Blog Tour: Happily Ever After by Jane Lovering

 

Everything Andi Glover knows she learned from books. After an unconventional upbringing, she isn't really equipped to live life independently in the real world but she definitely doesn't want to go back to living in a converted bus, or living with her sister who manages to have a normal life.

When she gets a job working in the library of a stately home cataloguing books, she knows exactly how life should go. She will meet the single and available heir, he will sweep her off her feet and fall desperately in love with her, they will marry, have beautiful children and live happily ever after. That's what happens in every gothic romance right? Except.....that's not how it unfolds

Andi has been asked to catalogue all the books in the library at Templewood Hall, currently haphazardly piled up everywhere. Really, what she is being asked to do by Lady Tanith Dawe is to secretly find the missing diaries of Sir Oswald, a famous author who Lady Tanith says she was the muse for, even though she later married his son. Accompanying Andi most of the time is a cat known only as The Master, and he needs to be treated accordingly. Also in the house is Hugo, who is the second son but who is now heir to all he surveys after his older brother, Jasper, forfeited his inheritance. Throw in a very grumpy housekeeper and a very rude gardener and the cast is complete.

There were a lot of things to like about this book. For example, I loved that each chapter had the name of a famous house from literature in it. For example, the first chapter is called Manderley and then we had Northanger Abbey and Bag End (from The Hobbit) as well as many others. I did like how Andi's story progressed and where she ended up, but I did think it took Andi a bit long to find the diaries and everything was all a bit drawn out and convoluted. 

This is my third Jane Lovering book. Last year I read and loved The Start of the Story by Jane Lovering (my review). If I was going to recommend anywhere to start with this author I would still start there, but this was a bit of fun and worth reading.

I am sharing this review with the New Release Challenge hosted by The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews, British Isles Friday hosted at Joy's Book Blog and the Bookish Books Challenge hosted at Bloggin Bout Books. Be sure to check out other stops on the tour shown below. Thanks to the publisher, Netgalley and Rachel's Random Resources for the review copy. 

Rating 3/5

About the book

Happily Ever After

Andi Glover loves nothing more than a good book.

Any book in fact because when you’re raised by unconventional parents who think school’s for squares, alongside a deeply conventional sister who escapes home as soon as she can, fiction is eminently preferable to reality.

The only problem is that fiction isn’t the best way to learn about the real world. When Andi starts her new live-in job at Templewood Hall for the eccentric Lady Dawe and her enigmatic son Hugo, it’s tempting to think she’s fallen into the pages of one of her favourite gothic novels.

But the plot twists at Templewood Hall are stranger than fiction and it’s not long before Andi questions if she’s living in a romance novel or a whodunnit. Bumps in the night, a missing heir, ghostly apparitions and secrets that have been kept for generations - the mysteries mount up. Then there's the inscrutable gardener who seems to appear when needed - is Andi right to hope for a happily-ever-after end to her story?

Purchase Link https://mybook.to/happilyever

About the Author 

Jane Lovering is a bestselling and multi-award winning romantic comedy writer. Most recently Jane won the RNA Contemporary Romantic Novel Award in 2023 with A Cottage Full of Secrets. She lives in Yorkshire and has a cat and a bonkers terrier, as well as five children who have now left home.



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