Two nights at Gwydir Castle

I’m aware that I’ve not been blogging as frequently as usual… apologies but I’ve been doing a lot of reading rather than writing!  It’s lovely to indulge in a reading frenzy now and again.  I’ve got lots of books to catch up on and review for you, so watch this space…

The other explanation for being out of action is my recent visit to North Wales’s Gwydir Castle: the setting for the rather wonderful Castles in the Air by Judy Corbett, which I reviewed a few months ago.

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Book Review: Castles In The Air by Judy Corbett

I’d never heard of this book before I picked it up a few months ago.  Nobody I know has read it, and I hadn’t seen any online reviews about it.  I just saw it in a Bargain Bin in a second-hand bookshop and was taken in by the blurb on the back cover.

Blurbs are funny things, aren’t they?  I love them: a browser like me relies heavily on them to persuade me to buy the book (and I am also swayed by a beautiful cover… I’m only human).  A bad or misleading blurb can be fatal for me, as was almost the case with One Day.  On the flip-side, I know people who refuse to ever read blurbs, preferring to be surprised by the content of a recommended book.

The blurb for Castles in the Air, a non-fiction read about a couple who buy a derelict Welsh castle and lovingly renovate it, made me stop for a moment and long to be a part of their adventure.  When I started reading the book itself, I wasn’t expecting an action-packed adventure; I anticipated a slow-paced, romantic (in the traditional sense) tale of a historical building, its inhabitants and the surrounding countryside.