The Postcard

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This is heart warming, slightly emotional, full of love and family ties, and really is a fabulous book that I adored reading. Easily one of my favourite Fern Britton books to date. The Big Allotment Challenge was a wonderful show to work on. I really loved learning from Jim Buttress. He is not only a gardener through and through but he is a great storyteller and hugely funny. I rather fell in love with him! Also Jonathan Moseley is THE man when it comes to flowers and creating incredibly beautiful arrangements. He’s a real gardener too and knows the names of everything. He’s also a great giggler! The pace and involvement is much better towards the end of the story. I have to say, this is not a book I’ll be wanting to read again soon, but it may well appeal to you more than it did to me. It could have been just me in the wrong frame of mind for it or just not my cup of tea in the first parts- but I did finish it, so it isn’t that bad! I’ve read others by this author in the past and thoroughly enjoyed them so it won’t put me off reading more from her in future. The author describes these characters well and it is difficult not to like them. There is a calm about this book which is welcoming and draws you in. Cornwall is as magical as we all know it and I really enjoyed this book.

Everyone has secrets. Secrets can become a burden over time. They need to be shared or they will break the person carrying them, with their weight.Set in the beautiful Cornish village of Penduggan, the area and community are brought to life in this novel - warts and all! My main problem with this story was that I really didn’t like the main character for most of the story - she’s such a negative person! However, if you persevere like I did, you’ll discover just why she behaves as she does and my feelings towards her did change towards the end of the story. It is a story of estranged familial relations, facing up to past events and uncovering secrets. Coming Home is based in Cornwall, England - a beautiful seaside area with loads of fisherman around. The author describes the place so well, that it made me want to go there, just to see it and be close to the characters. It reminds me of South Shields very much as well. Thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Penny even more, having already met her in A Seaside Affair, although this is a completely new story and could easily be read as a standalone. Penny is struggling a bit to juggle work and being a mother, and its starting to get to her a bit. She really isn't herself and the last thing she needs is her estranged sister trying to get in touch with her. Adella and William are left in charge of raising Ella and Henry. William is distraught that his daughter could do that to them. Let alone her children. Erases every memory of Sennen from the house. All her belongings and pictures of her are burnt and he doesn’t want to hear her name mentioned again.

Ella is kindhearted and caring. She immediately belongs in Pendruggan. The same goes for Kit and Adam, who are both wonderful. The three of them are great additions to this fantastic fictional village and they constantly put a smile on my face. I couldn't wait to find out more about them. I love it when there's so much kindness in a book. Fern Britton is very good at describing the personalities of her characters and I like that she makes it possible for her readers to get to know them through and through. I have read books by Fern before and enjoyed them so I was delighted to be asked to read The Postcard for the blog tour. For anyone who may not know (I have a lot of followers from overseas) Fern is a well known TV personality in the UK and this always comes through in my mind when I read her books. She has a calm, gentle personality and it’s almost as though her voice is in my head narrating the story. I would love to get to know some of the other characters in more depth, or get to discover what eventually happened to some of the other threads in this book - such as the storylines about Ella and Henry, Adam and Kit etc. I love Fern Brittan’s novels. I’ve read a couple of others of hers and I love how fresh they are. Also they’re set in the lovely county of Cornwall (where I live). I love the smattering of local accents that isn’t over the top. Her characters are brilliant too. Only one person I didn’t like (but I loved to hate her!)Fern Britton makes the rest of us seem woefully inadequate. She’s one of the UK’s best-loved broadcasters, has completed a host of mega bike rides across Egypt, India and Cuba (raising thousands of pounds for charity in the process) and recently took part in a series of short films to highlight maternal mental illness in the UK. Ella is a loving, forgiving woman, whilst her brother Henry is bitter and angry. Their mother Sennen left them when they were just babies and Ella has no memory of her at all. Sennen was young, just seventeen, when she ran away, and already the mother of two children.