Just to be a complete literary snob for a second, The Secret of Happy Ever After is not the type of book I normally buy. I’m more than happy to read “chick-lit” (although I do hate that title) if someone’s recommended a particular book and lent it to me, but I don’t normally seek it out.
So why did I buy this one? Firstly, the fairy tale sound of the title drew me in enough to pull the book off the shelf. Then the picture of the Dalmatian on the front cover (I can’t resist a story about animals) persuaded me to read the blurb. Finally, once I’d discovered that the story was set in a bookshop, I was sold!
The best time to start planning a holiday and dreaming of far-away places is always during the first few months of the year: Christmas is all but forgotten; the weather’s mostly miserable; and summer seems a distant dream. So reading about a hot and sunny location like Italy seemed the perfect pick-me-up. Although rain appears to be far more frequent in Italy than I had previously imagined, as this story approaches its conclusion and the summer heat descends I found myself basking in the imaginary sunlight streaming from my Kindle screen. The more the characters gasped in the humidity, the better I felt.
TheBrontëSister 