Guest Review: Snowdrops on Rosemary Lane by Ellen Berry

Last winter she had a plan.

Lucy fell in love with tumbledown Rosemary Cottage as a child. So thirty years on, when she loses her city job and discovers the cottage is for sale, it feels like fate. She’ll raise her children in Burley Bridge and transform the cottage into a B&B with her husband.

But a year can change everything . . .

Now Lucy is juggling two children and a B&B, but on her own. Christmas looks set to be their last on Rosemary Lane – until she meets James, a face from her past and someone who might offer a different kind of future . . .

Should Lucy leave the cottage behind? Or could this winter on Rosemary Lane be the start of something new?

 Review: I have been waiting for this book to be published with great anticipation. I have read and very much enjoyed Ellen Berry’s other books set in Rosemary Lane and couldn’t wait to see who was going to star in this next addition to the series. Once again, when I sat down to read, I found myself quickly drawn into the Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge, pleased to meet up with a few familiar faces.

This story revolves around Lucy Scott and her family. Having loved visiting Burley Bridge as a child during her school holidays, Lucy is delighted to find that Rosemary Cottage, a house that she had always admired on her visits, is for sale. Glad to be able to escape the hustle and bustle of Manchester, she moves in with husband Ivan and their children Sam and Marnie. Having made some necessary improvements to the property, the couple set up Lucy’s dream B&B business and settle into country life. When tragedy strikes and Lucy finds herself bringing up the children and running the business on her own, she is thankful for all the friends who rally round to help her, especially James, who she first met on those childhood visits to the village. However, even with such a wonderful support network, Lucy ultimately begins to wonder whether she should leave her beloved cottage behind and return to her old life.

I really loved this book and whizzed through it in no time. It is quite an emotional read, extremely sad in places, but with some humour as well. The storyline spans a few years from when Lucy moved to Burley Bridge to the time that she began to consider her future there, so the book is not as Christmassy as the lovely wintry cover suggests. The author skilfully conveys Lucy’s grief and coming to terms with the tragic situation in which she finds herself; the reader can almost feel the pain come out of the book’s pages. I greatly admired the way in which Lucy steadfastly resisted her mother’s forceful attempts to rush her away from the village which she regarded as being too far from civilisation. I’m not sure I could have been quite so patient with her mother and her thoughtless comments. Although the main focus of the story is on Lucy, there is an interesting subplot concerning James and his ageing father, the author again dealing sensitively with a difficult subject. I can definitely recommend this book and the Rosemary Lane series as a whole to other readers. I’m hoping that there may be other stories about the Yorkshire village in the pipeline.

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