Thursday 5 January 2012

Review - Breakfast At Darcy's

What a delightfully charming and romantic story!
London beauty and fashion journalist Darcy McCall is flabbergasted to find out that she is the sole beneficiary of her Aunt Molly’s will as she regretfully hadn’t seen her Aunty for a number of years.  What she actually inherits is Tara Island, on the west coast of Ireland, which hasn’t been inhabited for years, but there are conditions!  She must stay there for at least twelve months, and she must build a community to live and to earn a living there.  
Darcy makes the choice to leave her life in London and all that being a beauty and fashion journalist entails, and hang up her Jimmy Choos to rough it on Tara Island and take on her Aunt’s challenge.  Will she rise to the challenge, or will she give up at the first sign of trouble?  Will the people that she has chosen to go with her, help her to build this new life and will it be a success or will she fail?
Breakfast At Darcy’s was a delightfully, gentle and romantic story, with some fabulous characters to meet along the way, and I really didn’t want it to end.  I started reading this on New Year’s Day and read, and read and read!    At page 354, I had to give up because I couldn’t see anymore and I’d probably been a bit antisocial (for a change), but I loved every second of it.   I then picked it up again yesterday to finish it as I was out all day on Monday, but was SO looking forward to finding out what was going to happen on this idyllic island. 
It was such an enjoyable book to read with colours so bright and so vivid, making the island very easy to imagine and the characters came to life easily through Ali’s descriptions and I loved each and every one of them in their own way (well, maybe except for one!).  I could have hopped on a boat and headed off to Tara Island myself, it was painted in such an appealing way that I just wanted to be there and experience the peace and tranquility that they were lucky enough to enjoy!   I wanted to walk on the glorious sandy beaches, have barbeques under a sky full of bright stars, and build new and genuine friendships with the fabulous people who lived there. 
It was a book which was full of fun, and romance with plenty of laughs along the way, and it left me feeling all warm and fuzzy when I’d finished it!   A charming and deliciously delightful book that I think everyone should experience!
Ali McNamara lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband and two children and Jake her golden lab.   When she isn’t writing, she enjoys reality TV, eating chocolate and loves the beach and the sea. She loves to have get glammed up and go out partying, which is a real change from sitting at a desk writing.  Her writing started, when she wrote for fun on Ronan Keating’s website and the stories were eventually sold for his fundraising charity.  She realised that not only did she enjoy writing, but that people thoroughly enjoyed reading her work and decided to write a novel.  Her first novel From Notting Hill with Love…actually was published in late 2010. 

1 comment:

Rea's Book Reviews said...

Great review Kim I also Loved this one xx