As usual, Katie Fforde provides an enjoyable romantic adventure with characters that leave you wishing you could keep hanging out with them even after the last page has been turned. This is an older novel (2005), Fforde's second. Thea Orville has left her career as a globetrotting photojournalist after being betrayed personally and professionally by the man in her life. With the help of a convenient inheritance, she has left London, invested in a large house in Cheltenham, and started taking in student lodgers, providing housing and an occasional meal for a group of messy, irresponsible university students. When friend Molly invites her on an unexpected trip to France she decides to accept and get away from it all. During the trip she meets Rory, a breathtakingly attractive Irish artist who has been hired to lecture to the group on Cezanne, and after arriving home to chaos and destruction in her house she decides to take Rory up on his invitation to visit him in Ireland, leaving Cheltenham behind and the mess behind.
Her unplanned visit to the Emerald Isle leaves Thea not with a new romance, as you might have presumed, but a new career as an art gallery owner, plus an Irish wolfhound and several puppies. With the help of Molly and Molly's handsome cousin Ben, Thea decides to find a property and exhibits Rory's beautiful landscapes. Neither the course of true love nor the launching of a new enterprise ever run smoothly and Ffforde treats her readers to nonstop action, including potentially romantic remodeling accidents, a possible kidnapping, a vicious ex-spouse, lots of puppy antics, and some very bad weather. This is fun!
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