#Review by Lou of Best Summer Ever by Heidi Swain @Heidi_Swain @BookMinxSJV @TeamBATC #TeamBATC @simonschusterUK #Summer #SummerRead #BestSummerEver

Best Summer Ever
By Heidi Swain

Review written by Louise Cannon

Heidi Swain is celebrating 10 years being a published author, please join me in congratulating her in what is no mean feat. She’s published stand-alone books and 2 series over the years. She writes books that are primarily published for the summer and Christmas, each are feel-good, uplifting and pure escapism, whilst also tackling the challenges of individuals and society of the day.

Her latest is Best Summer Ever. I am incredibly surprised and proud that I have been quoted. Today, I am also very pleased to be returning to the community of Wynmouth on the blog tour.
Find out more in the blurb and my review below…

Blurb

Summer is in full swing when Daisy drives back into Wynmouth in her almost-clapped-out car, having left both her most recent job and the man her parents thought she was going to marry. Coming home could be just what she needs to move her life on.

At Wynbrook Manor, things are in disarray. Owner Algy isn’t getting any younger, and Daisy’s mum Janet, housekeeper at the manor, spends her days running around after him, while Daisy’s dad Robin, the gardener, has been let down by the person he had lined up to take care of the new cut-flower garden.

As Daisy tries to find her place at Wynbrook and in the village, she’s drawn to summer visitor Josh. But when he turns out to be not the person he appears to be, will the spark between them fizzle out? And with it, the chances of this turning into the best summer ever?

Review

Wynmouth is a community of people who I like very much to return to time and time again. There are always new people and new things to discover about it.

The opening lines instantly make you think of warm, summery days. Heidi Swain has a knack of placing you right there at the scene and making you feel everything. Whether you’ve had a great week or a week you’re pleased to see the end of, this book helps to ease the mind and take you to the warm, balmy carefree days of summer.

Daisy is looking to change her life and has returned to Wynmouth in the hope that this will help her to do so. There’s a realism in the carving out of the character Daisy that is relatable and other readers I am sure will find, either all or elements of relatability too. She’s never quite found her place in life, no matter what she does or how much she tries, whether its in employment or relationships. You get a sense of how challenging for the soul, life can be. Even at home, when she returns to Wynbrook Manor, she doesn’t slip in as she had hoped because there are many stressful factors occurring within her parents lives. It gives a real baseline of how trying to change life circumstances isn’t always as easy as you’d imagine.
Fortunately for Daisy, things do slowly turn around and you see her develop a sense of place and see old friends. It warms the heart as life begins to even out somewhat, until there’s more trouble. She meets Josh and there’s a spark, but there’s so much to find out about him that makes you wonder if things could go any further with this visitor because not all is what it seems, deep under the surface. It makes you wonder how it can be the best summer ever. You’ll need to read the book to find out.
The twists and turns of life appear compellingly well-written and immersive in Best Summer Ever.

Best Summer Ever lightens the heart with the warmth of sun, community and romance.

#Review By Lou of The Golden Hour By Kate Lord Brown @katelordbrown @Teambatc #TheGoldenHour

The Golden Hour
By Kate Lord Brown

Be seduced into Egypt with this intriguing tale of past and present and history of the country and between the characters colliding. Discover the gorgeous cover, the blurb and my review below…

Blurb

The Golden Hour is an epic dual timeline story which interweaves glory-seeking desert archaeologists, priceless treasures, Nefertiti’s tomb and the decadent cabarets of WW2 Cairo with restless expat lives in bohemian Beirut.

Archaeologist Lucie Fitzgerald’s mother is dying – she’s also been lying. As her home, the ‘Paris of the East’, Beirut, teeters on the brink of war in the ‘70s, Polly Fitzgerald has one last story to tell from her deathbed. It’s the story of her childhood best friend Juno and their life in 30s Cairo. Lucie travels home to be with her dying mother and discovers the truth about her family, Juno’s work and their shared search for the greatest undiscovered tomb of all – Nefertiti’s.

From the cities to the deserts, this transporting and moving story of a lost generation transformed by war is a study of great love and sacrifice in all its forms, the perfect novel for fans of Santa Montefiore, Lucinda Riley and Victoria Hislop.

Review

The Golden Hour has a rich, lush setting that goes with the evocative cover. The plot goes across a dual timeline, flowing seamlessly linking past and present together, showing symbolism and hidden meanings along the way.

Lucie, in 1975 is called back to Beirut because her mother, Polly hasn’t long to live. She hopes that Lucie will take care of the stud farm. She also has one rather big secret to tell…
Lucie is an archaeologist researching Nefertiti’s tomb. This links past and present together. Polly also used to be in Egypt in 1939 with Juno, who have a complex friendship. There is a bit of common ground in their upbringing, on top of being able to see their passion for ancient Egypt. Like Lucie, they also had a desire to see what they can uncover in Nefertiti’s tomb. Their story starts to compellingly unfold in Luxor, Cairo.

In the background of unrest, tension and war looming, a remarkable friendship, love and secrets weave through the richly drawn plot. The passion for Egyptology of Kate Lord Brown comes across in the book with lots of detail, but not overly done as it leaves you feeling swept away with it, rather than bogged down in it.

The Golden Hour is intriguingly seductive and one to savour.

#Review By Lou of The Mother of all Christmases By Milly Johnson @millyjohnson @BookMinxSJV @#TheMotherofAllChristmases #Christmas #Books

The Mother of all Christmases
By Milly Johnson

Review written by Louise Cannon

This was my first Christmas present that arrived with a lovely card, opened because it was supposed to be before Christmas. It certainly got me in the mood for this special time of year. There’s lots of substance to discover within it, possibly one of her best… Here’s the blurb and my review:

Blurb

Eve Glace – co-owner of the theme park Winterworld – is having a baby and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband Jacques should renew their wedding vows with all the pomp that was missing the first time. But growing problems at Winterworld keep distracting them.

Annie Pandoro and her husband Joe own a small Christmas cracker factory, and are well set up and happy together despite life never blessing them with a much-wanted child. But when Annie finds that the changes happening to her body aren’t typical of the menopause but pregnancy, her joy is uncontainable.

Palma Collins has agreed to act as a surrogate, hoping the money will get her out of the gutter in which she finds herself. But when the couple she is helping split up, is she going to be left carrying a baby she never intended to keep?

Annie, Palma and Eve all meet at the ‘Christmas Pudding Club’, a new directive started by a forward-thinking young doctor to help mums-to-be mingle and share their pregnancy journeys. Will this group help each other to find love, contentment and peace as Christmas approaches?

Review

The Mother of All Christmases is moving and heart-warming, without being too saccharine. There’s friendship, pregnancy, relationships, good times, challenging times throughout this festive book, which is separated into trimesters.

The Christmas Pudding Club is set up where there’s plenty of humorous banter and hope within the mothers-to-be. Will the baby arrive on the 25th December as planned? Will Winterworld survive?

It’s great that there are plenty of highs and lows in Mother of All Christmases, from financial worries to new mother anxieties to grief, not forgetting the sheer joys and laughter of Christmas this time of year brings too. This book has it all. There’s something everyone can relate to and come to the end feeling satisfied from a good festive read.

It’s really easy to root for the characters and want the festive spirit to permeate through everyone and everything, such as the Christmas Pudding Club and the festivities of Winterworld.

#CoverReveal By Lou of Slow Burn By Oti Mabuse #SlowBurn #TeamBATC #OtiMabusi #RomanticFiction @BookMinxSJV

In 2025, something sizzling and electrifying is coming to a bookcase near you! It’s so hot and smouldering, can you handle it?

Former Strictly dancer, Oti Mabuse has written 2 books that will be published by Simon and Schuster’s Books And The City (BATC) arm. Slow Burn being the first.

I have the very exciting pleasure of being part of revealing the cover.
Check it out and the blurb below.

To fall in love, they first have to get back in hold.

For Lira, Latin Ballroom is everything. Whilst her dreams of fame were cut short aged 19, she’s never forgotten the connection she felt dancing with a stranger at the Paris World Championship afterparty 13 years ago.

Taking on the responsibility of running the family dance studio wasn’t in her master plan, but with her two younger sisters pursuing their own successful careers, Lira’s flame of ambition is barely burning anymore.

But Lira is still feisty and fierce, and just because her family treat her like a doormat, she’s not going to take it lying down anymore.

A chance encounter sees Lira secretly auditioning for Slow Burn, a new dance show about to embark on a 6-week European tour, and coming face to face with a blast from her past that sends her reeling.

Gabriele has been the darling of the Latin Ballroom scene since his mother taught him the Argentine tango as a child. Slim of hip, with long, lean muscles that pop, a chiselled jaw, dark eyes, obscenely long lashes, and a mouth that just won’t give, he’s been surrounded by fawning women all his life. He’s the quintessential bad boy – arrogant, cocky, and he almost can’t help but take women for granted.

As the longest serving, and most popular professional dancer on hit Italian TV dancing competition, Bring the Heat, the world’s his oyster, and it’s no surprise when he lands the principal male lead role on Slow Burn. But, with just a few weeks to go till the tour starts, he’s at his wit’s end and down to his last two female lead auditionees. He needs to feel the heat, the fire, the chemistry… then in walks Lira.

On the dance floor they’re smouldering, off it, they’re electric.

Filled with sexy, Black female characters, hot scenes of sizzling, spicy passion that’ll make you blush, and plot beats of swoon worthy romance that will leave you breathless, the highly anticipated and unputdownable debut novel from Oti Mabuse brims with heat and heart, for fans of Colleen Hoover, Tahlia Hibbert, Ana Huang, Lauren Asher, Tessa Bailey and Hannah Grace.

#Review By Lou of In Bloom By Eva Verde @EvaKinder @BookMinxSJV #InBloom

In Bloom
By Eva Verde

It’s my stop on the blog tour for the paperback of In Bloom by Lives Like Mine author, Eva Verde. Find out about this new standalone novel below in the blurb and my review.

Blurb

A deeply affecting novel, In Bloom tells of strength, survival, forgiveness, resilience and determination, and the fierce love and unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.

Delph has kept herself small and quiet as a form of self-protection, ever since the love of her life Sol’s untimely death left her pregnant and alone at the age of twenty-four. Theirs was such a once-in-a-lifetime love, that the loss of her soulmate broke her heart ‒ and almost broke her, too.

Years on, Delph’s protective bubble bursts when her daughter Roche moves out of the flat Delph shares with her partner Itsy and in with her estranged nan, Moon. Now that it’s just the two of them, the cracks in Delph and Itsy’s relationship begin to grow. Feeling on the outside of the bond between her fierce-yet-flaky tarot-reading mother and volatile martial-arts-champion daughter, Delph begins questioning her own freedom.

Is her life with Itsy all it seems? And has keeping small and safe truly been her choice all these years…?

Review

Life, it can be full of challenges, even family life. In Bloom takes 3 generations of women in a family, there’s Delph the mum, Roche, the daughter and Moon, the grandma and shows how they evolve and want to discover their own life paths.

Roche is growing up and is searching for a bit of independence from her mum, even if it means moving in with her grandma. She also becomes interested in the family history and discovers quite a bit, which makes you wonder whether they’ll ever allow and set themselves totally free from the pattern that emerges so their life buds can bloom.
Moon is great, she’s got a bit of free-spirit that’s like between hippy-like and bohemian about her that you easily get caught up in, but you wouldn’t want to mess with her.
Delph has to learn how to “let go” of her daughter, Roche and let her once little bud, bloom. She also is trying to discover her own way in life as the family dynamics change so that she can bloom once again. Life has been tough on her in other ways and she has a fierce need to self-protect, so blooming is quite a challenge now for her.
Humour and emotion plays a big part in the family’s stories of threads of intertwining connections of past and present.

In Bloom is an absorbing story of a family that so many families will be able to relate to one way or another.

#Review By Lou of Preloved By Lauren Bravo @laurenbravo @simonschusterUK @simonschusterPR #Preloved

Preloved
By Lauren Bravo

Preloved is an uplifting book set within a charity shop. Thanks to Simon and Schuster, I have reviewed from the e-book. Find out more in the blurb and then my thoughts in the full review below.

Blurb

A love story about things…

Gwen’s life has stalled. She’s in her mid-thirties, perpetually single, her friends are busy procreating in the country and conversations with her parents seem to revolve entirely around herbaceous borders and the council’s wheelie-bin timetable. Above all she’s lonely. But then, isn’t everyone?

When Gwen’s made redundant from a job she drifted into a decade ago and never left, she realises it’s time to make a change. Over what might be the best – and most solitary – meal she’s ever eaten, Gwen vows to find something meaningful to do with her life, reconnect with her family and friends – and finally book herself a dentist appointment.

Her search for meaning soon leads her to volunteer in a local charity shop where she both literally and metaphorically unloads her emotional baggage. With the help of the weird and wonderful people she meets in the shop and the donated items bursting with untold stories that pass through its doors, Gwen must finally address the events and choices that led her to this point and find a way to move forward with bravery, humanity and more regular dental care.

Brimming with life, love and the stories bound up in even the most everyday items, Preloved is a tale about friendship, loss, being true to oneself no matter the expectations – and the enduring power and joy of charity shops.

Review

I’d connect with Gwen in a heartbeat. I relate to her, plus I volunteer, although, unlike her, I never offload any emotional baggage, but like her, happy for others to.

Gwen has discovered, come a certain age, the talk is often about babies and household chores. She’s also discovered that when you’re single, there’s also many other things that there are other things that also go on in your life, but can’t always be talked about because no one else understands anymore or friends are wrapped up with their own lives.
Gwen, after facing a series of this and winds up feeling very lonely and for the reader, you wind up feeling very sorry for her because you know she isn’t invisible, she does exist, but not necessarily enough for people to truly see her. Then to make matters worse, she’s made redundant.

As things change, Gwen decides volunteering would be a good road to go down and ends up in a charity shop. As she unloads all sorts of baggage from people, she also offloads emotional baggage and so do the people entering the shop.

It’s a somewhat thought-provoking book about how we treat single people, but its also an uplifting book about new-found friendship and turning your life around.