An unexpected inheritance with unexpected stipulations

Synopsis

It’s a truth often acknowledged that when a journalist and Jane Austen fan girl ends up living next door to a cynical but handsome crime writer, romantic sparks will fly!

When Maddy Shaw is told her Dear Jane column has been cancelled she has no choice but to look outside of London’s rental market. That is until she’s left an idyllic country home by the black sheep of the family, long-not-so-lost Cousin Nigel.

But of course there’s a stipulation… and not only is Maddy made chair of the committee for the annual village literary festival, she also has to put up with bestselling crime author –and romance sceptic – Cameron Massey as her new neighbour.

When Maddy challenges Cameron to write romantic fiction, which he claims is so easy to do, sparks fly both on and off the page…

My review

Maddy Shaw always enjoyed writing her agony aunt column named ‘Dear Jane’, taking inspiration from the novels of the famous author.
But with her column being cancelled, Maddy has no other choice than looking outside London for place to stay.
So when she inherits a house from the black sheep of the family, Uncle Nigel, it may be the answer to all her prayers, even it the inheritance comes with a few unexpected stipulations, like being chair of the committee for the annual village literary festival. And then she finds herself also having a lodger in the form of Luke Hamilton, better know as bestselling crime author Cameron Massey. And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen lover and a cynic crime writer are bound to clash… 

I can say with a clear conscience that this story was not the kind of story I was expecting. I thought that the story would be more centred around  Jane Austen’s stories, even somehow a reproduction of it somehow.
So I was a bit disappointed when I discovered that I was on the wrong track.
but only to be quickly assured that this was a great story, even if not in the ways I expected it to. 

Maddy is the kind of character that you will immediately like. But not only that, as in my case, I recognized a lot of her in myself too. 

Losing your job is always difficult, but I can only try to imagine how it would also mean that you have to search for another place to live, and realize that you have to just change your whole way of living. Yet Maddy keeps her hopes up, believing that something will come her way. So I was glad when it did, even if it came in a way that Maddy didn’t expect. 

Seeing Maddy getting accustomed to her new place, getting used to the ways of how her neighbours are around, was not only refreshing, but also hilarious. I know for sure that I would get frustrated with such kind of neighbours, but it’s also clear what a close unit they are.
And how much they care about the ‘traditions” of their village, and how much Nigel, despite Maddy and her family’s vision of him, mattered in the village. Everyone wants to continue his legacy, showing how much he was loved. 

Obviously the best parts were those between Maddy and Luke. Their clashing, if we can call it like that, was exactly what I expected from them. Of course they don’t dislike each other completely, but they only don’t agree on the importance of genres in literature. And seeing how romantic Maddy tries to persuade Luke that romances aren’t at all that predictable, while Luke is sure that everyone could write a romance, was hilarious. 

But beside their bantering, it was great to see how slowly the relationship between them change from owner and lodger to friendship where trust and confidence only start to grow. And the trust and confidence, where Luke opens up and confides in Maddy about his struggles, was wonderful to read about. 

While the final outcome wasn’t a total surprise, it’s just like Maddy says herself, it’s the journey the characters make that is worth of the read. It’s the changes that characters undergo that make you hooked to a story. 

It was also sweet to see how, while perhaps not the main focus of this book, Uncle Nigel gets the recognition he truly deserved, which is as far as possible from being the black sheep of the family. It only shows that no matter what mistakes you make in your life, you can always find a way to turn things around.  

And while this book was not what I expected from the title, the author showed with her writing skills and her developing characters, that sometimes the unexpected can turn out to be even better than what we expected.