Sunshine And Sweet Peas In Nightingale Square by Heidi Swain

3.5 Stars

This is a fairly charming tale of starting over after your Happily Ever After becomes a Fairy Curse.  The problem for me was that I found Kate to be quite an unlikeable character who was quick to judge others and rather inflexible in her opinions and life.  I know that part of that was to serve the plot but that didn't stop me from finding her unpleasant and as the tale is told from her viewpoint that did spoil my enjoyment of it.

The secondary characters of Lisa and Harriet(?) are wonderfully written and had that breath of reality infusing them that I have come to expect from Ms Swain.  I would love to know more about both of them but suspect that this is unlikely.  Although, there is much more to Nightingale Square than the 3 ladies,there are a host of supporting characters that live and breathe on the page - more importantly they garden together and party together too.  I did find the battle for a community allotment to be a great plot device to absorb newly arrived Kate in to the Nightingale Square crew and a good way of introducing everyone to us.  Sadly, I think communities of this type only exist within book pages these days.

The romance angle of the book is quite pronounced but from the unusual perspective of Kate refusing to have anything to do with it as she has blown her chance after separating from her husband.  The real reason why is dragged out through the book and I did find that infuriating as it became this big "thing" that Kate would not reveal and turned out to be fairly pedestrian in the end.  The resolution to all this is that of course she does realise that there is more than one love out there for her and it is who you suspect it is going to be from the moment they first meet.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys this genre of fiction.  There is a warmth to Ms Swain's writing that invites you in and she has a real knack with drawing a great character on the page.  Unfortunately for me I did not like her main character so I have marked the book accordingly but the story arc is well paced and the people believable - trust me if you want a hug from a book this will provide it.