LIZ FIELDING

READING…

Isn’t it just wonderful when you find a new author? A couple of weeks ago my dd was telling me about a first book she’d just read called GARDEN SPELLS by Sarah Addison Allen and was desperate because she couldn’t find the author’s second book, SUGAR QUEEN in her local bookshop.

Being a totally fabulous mother , I found it on Amazon and gave her a copy when she came to see us over the May Bank Holiday. In return she gave me her copy of GARDEN SPELLS. And then, because I was desperate for the second book, too, Michelle Styles generously sent me her copy of SUGAR QUEEN.

These books are magic. Literally. As well as being delightful romances, things happen that don’t happen in the ordinary world. According to Sarah, when I checked her website this morning, when she wrote GARDEN SPELLS she had intended to write a book that was about the reunion of two sisters, but then the apple tree started to throw apples and – like her heroine, Claire -- her life has never been the same again.


In SUGAR QUEEN there’s a girl living in Josey’s closet – and blackmailing her over her secret stash of sweets and paperback romances -- a crazy maid, the mother from hell and the mailman. And then there’s Chloe, whose one true love has cheated on her and who is plagued by books. Titles such as Old Love, New Direction; A Girl’s Guide to Keep Her Guy and Madame Bovary (an awful warning!) will turn up and refuse to stay in the trash.

This morning, having read the second book in a can’t-put-it-down rush, I went to Sarah’s website to see what else she’d written.

Sadly I’m going to have to wait until 2010 for her next book, the one in which the wallpaper changes pattern by itself. Such imagination!

Fortunately, there’s a new Susan Elizabeth Phillips to help plug the gap – although if anyone can suggest anything else that has the SAA touch, or any great books you've read lately, word of mouth is the best way to, um, spread the word!

You're welcome to start here.