Rachael LucasBesprekingen

Rilla Clark's father has died, and she's off to the village of Applemore in the Scottish Highlands. It's been a long time since she was there, even though it holds such cherished memories. Lachlan Fraser is part of those memories, and neither is aware that they are returning to the village simultaneously. Lachlan is returning to the village to have a critical family meeting with his 3 sisters. The Applemore House has been an ancestral home for 150 years for the Fraser family. House may be part of the name, but truth be told, it's a castle in disrepair, and there is a burden of death and inheritance taxes due as Lachlan and his sisters' father died several months before Rilla's father.

I loved the blended themes of a second chance at love unexplored in their younger lives, the balancing act between the continuation of a dream partnership and familial duty by a son not only to carry on the family legacy but for his sisters and future generations, women rekindling friendship, the rescue of a dog, and discovery of a secret. Can the past still be meaningful in the present, or is it just a brief interlude of delights?

After reading "The Telephone Box Library," I knew I wanted to read more of the author's writing. I look forward to returning to Little Maudley and Applemore in the New Year.

This was one of those feel good books I adore. Wonderful uplifting book which just made me want to smile. I cried once and that was the acknowledgments at the end.. PollyDog bless her xx

really enjoyed this book. nothing slushy.. just what i needed

Das Buch erzählt eine nette Geschichte über die Geschichtslehrerin Lucy, die sich ein Halbjahressabbatical in einem englischen Dorf nimmt. Sie lernt Leute kennen, die sie mag, findet historische Zusammenhänge und beteiligt sich am Umbau einer Telefonzelle in eine kleine Bücherei.
Wie gesagt, das Buch ist ein typisches Wohlfühl-Buch mit sympathischen, gut gezeichneten Personen, nicht mehr, aber auch nicht weniger.½

A charming contemporary romance set in the Cotswald village of Little Maudley. As I had read an article last year of townspeople turning the famous red telephone booths into micro libraries I was drawn by the description of this story. Little libraries in the United States are known as "mini-town squares" across the United Kingdom. And how appropriate as throughout the novel Bunty Nicolson shares the various ways the village phone booth was so meaningful to the community before it was decommissioned.

Note: "The first such telephone box library was set up in Westbury-Sub-Mendip in Somerset was founded in 2009 after the local council cut funding for the area’s mobile library."

Lucy Evans has come to Little Maudley "sight unseen" taking a 6-month sabbatical from her position as Head of the History Department and teacher at a secondary school. With the door of the address she's to meet Margaret Nicolson closed in her face, Lucy is not sure she hasn't made a huge mistake. But the advert seemed perfect for her desired and much needed rest. Lucy would only be needed to look in on Bunty Nicolson, age 96, approximately an hour a day to see if she needed anything and might need a little help. Oh, it had sounded so perfect. Was it really too good to be true?

I was smiling non-stop when Lucy's view of Little Maudley was described as "This place was like stepping into an episode of Midsomer Murders."

I've watched every episode so beyond the lovely descriptive writing I could even further imagine the landscape. Then as I've watched every episode of "Hamish Macbeth" I couldn't help giggling to read Lucy's dog is named Hamish. I had to wonder if Rachael Lucas has enjoyed that series too.

I loved the blended themes of the multi-generational storyline, the camaraderie of single parenting, the friendships of neighbors, the hesitation of revealing secrets of the past, the flavor of historical fiction with the intermingling of history of the Women's Institute (WI), the transmission of fake German radio programs, and work at Bletchley Park. Beyond that, I truly wish I could escape to a treehouse designed and built by Sam Travis.

I'm eager to read the next book in the series as one visit simply isn't enough to Little Maudley.

Light and fun, with likeable characters, and charming English slang and character. The secondary plot about the young women working at Bletchley Park during WW2 was an interesting addition. It was a little too quaint, and the conflicts worked out a little too easily...it was like a young adult Hallmark movie.

Student Review
Review By: Heather R (12th grade)
Grade Range: 7th Grade and up
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Literary Merit: Great
Characterization: Great
Review:
The State of Grace centers around a young girl named Grace who is living her life differently than others since she is autistic. Life for everyone else seems easy according to Grace. To her, it is as if every other person in the world received a detailed list of procedures and tips for how they need to live out their daily lives, and she just so happened to not be around on that particular day to receive her copy. Just when life starts to make sense to her, through daily trips to the stables to see Mabel, her horse, changes set in and take over her perfectly stable life. Her dad, through his work as a nature filmmaker, has to travel far away from home for a long period of time and is practically leaving his family behind for his work. On top of that, there's the issue of Eve, a friend of Grace’s mom, who has decided to invade the house and influence her mom in ways that do not benefit the family as a whole. To top all of that off there is the fact that Grace is finding out what it's like to deal with the wrath of the popular girl at school, Holly Carmichael. These issues combine to start creating a world that is even more unknown for Grace, she still is able to push through them with the power of friendship and family.

The State of Grace has a cover that is not very eye catching at first until one realizes how much meaning the cover actually holds. The subtlety mixed with color included on the cover allows Grace’s personality to be accurately represented. The message of the story, told through a main character who is autistic, is that it is not always possible for people to fit in exactly like how others do. Instead, these people can fit in and be accepted by just being themselves and not trying to change their true personalities. The best aspect of the book had to be the main character, Grace. The number one reason Grace stood out as a character was due to the fact that she was not created to be a perfect person. She was created to be the eye opener for people that might have no clue what Autism is like on a daily basis for anyone that might be living with disorder. Grace can be a rather frustrating character, yet that allows the readers to understand how difficult her life, which may seem simple to others, is for her. Her friendships with Anna and Gabe allow her to realize that some people can understand that their choices might be easy for them while her choices can be much more complicated for her. Leah, her sister, allows her to have a personality that is not just defined by her disorder. The plot of the book was set at a decent pace which allowed Grace to show character development from the first to the last page of the book. Even though that was the case, I was not sure what the plot was going to entirely entail when I first picked up the book. Because of that, I was a little nervous at first that I was not going to like the book. Although, as I started to get further into the book I realized that there were elements of foreshadowing that helped to create a story that was far more than the typical high school love story that I thought that it was going to be.
Recommendation: For any reader that loves Realistic Fiction and enjoys seeing through the eyes of a character that is not perfect and can be frustrating.

This is the third and final part of Wildflower Bay. I have enjoyed reading it in three parts, although I think a little something is lost by reading it this way. In part 3 everything comes to a lovely conclusion for Isla, as she works out what she wants to do in the future. Wildflower Bay, as a whole story, is just lovely.

I do quite like these books that are released in parts over the course of a few months, although I could do with a short reminder at the beginning as to what happened in the last one. In part 2 of Wildflower Bay, Isla is finding her feet and getting used to life on the island of Auchenmor. She's making friends and enjoying her work in the salon.

This is a really easy, pleasant read and I'm looking forward to part 3. I'm enjoying Rachael Lucas's writing style very much.

Isla is a top stylist at a prestigious Edinburgh hair salon. She's worked her way up but in doing so has sacrificed friends and a love life to get where she is. Until one day things go a bit wrong. She then finds herself on the remote and quite old-fashioned (or so it seems to Isla) Scottish island of Auchenmor, looking after her aunt's salon for eight weeks. Isla isn't best pleased to be there and we end part one of the book with her getting used to being there.

Like many of these lighter reads, at first I was thinking it was a fairly run of the mill book, but as it went on I started to really get into the story, especially when Isla arrived on the island, like a fish out of water. I think part one set me up nicely for part two.

It's a strange device, this drip-feeding of a story like this, but one which is increasingly popular, and I do quite enjoy the serial style. I will look forward to finding out what happens next to Isla and how she will, I'm sure, come to love being on Auchenmor. From reading the blurb of Rachael Lucas's other books, it seems like Auchenmor features in them too and I am a bit of a sucker for Scottish islands.

This is an undemanding and very pleasant read.

Thank you for helping me experience my lifetime dream of living on a remote island in the...uk. Now that dream needs to come to fruition. OOO

Really enjoyed this as a simple light-hearted read. Probably not the sort of thing I would've picked up by myself. Going to lend it to my mum-in-law to read.

Spent the whole thing imagining the island to be Bute because of odd references and then at the end the author actually mentions the Isle of Bute as one of her favourite places.

Could see what was going to happen from the start but it was fun seeing where it was going and how it would get there.

A light and dreamy book about a girl who gets dumped and sets off to find herself (aka escape from the real world). The island sounds lovely (although too cold for my taste) and all the characters sound like people I'd love to be friends with. If only this place/people existed in real life - sigh, guess that's what books are for. . .

Let me lead right off by saying that I've never read a book like this before. By that, I don't mean "I've never read a book with this particular setting or plot before," but more generally, "I have never read a romance novel before," nor anything that might in a million years be termed chick-lit. Not once.

So, in that light, Sealed with a Kiss serves as my introduction not only to debuting novelist Rachael Lucas, but to an entire genre of fiction. And I now propose to draw sweeping conclusions about both, based solely on this one book. (No pressure, Ms. Lucas.)

The first thing that popped right off the page and into my face was the language. In a good way. I think I may have brought some negative bias to the table in that my expectations of the quality of writing in a "chick book" were fairly modest. I was pleasantly surprised, though: Lucas's prose is effortlessly smooth, humorous, peppered with cheerfully exotic (to my ear) terms such as "loo roll," "snog," and "loudhailer." She excels in description, constantly pulling the reader into her world with vivid simile and metaphor that managed to be surprising yet felt instantly familiar. The reader, much like the protagonist, finds him- or herself in a place that is new, yet at the same time warm and inviting.

Perhaps most surprising - and most impressive for a first novel - the dialogue in Sealed with a Kiss is excellent. Economical, streamlined, and always with the authentic ring of actual conversation. As this is a book whose plot necessarily hinges on verbal interactions between the characters, clunky dialogue would have been the kiss of death, but Lucas handles it deftly. In fact, I would say that Rachael Lucas shows writing chops here that would serve her well in just about any literary genre she chose. Though this is her first published novel, I would venture a guess that she's an experienced writer.

I can't remember if the blurb described this book as "breezy," but I certainly do. I normally seem to gravitate to novels with Big Conflict: novels where the protagonists are fighting for their lives, freedom, souls, or sanity; where they're trying to save the whole planet from destruction, keep an innocent man from being lynched, or cast the One Ring into the fires from whence it came. So it was a stark contrast, reading a book where the main questions were: Will Kate get the guy? If so, which guy? And will she learn a little about herself in the process? Also, what is that nasty bitch Fiona up to?

A story where the stakes are so comparatively small maintains interest based mostly on how deeply the reader buys into the characters. Luckily, there is where the author's strong powers of description and good ear for dialogue pay off, as the characters here seem nuanced and three-dimensional, familiar as old friends. It's another thing that pleasantly surprised me, as I sort of expected the characters in a romance novel to be cartoonish, one-note hunks or hags.

Which is not to say the people are all realistic. All the main male characters are uniformly described as gorgeous, to the point that Kate winks at the fourth wall by musing that the island seems to be some sort of absurd Hot Dude Refuge and Game Preserve (OK, my wording there). And the main love interest, Roderick, had me pinching the bridge of my nose with his over-the-topness. By the time he'd been put forth as...

1) strikingly handsome
2) a real Scottish laird
3) funny
4) but with a wounded heart, waiting for the right girl to come and heal his hidden pain

...I was near the breaking point, so when "Oh, by the way, he rescues adorable orphaned seals in his spare time" was added to the pile, I admit to snorting out loud incredulously. No dude is that perfect, otherwise what hope is there for the rest of us? But I have the feeling that my quibble here is with the conventions of the genre; one might as well look at Maxim magazine and complain that all the girls are too airbrushed and collagened. To buy a copy of Maxim is to subscribe to a certain brand of pleasant fantasy, and so perhaps is to read a romance novel.

At any rate! Three stars, and that doesn't really convey what an enjoyable read this was. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is an aficionado of this genre, and it's a fun read even if you aren't. Rachael Lucas's voice here is warm, humorous - and tender when the moment calls for it. I'd happily read her next novel.

PS - Oh, and final kudos to the adorable cover art. Cover images for e-books in particular can be of such varying quality, from eye-catching art to slapdash home Photoshop work. Yet much like the label on a wine bottle, the cover art of an e-book is the first and sometimes the only chance to set itself apart from all the rest, for better or worse.