Afternoon Tea At The Sunflower Cafe by Milly Johnson

Connie is married to Jimmy Diamond and has just had the scales wiped from her eyes.  He is not the owner of a struggling cleaning business as he professes.  He is, in fact, the owner of a very prosperous cleaning business who has kept Connie tied to the kitchen sink whilst going on Golf Trips and for business meetings which are nothing of the sort.  Now Connie knows and she is going to do something about it.

Della has worked for Jimmy Diamond for 15 years and has run not only his business but his personal life for him.  She used to take great delight in lying to his wife when he was on one of his assignations.  Now, she realises that Jimmy is just using her like he does all his "best girls" and her deep love for him is not reciprocated.  Just how far will Della go to exact her revenge for 15 years wasted?

Cheryl works for Jimmy Diamond's cleaning company and is desperate for a child.  When the bank statement comes she finds out her partner has gambled away her IVF savings fund and that is the last straw.  How will she cope without the man she still loves?

The premise of the book is great and starts off so promisingly.  Unfortunately, it runs out of steam fairly quickly and certain sections are just repeating what we read in a previous chapter but just in a slightly different way.  Luckily it is a light froth of a book so perfect to pick up and put down without losing the gist of the story or the thread of the narrative.  Worked perfectly as my bedtime read because of this.

The women's voices are very similar and, on occassion, I had to skip back a couple of pages to remind myself who was "talking" in this chapter.  I also found that the supposed strength of this women in changing their lives was undermined by their frequent bouts of "woe is me".  Maybe this makes the characters more human but I found it just irritated the heck out of me and I wanted to slap them.

Sorry, this one just wasn't for me and as my first Milly Johnson read I'm not sure I will go back for more.

**Review originally published September 30th, 2017**