Thank you Harper Collins UK, Avon and Netgalley once again xx

I fell in love with the cover of this book straight away and the title made me melt.
Opening it up to discover its also set in Yorkshire and I am a 'Yorkshire Lass' was a bonus too.
It was a lovely story, nothing sloppy. It made me sad it made me smile. This was all in all a glass of juice in the garden book, well for me anyway xx ( )

Thank you Harper Collins UK, Avon and Netgalley once again xx

I fell in love with the cover of this book straight away and the title made me melt.
Opening it up to discover its also set in Yorkshire and I am a 'Yorkshire Lass' was a bonus too.
It was a lovely story, nothing sloppy. It made me sad it made me smile. This was all in all a glass of juice in the garden book, well for me anyway xx ( )

The characters were realistic and the protagonist was likable enough. It's very British and the plot was predictable and heavily foreshadowed. Although nothing really stood out as being exceptional, it was an enjoyable read about a woman trying to grow and improve her life. ( )

Another audiobook (and possibly the first one I was tempted to give up on, which gives you a clue as to how this review might go!) The story revolves around Della, whose mother Kitty passes away at the beginning of the book, and Della ends up inheriting itty's vast collection of cookbooks. She decides to open a bookshop selling just second-hand cookbooks, despite her husband Mark and her brother Jeff telling her it won't work. As odious as both of these male characters turned out to be, it pained me to agree with them. She wanted to open the shop in a sleepy little village, selling exclusively second hand cookbooks, with the focus more on socialising than buying. I'm not a genius but it doesn't need one to know that in real life, this is a business model destined to fail.

Although the title would suggest that the book is mainly about the bookshop, it's actually mainly about Della's personal life. She has a husband who is quite frankly awful, and a brother who is so supercilious that I dare any reader not to want to give him a slap. The only decent member of her family was her daughter Sophie, who was intelligent and independent despite having a doormat and a lying know-it-all cheat as parents.

Della also discovers some secrets in her own past, which were the best parts of the book, by virtue of the fact that they were more tolerable to read about than the rest. Naturally the bookshop itself is a roaring success, and of course Della finds happiness, because she finds another man to love her and loses weight.

The narration by Gabrielle Glaister was fine, despite some huge pauses in-between paragraphs and chapters, which made me wonder if I had accidentally pressed pause on the playback, but I would be happy to listen to another audiobook with this narrator (although not by this author).

I have looked at other reviews of this book, and they are largely extremely positive, so if this is the sort of book that appeals to you, don't let my review put me off. I think I probably picked a book in a genre that just doesn't appeal to me, but at least I now know what kind of thing to avoid! ( )

This was a totally delightful, quirky read. It is the story of a 50-something Della whose only child goes off to college and her husband leaves her all in the same month. She is left with cleaning out her mother's cottage and making it suitable for resale. What to do with her mother's 972 cookbooks? She finds something of a "mystery" note in one of the cookbooks and that sets her off in a new direction that she never had dreamed of. She finally opens her cookbook bookstore in spite of the objections of most that it couldn't possibly succeed. This is a light read but one of the few times that I have laughed out loud when reading a book in a long time. I hear there is going to be a sequel that I will definitely read. 370 pages 5 stars ( )