🔊 ”Listen”

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

A beaker of “bubbly, fizzy happiness”, this gentle, uplifting marvel is so sweet and so endearing you will yearn for a sequel. Luckily, for this reader, there is a prequel, and another book by this talented author just waiting to dive into.

Lucinda Green, a 40 year-old raven-haired beauty, is a chef and owner of her own catering company. With a past that has left her irreconcilably disenchanted with the notion of “true love”, Lucinda is a sharp, no-nonsense, ambitious, somewhat grumpy, quick-witted, impatient and scornful woman, who, perhaps most predominantly of all – maintains a vise-like grip on her steely independence.

It doesn’t take long for the reader to determine that Lucinda, as real a person as you will meet between the pages, is clearly vulnerable – hiding her fragility and past rejection behind a cool, capable and biting persona, one that only the very brave and very determined would attempt to breach.

“If you don’t give someone your whole heart, it’s pretty hard for them to break it.”

Alex Fraser is a forty-three year-old actor, who carries the unmistakable scent of citrus, pepper and something mysterious (perhaps mint?). An insecure, endearing, and effortlessly charming man, Alex carries a secret hurt that he does not discuss – a hurt which unfortunately periodically reveals itself in heart-racing anxiety-attacks that are becoming impossible to conceal.

When Lucinda and Alex stumble unwittingly into each other’s orbit, a series of events, as unpredictable as they are entertaining, offer proof that life, as hard as we may try to contain and restrain it, has its own way of showing us the truly exceptional.

For is it not abundantly clear – when faced with “sticky toffee pudding and custard waiting for you on the rose garden balcony” – which of us can (or even, should) try to resist?

My stop today on the @rararesources #blogtour for #TheOnlyException

A great big thank you to the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.