Country Plot

May 21, 2012
Harrod-Eagles’s love of the English countryside shines through in this light contemporary’s details of rural life, but the story doesn’t hang together. Jenna Freemont survives “Lousy Monday” when she loses her job at a London magazine and returns home to find her lover with another woman. She regroups and winds up as assistant to Kitty, a distant cousin in Holtby. A widow, Kitty can’t afford to keep her late husband’s family estate, so she and Jenna must catalogue and sell its contents. Kitty’s godson, Alexander, and his fiancée, Caroline, take an instant dislike to Jenna, believing she is there to take advantage of Kitty. When Jenna plots a way for Kitty to afford to keep the house, she meets resistance on several fronts and even suffers an attempt on her life. Incorporating pop culture references and a clutter of irrelevant details, Harrod-Eagles (Game Over) also stretches the reader’s sense of a believable budding romance between Jenna and Alexander.

June 1, 2012
Mondays are difficult for everyone, but pity poor Jenna, who loses her job, her boyfriend, and her home on what she dubs Lousy Monday. In shock, she turns to her sympathetic brother and sister-in-law, who decide she needs a total life revamp. Their suggestion: a visit to distant relative Kitty Everest, who needs a live-in assistant to catalog the contents of her longtime family home, Holtby House. Fearing she'll be stuck waiting on a senile old lady in the back-of-beyond, Jenna is pleasantly surprised to find that Kitty is smart, energetic, and attractive, and that Holtby is a picturesque English village. The only thorns in Jenna's side are Kitty's stuffed-shirt godson, Alexander, and his snooty but beautiful fiancee, Caroline. When Jenna learns that Kitty may be forced to sell Holtby House, she forgets her troubles and throws herself into helping Kitty keep her beloved home. In the process, she sheds her old life, finds love, and heads toward happily ever after. Charming, gently humorous, and engaging, the latest from versatile crime and romance novelist Harrod-Eagles is pure pleasure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)