A Taste of Home: 'A story so full of sunshine you almost feel the rays'  Woman's Weekly

Three and a half stars. When Fliss Brown's mother dies at their home in Italy she discovers that they were not alone in the world, she has family living in England that she has never met. Her adopted Italian family persuade her to go to meet her grandparents and reluctantly Fliss agrees, intrigued by her mother's note that she would fit right in there. When Fliss arrives in the small town of Wynbridge in the Fens, she discovers her only remaining family is a grumpy grandfather who has just had a hip replacement and is suffering from an infection. But strangely, he owns a fruit farm and Fliss has spent much of her life working on fruit farms in Italy following her peripatetic mother. Never one to sit on her laurels, while her grandfather is recuperating she thinks of ways to restore the farm and bring it back to profitability. Soon Fliss is interacting with the local community, including her grandfather's nursing assistant Eliot, his sister Bec and mother Louise, there is also a mysterious stranger who keeps popping up. This is, apparently, the eighth book in the Wynbridge series. However, it can definitely be read as a stand-alone. I liked it but I didn't love it and while I might read another one in the series I probably would only do so if it was on offer. There were too many characters/events where their sole purpose appeared to be to further the plot, maybe if I had read the other books these characters would have come to life more. Also, the 'villain' in this case was signalled so strongly that Fliss just looked a bit dense for not suspecting them previously. Kudos that she didn't believe them but overall it felt a bit clichéd. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

A nice easy read