Rambling About.. Lynsey James' The Sunflower Cottage Breakfast Club

I'm so glad that I already have Lynsey James' The Broken Hearts Book Club on my Kindle app. It's the first book in the Luna Bay series and I've so enjoyed the second one thanks to NetGalley and CarinaUK! I used The Sunflower Cottage Breakfast Club for the most recent Book Beginnings & Friday 56 post and at the time had only read a couple of pages. I really got into it yesterday and had a hard time falling asleep last night because it would mean putting it down.

Emily has traveled to Luna Bay from her home in Glasgow with a two-part month-long mission. Part one is to meet her biological father for the first time after spending her entire life not knowing he wasn't the man she had called Dad. Part two is to convince the owner of Sunflower Cottage to sell her bed & breakfast to the hotel development company Emily works for and become the latest member of its chain (and gain Emily a much sought-after promotion in the process).

Emily is very much a business woman. She favors green smoothies over breakfast and pantsuits (complete with shoulder pads) over casual wear. She "unwinds" by diving into the work on her laptop. Until, of course, Luna Bay starts to take effect on her.

At first Emily couldn't wait to get out of there. People were wary over her wanting to take control of their beloved Sunflower Cottage -- especially Noah, the handsome but gruff mechanic who helped the owner, Rose, as much as he could and felt it to be as much of a home as he ever had. When Rose has an accident that puts her out of commission for a bit, Noah volunteers to step up to run the B&B in her absence -- and Emily volunteers to help. It doesn't take long, of course, for the two to get past their initial bickering and dislike of each other and a romance starts to blossom. (No big surprise there, huh?)

Actually, the quick turnaround in feelings between Noah and Emily was the only part of the book that seemed a little off to me. It just felt rushed -- as though a step or five had been overlooked. Nevertheless, the swiftness of it is was swept aside by the sweetness and strength of the rest of the tale. I fell in love with Luna Bay and its delightful cast of characters and look forward to revisiting time and again,

Life in Luna Bay is sweet & sizzling. Once you spend some time there, you won't want to leave!

Lynsey James' The Sunflower Cottage Breakfast Club (Book beginnings & Friday 56)

Emily Reed is having a bad day. Her mother has just dropped a devastating bombshell—the dad she’s known and loved for twenty-five years isn’t her biological father!
Desperately in need of answers, Emily heads to Luna Bay covering her personal quest up as a work trip to Sunflower Cottage B&B.
Setting up the ‘Sunflower Cottage Breakfast Club’ should be a great way to meet the locals and maybe even find out who her father is. The only problem is brooding and insanely gorgeous, Noah, who is determined to make Emily’s stay perfectly uncomfortable.
Discovering the truth after all these years was never going to be simple, but Emily will stop at nothing to uncover her past… even if her heart is getting in the way! (Amazon Description)

Thanks to the wonderful folks at NetGalley and CarinaUK I've just started reading Lynsey James' The Sunflower Cottage Breakfast Club.  I haven't gotten far enough in to warrant a ramble yet, but it's never too early for a tease or two!

Friday 56 (share from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice
& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader

Rambling About.. Jenny Colgan's The Good, The Bad and the Dumped

Now, you obviously, would never look up your exes on Facebook. And even if you did, you most certainly wouldn't run off trying to track them down, risking your job, family and happiness in the process. Posy Sutherland, on the other hand…Posy is delighted when Matt proposes – on top of a mountain, in romantic mode. But a few days later disaster strikes: he backs out of the engagement. Crushed and humiliated, Posy starts thinking. Why has her love life always ended in total disaster? Determined to discover how she got to this point, Posy resolves to track down her exes. Can she learn from her past mistakes? And what if she has let Mr Right slip through her fingers on the way? [Amazon Description]

The Good, The Bad and the Dumped is a 2010 release from Jenny Colgan. Unfortunately, it appears that it was never published here in the U.S. Fortunately, we have the wonderful Internet that allows us to easily buy books from elsewhere.

So, Posy has been proposed to by Matt and said yes. While she says that she's happy about the idea of it all, her sister Fleur and best friend Leah help her realize that maybe she isn't really so much completely over her ex from three years ago. To further complicate matters she runs into a friend of an ex from nine years ago. And then her first serious boyfriend from way back in university pops up on Facebook which leads to memories of meeting the ex from nine years ago.

Posy takes all of these memories flooding in as a sign and she seems to think it's a good idea to actually see her ex-es ... without telling Matt about it.

'This,' said Leah, 'is the worst idea you have ever had.'

'Can't you be more supportive?'

'I can!' said Fleur. The she took on a concentrated look. 'Oh no, hang on, I've just thought about it and it turns out I can't. Sorry. This is a stupid idea. Maybe it isn't a sign after all.' (p 68)

She's a bit of a hot mess. (I'm sure her psychotherapist mother would agree with me on this.)

Posy is such a fantastic trainwreck and her friends and family add to it tomake sure that you can't look away for fear of missing something hilarious. Even moreso when she kind of gets one more ex to add to the list -- Matt. I seriously couldn't blame him one bit. I likely would have kind of dumped her, too. At the same time, though, don't we all have the right to be trainwrecks once in a while? (And if I ever have the need to do so, I hope that I can do it half as fabulously as Posy!)

The aftermath is sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking and incredibly believable. Watching Posy attempt to get her train back on track was definitely worthwhile and Colgan has moved up another notch on my "must read" list of authors.

Murder in the Secret Garden by Ellery Adams (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

Normally I would copy & paste the Amazon description for the book I'm featuring, but when Ellery Adams shared the video trailer for her latest Book Retreat Mystery, Murder in the Secret Garden, I couldn't resist!

Frances Hodges Burnett's The Secret Garden was always a favorite of my mom's and of mine. The book, the movies, the musical ... all of them are near and dear. I was downright giddy when I found out that the third Storyton Hall tale was going to have a Secret Garden slant and even moreso when Ellery sent me an autographed paperback copy to devour. Unfortunately, I'm not used to carrying actual books around anymore and forgot to throw it into my purse a couple of nights so ended up reading something else ... but that just means that it lines up perfectly with Tuesday Intros and Teaser Tuesday! 

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is the first paragraph (or two) of a book being read now or in the future and is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. "Teaser Tuesday" from Books and a Beat asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.

The first book in the series I enjoyed because of how it gave the backstory to Storyton Hall and Jane (and her sons') legacy. It truly is a remarkable place that I would love to visit if only it actually existed. The second book I was a little "eh" about because I had figured the mystery part out fairly early on and wasn't feeling the romance angle in Jane's life. I've got about 100 pages left to read for this one and it has me downright flummoxed! There are few things in this life that I enjoy more than a flummoxing by a well-written mystery.

Rambling About.. The Secrets of Wishtide by Kate Saunders

Set in 1850 England, The Secrets of Wishtide is the first of Kate Saunders' Laetitia Rodd mystery series due out on September 13th. Laetitia (Letty) is 52 years old, childless, and a widow -- her archdeacon husband, Matt, having died just over two years ago. She lives quite modestly, but happily, with her friend and landlady Mary Bentley. Her younger brother, Fred Tyson, is a criminal barrister and often relies on Letty's assistance in cases. After all, people are often far more willing to open up to a kindly old minister's widow than they are to a lawyer.

Her latest case has her travelling to Wishtide, the home of Sir James and Lady Calderstone. Their son, Charles, has fallen in love with the girl who had been hired to teach their daughters Italian but they have received ominous correspondence suggesting that the girl isn't suitable. Letty is to act as the new governess for the daughters while snooping about to find out the truth about the girl that Charles wants to marry.

It sounds like an easy enough case for a woman who says that her work "could be described as the Management and Prevention of Scandal," and it does start out to be easily tied up. Unfortunately, it gets complicated when more family secrets are discovered and several murders at and around Wishtide occur. When Charles is arrested for one of them Letty is called upon to help clear his name -- much to the dismay of Scotland Yard's Inspector Blackbeard.

I thought that I knew a couple of different times how things were going to play out but Saunders kept me guessing. I'm thrilled that I was able to read this thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley and even more thrilled that more Laetitia Rodd books are in the works! Part Father Brown, part Miss Marple -- Letty Rodd is a pure delight and will be a welcome addition to any historical mystery collection!