The Honeycote Collection by Veronica Henry - Escape to the Cotswolds with Veronica!

I have just binged on the three books in Veronica Henry's series, The Honeycote Collection, and I wish there were more to read! These were originally published as separate titles in the 2000s as Honeycote, Making Hay, and Just a Family Affair and, in 2017 to 2018, were repackaged as A Country Christmas, A Country Life and A Country Wedding, finally becoming The Honeycote Collection in 2020. They are all based on the ficticious, picturesque Cotswold village of Honeycote, and its brewery, Honeycote Ales, run by Mickey Liddiard and his family.

A Country Christmas sets the scene with the brewery in financial trouble and shows the ups and downs of the Liddiard family: Mickey, Lucy and their children, Patrick, Sophie and Georgina, and the people who get involved with them like Keith Sherwyn, a Solihull businessman, his wife, Sandra, and their daughter, Mandy, who have quite an impact on the future of the brewery and the family itself. It's all a bit like Dallas, in a way, with wheeling and dealing, and hot affairs! But it is so well written that you can't help getting really involved with the story, and being sorry when it's finished. However, it's not too Christmassy so you could read it at any time of the year.

A Country Life, although the Liddiards are there in the background, this book is about Suzanna and Barney Blake who are taken on to refurbish and run The Honeycote Arms, the brewery's flagship pub. They have been unsuccessfully trying for a baby and feel that this challenge will give them a new focus in life. Other new characters are Ginny, freshly divorced and making a new start with her twin teenage daughters, Kitty and Sasha, and Damien, also escaping to the country and trying to live down his dodgy past, but who also has eyes on taking over the pub.

Lastly, A Country Wedding, Patrick, Mickey and Lucy's son, and Mandy, Keith's daughter, are to be married, but her father is acting strangely, and Mayday, Patrick's platonic friend, finds that she would perhaps like him for herself. All in all, these three novels are a wonderfully engrossing read, so sit back and escape to the Cotswolds with Veronica Henry!

A Wedding at the Beach Hut by Veronica Henry - Feel-good, Warm, and Delightful

Things are looking up this week, but even if you can't get away to the seaside yet, A Wedding at the Beach Hut by Veronica Henry is the perfect book to enjoy on your own favourite sun lounger at home. If only it would stop raining!
Robyn and Jake are landscape gardeners;
business partners who fell in love, and their wedding party, a small affair with their favourite people, is to be held in the Shedquarters, the beach hut that belongs to Jake's family on Everdene Sands.
On her eighteenth birthday, Robyn's mother, Sylvia, gave her a special box from her birth mother, Emily. Robyn knew she'd been adopted, but couldn't bring herself to open it until now, when she is pregnant herself, and getting married in just one month's time. However, she worries about upsetting her parents if she gets in touch with Emily. They have been wonderful, bringing her up on the beautiful Hawksworthy Farm in Devon, giving her the life that she may never have had. But now the farm is losing money and Sheila and Mick must decide whether not to sell it.
Jake's parents, Rocky and Tina, have split up. Rocky, a builder, moved them all to Devon to have a simple family life, but it was too quiet for her, so she moved back to Enfield to run her hairdressing business, leaving him to earn a living and look after their two boys, Jake and Ethan. Now Jake's getting married and Ethan's off to uni, he's feeling lonely and wondering what his future will be. However, the Shedquarters has been his lifeline and the centre of family beach life for him and the boys and, with a lick of paint, will be the perfect wedding venue.
When she opens the box, Robyn discovers that Emily, has written her a letter about giving her up  thirty years ago. This breaks Robyn's heart, but she also worries about getting in touch with her as her family may not know about the existence of a baby at all. Meanwhile, Emily has never stopped thinking about the little baby girl she relinquished all those years ago.
This is a warm and delightful novel with real characters you care about, their stories expertly woven together, set in around the beautiful Devon coast, with that all important feel-good ending.
Piano playing does come into it and I challenge you to resist finding that piece by Ravel on YouTube!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

A Wedding at Christmas by Chrissie Manby - Can you wait until next Christmas to read it?

You may not want to wait until next December to read the final book* about the Benson family, A Wedding at Christmas by Chrissie Manby.  Having read all the others, I could not resist finding out all about Chelsea and Adam's wedding.
Chelsea and Adam's romance has featured in all four of the books, starting with A Proper Family Holiday when they meet on the plane to Lanzarote where she's going to join her family, and Adam's daughter, Lily, wants to sit in Chelsea's window seat.
Chelsea has two sisters who are at loggerheads because Ronnie is jealous of Annabel's luxurious upbringing because she was adopted at birth, and feels that she is going to take over Chelsea's wedding plans.
Their mother, Jacqui, tries to keep the peace whilst still trying to build her relationship with Annabel who she hasn't seen for forty-three years, and also get over her own insecurities at meeting, Sarah, the woman who brought Annabel up and whom she calls Mum.
Chelsea also has similar problems getting to know Frances, the mother of Adam's first wife, Claire, who died three years ago. Nothing she can say or do will please her.
The regular members of the Benson family are all here too: Jacqui and Ronnie's long-suffering husbands Dave and Mark, who get to know Frances's husband, Richard; Sophie and Izzy, newly found cousins when Ronnie and Annabel met; seven-year-old Jack and Lily, great rivals in Lanzarote, but now the best of friends, and Granddad Bill.
He's a great character, eighty-seven-years old, suffering from dementia and confined to a wheelchair, but this does not stop him singing songs punctuated with burps and worse, and supporting his beloved Coventry City. However, his dementia is getting more serious causing him to get confused as to whether he's in the present or in the Second World War when his brother, Eddie, was killed, and his panic attacks are getting more frequent and frightening. Jacqui and Dave fear that he may not make it to next September when the wedding is planned, and ask Chelsea and Adam to move it forwards to Christmas which they willingly do, having no idea just how complicated their wedding arrangements will be.
I really enjoyed this book because Chrissie Manby is excellent at exploring these relationships and making them so real that I feel I really know and love this family. I wish that one day she would write some more about them!

If you want to know more about the Bensons, here are some links to my reviews:

A Proper Family Holiday

A Proper Family Adventure

A Proper Family Christmas

* I've just discovered an e-novella about them too! Falling Leaves and Fireworks!

A Merry Mistletoe Wedding by Judy Astley - The Perfect Book to go with the Last of Your Christmas Chocolates!

Happy New Year! But, if you've still got lots of Christmas chocolates to eat up, here's the perfect book to go with them - A Merry Mistletoe Wedding by Judy Astley.
It's the end of August, and Thea has just spent her summer holidays in Cornwall with Sean and is loathe to go back for the new term at her primary school in London, so he asks her to come back to Cornwall and marry him at Christmas.
Meanwhile, her parents, ageing hippies, Anna and Mike, are thinking of downsizing from the family home and releasing some cash so they can enjoy their retirement, and sister, Emily, gives birth to Ned. Add Charlotte and Alex from It Must Have Been the Mistletoe, Judy Astley's book which tells how they all got snowed in last Christmas at Cove Manor, and you have a great cast of characters.
A Merry Mistletoe Wedding is a really engrossing novel, and kept me enthralled finding out where Anna and Mike would move to, whether Emily would ever go to Cornwall again after last year's fiasco in the snow, and whether Sean and Thea would actually manage to tie the knot on Christmas Day, despite the return of her ex, Rich.
I adored it and would love to read another story to find out what happens to these wonderful people next!