Summer of Love [Hardcover]

Like the overwhelming majority of the other reviewers, I really enjoyed this romantic novel. Katie Fforde's world is very kind - both her heroines are people I could imagine meeting and liking and the heroes Katie finds for them are just right. You can trust her as a writer to keep you interested and to make you smile, but not to shock or upset you, and I find her invaluable comfort reading when life (as it is for so many people) is stressful. Any person who likes romantic novels will like this and recognise all the essential components.

But I think there is another quality in Katie's fiction which is overlooked- how radical she is. Her heroines are normal women, and because Katie writes Romantic fiction with happy endings and no postmodern experimentation or disturbing twists, it is easy to overlook how unusual that is! I just love the way she writes about Fiona in particular - she manages to give us a lovely heroine who is a realistic middle aged woman, who suffers from indigestion, sees the funny side of life, does the church flowers , loves her son and grandson and has to buy new underwear before going on a date BUT who has a believably sexy time with a gorgeous middle aged man. Hooray! Thank you Katie! Katie's depiction of Sian, the younger woman, is equally skilled - Sian is someone you could imagine meeting on the school playground waiting to pick up her son. She is a kind, hard working single mother (another busted stereotype!) who loves her child, gets on well with her parents, has believably close and unbitchy friendships with other young mothers and with Fiona, and when confronted with a rich admirer has the principles not to choose money over love. The idea that the passion of a one night stand can be satisfyingly reignited after an unplanned pregnancy and 6 years apart is definitely of the genre, but because Sian is so believable and sympathetic this works.

Katie is great at characters. Sian's little boy, Rory, is beautifully and lovingly depicted. Even walk on parts - like the pie making woman in the bookshop - are fun and realistic.

I loved the subplots, particularly Fiona's internet dating disasters, which made me laugh. I will never look at garden centres in the same way again and the safety reminder may well help many a reader! Gus's bushcraft knowledge was really well conveyed - having gone on a children's bushcraft course I recognised all the techniques he used, but admired the skilful way Katie managed to describe them without sounding like an instruction novel.

In a quiet way, Katie Fforde is doing gloriously subversive work for middle aged women - giving likeable normal women who struggle with their weight and worry about their families passionate sexuality and fun! Thank you so much Katie. I think that, with 'Going Dutch', this is my favourite of your books. Please repeat this subversive recipe and have more middle aged heroines in the future!

If, like me, you have ever had to grind your way through seriously recalcitrant illness - or a wet bank holiday, or flu! - then you're going be so glad you found Katie Fforde. Not just because she's fun, and funny (two very different things, in lesser hands), but because she is all about the best things in life - kind people, calming places, hopes and ambitions, and the spirit to try, against comic, often mortifying odds, to find the place you belong. Her heroines are ordinary women, with ordinary problems, who - thanks to Katie's good-hearted mucking up of their plans - find themselves mired in the kind of gentle chaos that is the hallmark of her books.

Declaring an interest here - Katie is someone I know. So the great pleasure is seeing Katie herself coming through, loud and clear, so her readers can enjoy her too. Her stories are comforting and cheering - and occasionally make me spit coffee all over the cat on my lap, I'm laughing so much. Which wouldn't matter, except that the cat is not my own.

A couple of reviews have criticised the middle-class manners and milieu of the books, and their 'dated' (aka posh and/or grannie-aged person's language). Which is fair and free comment...so long as the argument is not that these things are in some way excluding, snobbish or unreal. The last things Katie's work could ever be. Her world exists; it's just different from Martina Cole's world, or Sophie Kinsella's. But so what? Isn't the point of books that they take you anywhere your imagination wants to go? I'm so glad 'Summer of Love' has a middle-aged character, making an idiot of herself with such self-awareness, such lack of sensible planning, and such return-to-adolescence glee. I believed in the close relationship of Sian & Fiona, too, most of all because, when it came to the heart of the matter - Sian's connection to Gus - they behaved like grown-ups (a bit of a shock to someone like me, addicted to Eastenders and crime novels!). This is a lovely warm hug of a book, and - against really tough odds - it lifted me up. I just hope Katie carries on being Katie - it's what she does best, and why her fans (and her friends) are so very happy she exists.

Having written several times that I wouldn't be reading any more books by Katie Fforde I decided to give this one a try as the e-book sample seemed intriguing. In my opinion this is Katie Fforde at her best. The characters are interesting and believable and so is the plot. Sian moves to the country with her five year old son Rory to try and make a new start. She rents a cottage in an idyllic sounding village and soon starts to make friends especially with her almost next door neighbour - Fiona.

If this was just a story of how Sian finds love then it would just be an ordinary love story. What lifted it out of the ordinary in my opinion was Fiona's venture into internet dating after years on her own and in her fifties. I could identify with Fiona and her desire to have someone to go places with and to share life's pleasures without necessarily having some sort of formal relationship. Her dates are amusing and cringe-worthy and even potentially dangerous.

I loved the way the ordinary every day aspects of life were such a big part of the story - cooking, eating, de-cluttering, Sian's work painting and restoring furniture. I liked James, the bookshop owner and I thought Richard, Sian's long time friend was well done too. Rory is an absolute charmer even though I don't particularly like children.

There's a good balance between dialogue and description in this book which hasn't always been the case with some of Katie's recent books. Altogether I found this an enjoyable read and an excellent choice for a summer afternoon in the garden or on holiday.