between the South of France and Cambridgeshire and is usually either writing or reading while being sat on, walked over or barked at by one of her growing band of rescue dogs.

You can find her online either via her website: http://www.lorraine-wilson.com or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LorraineWilsonWriter and Twitter @Romanceminx.

Giveaway

Win a PB of Poppy’s Place in the Sun and a crossbody hand bag (Open
Internationally).

This giveaway is run by Rachel’s Random Resources.

Enter here: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33c6949496/?

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter on Rafflecopter. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of
the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources for an egalley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Little Green is such a beautiful, moving story. I immersed myself in it on a hot summer’s day, and absolutely felt for all of the characters. Cohen has written a story about a marriage undergoing tremendous strain, and then pushed to the breaking point when the unthinkable happens to the couple’s daughter, and I love how real, nuanced and complex the characters and their relationships are.

Elise Sorensen is a horseback rider who competes in dressage and aspires to be in the Olympics. Her husband Matt has curtailed his own professional ambitions to be the primary caregiver for their child Gracie, and as a result has not yet made partner at 50. The novel takes place at Lake Placid, where the couple needs to sell off Matt’s childhood home to pay for Gracie’s school and physiotherapy and for Elise’s career.

Cohen is incredible at the subtle tensions and complexities of real life. The very beginning of the novel demonstrates this: Elise is on her way home to see Gracie in her first play, but has to deplane because of an issue with her horse. In response, Matt drives Gracie to Lake Placid without waiting for Elise, and soon learns that his first girlfriend (as Elise sourly notes, literally the girl next door) is back in town as well. Each is a minor incident on its own — a missed school play, an early drive — but as we can probably relate to from our own lives, each is also infused with so much hidden meaning.

Within the first few chapters, we understand Elise’s guilt at how much time she spends away from her family, but also her unwavering determination to achieve her professional goals. We can feel Matt’s frustration at his wife’s absence, and underlying that, his resentment that because he’s always around, his presence doesn’t mean as much to their daughter. We can understand how he could have fallen in love with Elise for her drive, but now longs for a quieter life. Elise and Matt are real, and with each new layer of emotion and memory and hidden resentment Cohen adds on, their lives become ever more relatable.

There’s a great moment where Matt reflects that Elise is fine with him making major decisions while she’s away, but expects to take over when she comes home, as if Matt is a middle manager and Elise is the CEO swooping in with veto power. That moment is particularly strong because Elise seems to regard the decisions she makes as minor, and doesn’t quite realize how she’s affecting Matt. I especially love that while Matt and Elise certainly lack open communication, their relationship has also gotten to a point where you feel like simply talking things over is not going to help.

I love that Cohen flips the traditional gender dynamic, with the husband supporting the wife’s career — and that neither Matt nor Elise is bothered by this. I also love that their relationships with the family that raised them (Elise’s deceased mother and estranged father, and Matt’s deceased grandfather) have such a strong influence in the way they act, and that Elise and Matt don’t necessarily realize this until later in the book. I love how both of them have to confront uncomfortable truths about these family members, and how this impacts their approach to their marriage.

Little Green is such a nuanced story with compelling characters. I loved it a lot, and highly recommend it.

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I met Tish Cohen at a recent #HarperPresents Summer Reading event. Read my recap here.

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Ernest Hemingway changed my life,” Paula McLain said at a recent meet-and-greet at The Spoke Club in Toronto. McLain’s books are intrigued not just by Hemingway himself but rather by the women in his life, and in particular, bringing forth their stories from behind his rather large and imposing shadow. The Hemingway in McLain’s books is larger than life, strong and brilliant enough that we can understand how women could fall in love with him, yet soon revealing the hot temper and (for lack of a better word) self-centred asshole behaviour that makes them eventually leave him.

Love and Ruin is about Martha Gellhorn, a wartime correspondent and badass writer in her own right, who happens to be Hemingway’s third wife. McLain’s respect and admiration for Gellhorn shines through loud and clear in this novel. We see how pioneering a figure Gellhorn was, fighting her way up the ranks to be taken as seriously as her male counterparts. I particularly loved how she ended up being one of very few journalists — and the only woman — at D-Day because of a twist of poetic justice — Hemingway and other male journalists were stranded at a spot that had earlier seemed more promising for a scoop.

The novel focuses mostly on Gellhorn’s journalism career and tumultuous relationship with Hemingway, but it was Gellhorn the novelist whom I found especially compelling. I loved the section where Gellhorn and Hemingway lived together and were working on their respective novels, but while Hemingway’s novel flowed easily, Gellhorn found herself struggling to write hers. I loved how McLain portrayed Gellhorn’s fear that her own writing would get subsumed by the shadow of Hemingway’s success, and how while both of them are talented and have very strong personalities, it’s hard to be a good writer living with a great one. This isn’t a knock on Gellhorn’s talent, but rather an acknowledgement that the book Hemingway was working on turns out to be the pinnacle of his already illustrious career, and I related so hard to Gellhorn’s insecurity about her own work.

In the book, Gellhorn’s novels get criticised for the journalistic objectivity of her writing style, and ironically, it’s this same vocal restraint that kept me from being fully in love with Love and Ruin. To McLain’s credit, the narrative voice reminds me somewhat of Hemingway’s writing (I’ve never read Gellhorn’s work and so can’t compare), and her descriptions of the settings and the war feel true to life. It also slows the book down somewhat, and the book never quite swept me up emotionally. McLain also includes some sections in Hemingway’s voice, and they were okay, but for me, didn’t really add much to the novel.

Still, I love that this novel sheds light onto a historical figure who’s super kickass, but often overlooked in Hemingway’s wake. I’m also fascinated by Gellhorn’s story after she divorced Hemingway, which McLain talks about in the afterword. It’s high time we stop referring to Gellhorn as “one of Hemingway’s wives” and start referring to Hemingway as “one of Martha Gellhorn’s husbands.”

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.