To move to a village full of ghosts…

Synopsis

The first in a delightfully warm, cosy and romantic new series with a fantasy twist, for fans of the BBC series ‘Ghosts’.

Can Callie give some needy ghosts their happy-ever-afterlife, while making Rowan Vale her own forever home?

When cash-strapped single mum Callie visits the beautiful Cotswold village of Rowan Vale on a school trip with her daughter, she is enchanted. It’s run as a living museum, with a steam railway, vintage teashop, Elizabethan manor house and old water mill allowing tourists to see history in action.

But there’s more to Rowan Vale than meets the eye…

To Callie’s surprise, the owner of the village, elderly Sir Lawrence Davenport, requests a meeting with her. It appears Callie has been observed talking to several villagers she shouldn’t be able to see – as they’re ghosts.

Sir Lawrence then makes an astonishing offer: to sell Callie the whole estate for a tiny sum, if she agrees to protect the village’s present tenants and make sure the headstrong ghosts are represented too.

With a spectral lord of the manor and his imperious wife, a naughty 1940s schoolgirl and the man who once taught William Shakespeare among them, it seems Callie’s role as owner wouldn’t be easy.

And that’s without the added complication of Lawrie’s disinherited grandson, the gorgeous Brodie.

Rowan Vale and Callie may need each other. But is this a match made in heaven or hell?

Fans of the BBC’s Ghosts, or books by Lucy Jane Wood, Laurie Gilmore and Heidi Swain will love this heart-warming and magical novel.

My review

When single mother Callie helps out with going with her daughter on a school trip to the Cotswolds village of Rowan Vale, she never expected that the trip would be so life – altering. Because not only Callie realizes that her curse of seeing dead people is this there, but that when the villagers, and specific Sir Lawrence Davenport, learn about her gift (and not a curse), she gets an offer she cannot refuse. An offer that entails in her buying Harling Hall at a ridiculous price, as only someone with the gift can be residing in it, and Lawrence is the last of his family seeing the ghosts. However, running a Hall is already not easy, and Callie never had the kind of worries that a Lady of the Manor has. But seeing ghosts and ghostly issues doesn’t make things easier at all for Callie. And the help Lawrence and his grandson Brodie is only temporary, as soon they will moving not only out but also away… So how will Callie cope with all the changes in her life and new presences around her?

While I don’t believe in ghosts, I absolutely love the BBC series Ghosts. And yes, I even love the American version, as it has the same bigger picture idea, yet having an (obviously) American twist to it.

So now having a book that has the same inspiration, of course I had to read it! And I loved it!!!

There are several reasons that at the start of the book, I felt sorry for Callie. I can imagine how difficult it must to be a single mother, no matter how lovely Immi is. But Callie struggles at the start to keep all the balls in the air. Yet you cannot ignore that she does whatever she can.

I have to say, initially I thought that Callie would be at peace with her gift, and she wouldn’t be surprised by all the ghosts she would encounter at Rowan Vale. But perhaps it was better the way Sharon Booth wrote this story, about a character that always had the ability to see ghosts, but due circumstances she didn’t anymore. And I loved it how her visiting Rowan Vale reignited it all.

Obviously I could understand her shock, when she sees those first ghosts and doesn’t grasp that they are ghosts and not living people like you and me. And it causes a few funny scenes when the ghosts realize that they are being seen or when Callie keeps on assuming they are alive.

There are several kind of ghosts in Rowan Vale, and some have a bigger part in the story than others. The ghosts with their own story to tell in this story, show us a humanity that surprised me but also broke my heart. They are all so different, in so many ways. From different eras, from different ages, from different background. And while it was great to see how they have somehow evolved also through time, but in a way also got stuck in their ways.

I was truly wondering how Callie would be coping with everything that has so quickly changed for her. Not only is she now the owner of Harling Hall, and she has to work everything out, with her own struggles with it. But she also has to earn the trust and the respect of the inhabitants of Rowan Vale, the living ones and the ghostly ones. And she has to keep on being there for Immi too…

Immi, she for sure is a force to be reckoned with, as despite everything is changing around her, yet she takes it all in her stride. And even when she has a few problems of her own, she tries to not to burden her mother with them.

I liked it how this book isn’t just about Callie or just about the ghosts or about a potential romance between Callie and Brodie, but it’s an accumulation without ever getting lost in chaos. Callie does everything she can, with trail and error obviously. And it’s exactly that trail and error that made her so easy to relate with, even if seeing ghosts may not be all that believable (at least for me 😊).

Callie isn’t without flaws, and she has been through a lot even at a younger age, learning to see her gift as a curse, something to be ashamed of. And her background also made it more difficult to trust people, and to open to them.

Yet I liked it how she saw things that needed to be changed. Because it’s not because how things have been done until now, that it was the right way. We see Callie grow in not only her character but also in her ‘job’. While at first she let things be, we see how she wants to make things better for everyone.

Obviously there is a potential love interest in this book, and while it was great to read those bits, as it also shows Callie’s and Brodie’s evolution in this book, it didn’t feel like the most important part of the story. Although, the will – they – will – they – not were a bit frustrating 😊.

This was a funny, no a hilarious, book, where each character whether dead or alive, had their own charm. And it was a heartwarming story about fresh starts and trying to make the right choices and decisions. A story where everyone need to adapt to changes, easy ones and more difficult ones. But this was a an amazing story, also about how important it is to understand people and respect them for who they are and what they have been through.

Sharon Booth showed with this book once again what an amazing author she is, making me have the urge to read page after page after page.