Author: Beth Moran: 

ISBN: 978-1804833605

The formula is this: an early 30-something woman, down and out for one reason or another, moves to Sherwood Forest (always there), trying to pick up the pieces of her life. She is there to work for a quirky, lovable older woman who becomes a surrogate mother figure for her, but who later gets diagnosed with a terminal disease, which becomes a big part of the plot. While there, said protagonist also finds herself immersed in a group of multi generational women–a club, a church group, a community, or in the case of this book, a support group–where she slowly begins to thaw out her frozen heart and learn to care about other people again after having been badly hurt. Also, at the very outset, a gorgeous man appears. He’s just a teaser throughout most of the book, though constantly in the protagonist’s mind. As time goes on, though, she begins to open up to the possibility of him too… but, then, there’s a misunderstanding. (I HATE this part. Misunderstandings make me anxious in real life, so I do not enjoy the trope in fiction at all, either. I usually just have to grit my teeth and get through it.) In this case I saw it coming a mile away… fortunately when it happened, it was resolved relatively quickly.

The particulars of this story: Sophie was a florist who did wedding flowers as a hobby, and was planning the flowers for her sister’s wedding, when her sister and both parents were suddenly killed in a car crash. She has nothing, and then because she lost so much herself, she finds herself inadvertently in a business in which she helps bereaved families as they sort out the pieces of the live of a loved one. In this capacity, Hattie, an art therapist in Sherwood Forest, hires her to help her sort out her affairs while she’s still (ostensibly) young and healthy… only she has some strange caveats. Sophie is required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and forced to lie about the reason for her presence there, claiming she is an historical author hired to write the details of Hattie’s life. This becomes especially difficult when Sophie meets and falls instantly in love with Gideon, the young caretaker for Hattie’s grounds who also is (she thinks) Hattie’s cousin. She’s forced to lie to him about what she’s doing there from the word go… and you can see how that’s likely to go awry.

Still, though they follow a very clear formula, Beth Moran’s books are always feel-good and focused on the importance of love of all types, and relationships.