The Vets at Hope Green by Sheila Norton – Extract and Review
Ebury Press, June 2017
A huge, lovely welcome today to Sheila Norton, whose book, The Vets at Hope Green was released in paperback on 1st June 2017 by Ebury Press.
Sam has always dreamed of working with animals…
But her receptionist job in a London vets is not hitting the spot.
Unsure whether a busy city life is for her, she flees to her Nana Peggy’s idyllic country village.
But despite the rolling hills and its charming feel, life in Hope Green is far from peaceful.
On first meeting Joe, the abrupt and bad-tempered local vet, Sam knows she must get him on side, but that is easier said than done…
With her dream close enough to touch, will she get there, or will events conspire against her…?
I have reviewed the book below but first, thanks to Sheila and Ebury, I have an extract from The Vets at Hope Green for you. Enjoy.
It was a beautiful, warm day at the end of May and the countryside on either side of the road was full of the promise of summer ahead.
I wound down the driver’s window of my little car and turned up the radio so that I could hear the music above the noise of the breeze as I whizzed along in the fast lane of the motorway.
Mile by mile, I felt myself relaxing. I felt my worries and uncertainties begin to melt away and my heart lifted with the anticipation of my destination.
Hope Green. The very name made me feel more optimistic. I sang along to the radio, remembering happy family holidays on the Dorset coast when I was a child. Hope Green had hardly changed since those days, its age-old charm untouched by the increased pace of life elsewhere. It was somewhere I could unwind and be at peace, take stock of things and perhaps really find myself at last.
As I steadily increased my distance from my home on the outskirts of London, I could almost feel my old life slipping off my shoulders like a heavy coat that had been weighing me down – the crowded streets, the rush-hour crush on the Tube, the traffic fumes, the stress on people’s faces – I was leaving all this behind me, leaving it for a place where life still depended on the seasons, where people still had time to chat on street corners, where people picked blackberries and elderberries from the hedgerows instead of buying them in tiny plastic packets from the supermarket at ridiculous expense.
by 
Blog Tour: Learning To Fly by Jane Lambert – Extract
I am pleased to be welcoming Jane Lambert to the blog today and her tour for her novel, Learning to Fly.
Forty-year-old air stewardess Emily Forsyth has everything a woman could wish for: a glamorous, jet-set lifestyle, a designer wardrobe and a dishy pilot of a husband-in-waiting to match. But when he leaves her to ‘find himself’ (forgetting to mention the bit about ‘… a younger girlfriend’), Emily’s perfect world comes crashing down. Catapulted into a mid-life crisis, she is forced to take stock and make some major changes. She ditches her job and enrols on a drama course in pursuit of her childhood dream, positive that, in no time at all, she’ll be posing in Prada on the red carpet and her ex will rue the day he dumped her. Wrong! Her chosen path proves to be an obstacle course littered with odd jobs and humiliating auditions; from performing Macbeth single-handedly at Scone Palace to chauffeuring the world’s top golfers at St Andrews – and getting hopelessly lost.
If she is to survive, she must learn to be happy with less, and develop a selective memory to cope with more than her fair share of humiliating auditions. She tells herself her big break is just around the corner. But is it too late to be chasing dreams?
Jane has very kindly shared an extract from the novel. Enjoy.
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It is never too late to be what you might have been ̴ George Eliot
Reasons for and against giving up the glitzy, glamorous world of flying:
Pros:
- No more cleaning up other people’s sick.
- No more 2 a.m. wake-up calls, jet lag, swollen feet/ stomach or shrivelled-up skin.
- No more tedious questions like, ‘What’s that lake/ mountain down there?’ and ‘Does the mile high club really exist?’
- No more serving kippers and poached eggs at 4 a.m. to passengers with dog-breath and smelly socks.
- No more risk of dying from deep vein thrombosis, malaria or yellow fever.
- No more battles with passengers who insist that their flat-pack gazebo will fit into the overhead locker.
- No more wearing a permanent smile and a name badge.
- No danger of bumping into ex-boyfriend and his latest ‘I’m-Debbie-come-fly-me’.
Cons:
- No more fake Prada, Louis Vuitton or Gucci.
- No more lazing by the pool in winter.
- No more ten-hour retail therapy sessions in shopping malls the size of a small island — and getting paid for it.
- No more posh hotel freebies (toiletries, slippers, fluffy bathrobes etc.).
- Holidays (if any) now to be taken in Costa del Cheapo, as opposed to Barbados or Bora Bora.
- No more horse riding around the pyramids, imagining I’m a desert queen.
- No more ice skating in Central Park, imagining I’m Ali MacGraw in Love Story.
- Having to swap my riverside apartment for a shoebox, and my Mazda convertible for a pushbike.
‘Cabin crew, ten minutes to landing. Ten minutes, please,’ comes the captain’s olive-oil-smooth voice over the intercom. This is it. No going back. I’m past the point of no return.
The galley curtain swishes open — it’s showtime!
I switch on my full-beam smile and enter upstage left, pushing my trolley for the very last time …
‘Anyheadsetsanyrubbishlandingcard? Anyheadsetsanyrubbishlandingcard? …’
Have I taken leave of my senses? The notion of an actress living in a garret, sacrificing everything for the sake of her art, seemed so romantic when I gaily handed in my notice three months ago, but now I’m not so sure …
Be positive! Just think, a couple of years from now, you could be sipping coffee with Phil and Holly on the This Morning sofa …
Yes, Phil, the rumours are true … I have been asked to appear on Strictly Come Dancing. God only knows how I’ll fit it around my filming commitments though.
Who are you kidding? A couple of years from now, the only place you’ll be appearing is the job centre, playing Woman On Income Support.
This follow-your-dreams stuff is all very well when you’re in your twenties, or thirties even, but I’m a forty-year-old woman with no rich husband (or any husband for that matter) to bail me out if it all goes pear-shaped. Just as everyone around me is having a loft extension or a late baby, I’m downsizing my whole lifestyle to enter a profession that boasts a ninety-two percent unemployment rate.
Why in God’s name, in this wobbly economic climate, am I putting myself through all this angst and upheaval, when I could be pushing my trolley until I’m sixty, then retire comfortably on an ample pension and one free flight a year?
Something happened, out of the blue, that catapulted me from my ordered, happy-go-lucky existence and forced me down a different road …
‘It’s not your fault. It’s me. I’m confused,’ Nigel had said.
by Blog Tour: No Turning Back by Tracy Buchanan – Extract and Review
I’m very happy to be welcoming Tracy Buchanan back to Novel Kicks and her blog tour for her new novel which is called No Turning Back (published by Avon on 28th July 2016.)
When radio presenter Anna Graves and her baby are attacked on the beach by a crazed teenager, Anna reacts instinctively to protect her daughter.
But her life falls apart when the schoolboy dies from his injuries. The police believe Anna’s story, until the autopsy results reveal something more sinister.
A frenzied media attack sends Anna into a spiral of self-doubt. Her precarious mental state is further threatened when she receives a chilling message from someone claiming to be the ‘Ophelia Killer’, responsible for a series of murders twenty years ago.
Is Anna as innocent as she claims? And is murder forgivable, if committed to save your child’s life…?
I have reviewed it below but thanks to Tracy and Avon, here is an extract from chapter seven of the book. Enjoy. (Warning, small amount of bad language.)
The Third One
‘My friends call me Coolio,’ the boy says.
I laugh.
‘Not for the reasons you think though,’ he adds. ‘It’s ’cos I once got my fingers stuck in a freezer door.’
I laugh again. This one’s funny.
‘I like it here,’ the boy says. We’re sitting in his garden, looking out towards the sea through the broken panels of his fence. It’s boiling hot and we’re both trying to huddle under a small tree, the one piece of shade out here. He’s new here, only been living in The Docks for three weeks.
I can’t help but look towards his pond. It shimmers under the bright exhausting sun and I have a flashback to the week before and the pale body that had lain prone in filthy water.
Guilt swirls with excitement. You said that will change, the guilt will eventually fade. I think you’re right, I’m starting to feel braver, fingers tingling with excitement.
by Book Club
