28th January 2020 – Book Review – The Mystery Shopper and the Hot Tub by Helen E Field.

Dear Readers, after a long sabbatical from my beloved blog that you are reading right now, I am back with a very, very small bang, reviewing Helen E. Field’s novel on De’ath family’s antics, on this particular occasion to do with dreams of lounging about in hot tubs to impress their Brentwood, Essex neighbourhood and random mystery shopping episodes. It is a very uncertain and dark time for all of us with the Corona and Covid pandemic and this novel was delightfully funny and fast paced, earning it well deserved four stars.

Brooke and Dean are the ideal couple next door, living in Brentwood, Essex with their little tot Paige. Dean dreams of getting a promotion in his IT Support firm while Brooke, described as a typical Essex hottie wants to be better than the rest of the Essex lot in their neighbourhood and has a penchant for reading Homes and Gardens and aspires to be better than the rest. Dean is very, very endearing as a husband who wants to do the best for his little daughter and Brooke. Brooke is very outspoken in her demands for a Hot Tub and that sets the story in motion.

When Dean applies for a job as a mystery shopper, his main concern is somehow earning enough to get a Hot Tub to impress his feisty wife and his friends and in laws. In the meantime, Brooke also scores a job working as an assistant to a Lady Townsend, a vivacious landed lady who takes a shine to Brooke at their very first meeting. Both of the spouses hide their little jobs from one another and what ensues is a hilarious comedy of errors that features side characters Martin (Dean’s friend) and Dawn (Brooke’s ever suffering friend and babysitter to Paige), Lady Townsend and the couple’s laws.

I especially enjoyed reading about Dean’s mishaps in mystery shopping and how he managed to visit a posh hotel that everyone was in awe of and did the typical ‘new to this kind of thing’ exercise of nabbing toiletries (in this case Molton Brown) for free!! He also mystery shops Burger King and a Golf Club with thieving staff and all of his experiences are worth reading! On the other hand, Brooke attends a posh members only club assisting Lady Townsend with her presentation and the description of the club and its members is engrossing and funny.

The best part is Dean’s role in Paige’s near disastrous birthday party and how well Dean and Martin are able to deal with the ensuing chaos as Dean somehow manages to fit in his mystery shopping task on the same day as his daughter’s birthday party.  I do not want to give any spoilers away, but in the end, both Dean and Brooke are able to realise their Essex dream of owning a beautiful state of the art Hot Tub, although this culminates in another comic situation for both of them. How they get to this stage is what the book is about. I thoroughly enjoyed the fast pace of this book and how the author has painstakingly described each situation and has given the reader a real feel of the Essex area and its customs.

 

14th June 2014 – Book Review: It Had To Be You by Lynda Renham

 

Summer’s here, the sun’s out, the birds are chirping and everyone has their sunnies and flip flops out! To mark the coming of summer, there are some amazing summer reads out and one of these happens to be Lynda Renham’s hysterically funny, witty and mood lifting novel ‘It Had To Be You’. Lynda’s forte has always been humorous romances and she does not fail to impress this time around with her latest offering.

‘It Had To Be You’ is hapless heroine Binki Grayson’s story. Binki is down on her luck as on a particularly disastrous Christmas Eve, her life unravels. After being sexually propositioned by her odious boss, she is fired unceremoniously when she turns him down in no uncertain terms. On coming home early, she finds her boyfriend Oliver ‘in flagrante delicto’ with his own boss in their shared apartment! Out of work and out of a boyfriend, Binki leaves the apartment she shared with Oliver to find solace with her parents. Once there, she discovers that she has inherited a house from her deceased Aunt Vera. However, Aunt Vera, it seems did not quite make up her mind and has also left the house to her financial advisor, the rich, handsome and infinitely arrogant William Ellis.

Unfortunately for Binki, William has already made his home in ‘Driftwood’, the house that Aunt Vera bequeathed to one of them and what follows is a story of comic mishaps, dodgy dealings, jilted lovers, sex shop shenanigans and loads and loads of chocolate (for those of us who love chocolates).

Binki is a loveable, scatty heroine who does not fit the size zero ideal. She loves her chocolate and is charmingly self-deprecating. I absolutely loved her observations in the novel, right from her descriptions of Oliver’s man-hunting boss Amanda’s ample assets and her detailed analysis of her lecherous ex boss, wart-nosed and all, down to her candidness about her failed attempts to diet and her hilarious thoughts on William Ellis’s vitamin taking and condom collecting habits. Similarly, William Ellis is the ideal hero, slightly mysterious and arrogant at first but the reader gets to know more of him as the novel commences and they cannot help but start to like him.

Renham’s writing hooks the reader and the story flows as Binki and William’s initial hostility with one another gives away to lasting and easy friendship and ultimately things start to get complicated as deeper feelings develop. A further spanner in the works is thrown, when Oliver, Binki’s cheating boyfriend goes on a mission to win her back and ultimately make her his wife. William has a complication of his own in the form Andrea, his own ex-fiancée who loved him and left him due to his workaholic tendencies but now wants him back.

The story is hugely entertaining and will appeal to fans of Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes and Jenny Colgan. It has plenty of humour, a huge dash of romance and amazing chemistry between the hero and heroine. For me the chemistry between the lead pair is the most important aspect of any chick lit novel and it is for this very reason that I feel chick lit aficionados everywhere will adore this book. This book is entertaining from start to finish and you must watch out for the soap opera-like ending and a mini cat fight in the end, which would give any current Hollywood feuds a run for their money! A sweetly nostalgic touch is added as Tony Bennett’s ‘It Had to Be You’ plays an important part in the story.

I give this novel a very apt four and a half stars and urge you to read it! ‘It Had to be You’ is published by Raccous Publishing and is out now.