Wild Designs

I wasn't sure how far I was going to read when i started this because there was so much confusion in Althea's household but it began to be understandable and with that understanding it became....delightful. I love English authors and this Althea just plain "grew" on me as the story evolved.

I also happened to be reading it at the exact same time the Chelsea Flower Show was opening for the year in England, the same time that it is described in the book. ( )

There are days and there are days. Some require coming home, popping popcorn for supper, putting on one's oldest, ugliest robe, and settling down with an escapist book where everyone lives happily after. Katie Fforde's 'Wild Designs' is the perfect book for those nights.

Althea Farraday is thirty-eight, the divorced mother of three, and she's just lost her job. But Althea copes. Not well, but she copes. Her passions are her children and gardening, until too-good-to-be-true Patrick Donahugh buys a nearby estate. Althea just happens to be surreptitiously using his rundown greenhouse to house her nursery plants; they meet, he's attracted [but involved with the toned and expensive Topaz], and Althea is flattered but afraid to get involved. The plot may not be especially demanding, but the people are Nice, there's lots of laugh aloud moments, and hey - everyone occasionally needs a buffer from the real world.

'Wild Designs' is a relaxing interlude. And when it's over, we can get up, toss the popcorn, and get back to Real Life. ( )

This book made me smile and has a wonderful feel good-factor! The characters are great, really down to earth... I didn't want to leave them at the end of the book. ( )

Truthfully, I'm not entirely sure how this book wound up in my TBR pile. It's not what I'd normally read, or pick up, or acquire, but... it was there, and when I started running out of May, I figured it'd be a reasonably quick read, and not distract too much from the studying I'm supposed to be doing right now.

As it turned out, well... Wild Design *is* better than reading Financial Reporting Standards (that studying I mentioned). But that's about all I can say for it. This book is everything I hate about chicklit, and a perfect example of why I don't tend to read that genre. The 'heroine' is a doormat. She spends most of the book sabotaging herself for no discernible reason, letting her friends and family walk all over her, and laying down so her kids can't help but walk over her whether they want to or not. She loses her job, decides on a new career as a garden designer... and then spends the rest of the book running around like a headless chicken, chasing everything but her dream, except by accident. She can't seem to imagine why the hero would be interested in her, and frankly, the way she treats him, I can't either. Seriously, I wanted to tell her to grow the hell up already.

The 'hero'... well, I suppose he was okay, all two dimensions of him.

I *did* finish the book, but only because it really was better than memorising FRS. ( )