Monday, May 19, 2014

Thyme Out

Title: Thyme Out (or Second Thyme Around)
Author: Katie Fforde
Published: May 3rd 2001 by Arrow (first published 1999)
Format: Paperback; Pgs 384
Genre: Romance

I am not sure if this book got better as I went along or it just wore me out and I gave in.

Being a typical romance, the reader knows from page one how it is going to end up. Once I got past the main character’s name, and names have always been an issue for me, I slowly plodded to the end and through some very dry humor; I found that I ended up liking Perdita. She still came across as very young and naïve, but she was trying.

Perdita Dylan has carved out a very physically demanding job as a small specialty farmer that delivers high-end vegetables to local restaurants. On her usual rounds to a local hotel, she discovers that he ex-husband Lucas is now the head chef. Unaware of this turn of events, since the last time she saw him he was in finance or something like that, she enters and hopes to get out without being noticed.

Since that was too much to hope for, verbal battles ensue and when the owner of Grantly House approach her and Lucas to appear in a chef and gardener type of show, she does everything she can to get out of it, but her finances are in turmoil and this just might hold her over a bit.

Add to this her 87-year-old friend Kitty who lives on the other side of Perdita’s garden and is the woman that has cared for her and about her for the last 20 years. When Kitty suffers a stroke, Perdita cannot handle it all alone and the neighbors can only do so much. With a business in chaos and a house falling down around her, Perdita calls on Lucas and of course, this simple act, has Perdita seeing him in a new light.

As I said, I am not sure if the book got better as I went along or it just wore me down, but the more exhausted Perdita became, the funnier her comments were.

Not everyone’s life ends in a happily ever after, but that is the recipe for romances, so if you are not looking for a twist or anything too in depth, Thyme Out which is either a reissue of Second Thyme Around or the other way around, is a simple summer read that will appeal to many readers.

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