I'm delighted to be one of the stops on the blog tour for If You Love Me, I'm Yours by Lizzie Chantree and sharing my review today. First of all though let's take a look at the description for the book...
Genre:
Romance/Humour
Release
Date: 9th July 2018
Publisher:
Crooked Cat Books.
‘If you love me, I’m yours…’
Maud didn’t mind being boring, not really. She had a sensible job,
clothes, and love life… if you counted an overbearing ex who had thanked her,
rolled over and was snoring before she even realised he’d begun! She could
tolerate not fulfilling her dreams, if her parents would pay her one compliment
about the only thing she was passionate about in life: her art.
Dot should have fit in with her flamboyant and slightly eccentric family
of talented artists, but somehow, she was an anomaly who couldn’t paint. She
tried hard to be part of their world by becoming an art agent extraordinaire,
but she dreamed of finding her own voice.
Dot’s brother Nate, a smoulderingly sexy and famous artist, was adored
by everyone. His creative talent left them in awe of his ability to capture
such passion on canvas. Women worshipped him, and even Dot’s friend Maud
flushed and bumped into things when he walked into a room, but a tragic event
in his past had left him emotionally and physically scarred, and reluctant to
face the world again.
Someone was leaving exquisite little paintings on park benches, with a
tag saying, ‘If you love me, I’m yours’. The art was so fresh and
cutting-edge, that it generated a media frenzy and a scramble to discover where
the mystery artist could be hiding. The revelation of who the prodigious artist
was interlinked Maud, Dot and Nate’s lives forever, but their worlds came
crashing down.
Were bonds of friendship, love and loyalty strong enough to withstand
fame, success and scandal?
BUY LINKS
Universal link:
Amazon.co.uk:
Amazon.com:
It was so much fun getting to know Maud, Dot and Nate along with seeing the journey that they all went on. They were such a great bunch of characters with lively and quirky personalities but with hidden depths too.
There was a lovely light hearted feel to the entire story that made it such a pleasure to read. I loved the creative aspect to the story with it being focused on art along with the characters finding themselves and being able to be confident in their abilities. Maud is a character I loved straight away especially as she has a difficult relationship with her parents although mainly her mum! I was eager for her to trust herself and be able to let the comments not bother her anymore which I know is easier said than done!
There is romance within the story but it is balanced out perfectly with themes of friendship and finding yourself. With humour and witty writing I was smiling away to myself on more than one occasion. There was emotion there too as each character processes what has happened in the past and then looks to the future.
If You Love Me, I'm Yours is playful, fun and very entertaining!
Four stars from me!
With thanks to Brook Cottage Books for my copy.
Chapter One
Maud closed her eyes
and prepared to jump off the emotional cliff she was teetering on the edge of.
She shuffled forward until she felt sick with nerves, took a deep calming
breath and waited.
‘Oh, Maud...’ her
mother sighed. ‘Not again.’
Maud cringed at the
familiarity of those words, and in her mind, she stepped off into the void and
plunged into the icy darkness without a whimper. In reality, she was still in
her lounge, but being around her mother made her feel like an abject failure and
the words she uttered sliced through Maud and filled her with doom. Her mum
pushed her to the edge of reason on a regular basis. She wished that for once
her mother could try harder to be nice. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult to
be grateful for the anniversary gift she had been given and to offer a smile,
even a fake one, for the sake of her child? It was the same every year and Maud
was finally ready to surrender and stop trying so hard to make them understand
her and compliment one of her paintings. It was never going to happen, she
realised with a heavy heart.
Maud didn’t mind
being boring, not really. She had a sensible job, sensible clothes, a sensible
love life... if you counted two overbearing exes and a one night stand who had
thanked her, rolled over and was snoring before she even realised he had
started! She was ok with not fulfilling her dreams or being outrageous and
carefree, she just wanted her parents to pay her a compliment, just once, after
years of disapproval and disappointment.
Maud knew that as far
as her mum was concerned, she was the most amazing parent who encouraged her
daughter to have a responsible career until she settled down and found a
‘suitable’ husband. Granted, Maud was a very good, well-liked and adept
teacher’s assistant in the local primary school, but every time she pushed
against the boundaries set by her parents for their perfect daughter... ‘Oh,
Maud!’
It was ridiculous,
she was twenty-four, thought Maud. She wished she had a big glass of wine to
slug back, but her mother would disapprove of that too, suggest in horror that
she was a ‘wino,’ and hand her the number for AA, which she would have readily
available in the little brown Filofax she carried everywhere in her patent
handbag. The woman was a menace.
Award-winning inventor and author, Lizzie Chantree, started her own
business at the age of 18 and became one of Fair Play London and The Patent
Office’s British Female Inventors of the Year in 2000. She discovered her love
of writing fiction when her children were little and now runs networking hours
on social media, where creative businesses, writers, photographers and
designers can offer advice and support to each other. She lives with her family
on the coast in Essex.
Google+:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY
A signed copy of this book and a Swarovski crystal handbag charm.
(OPEN INTERNATIONALLY)
Thank you for being part of my book tour and for the wonderful review!
ReplyDelete