Conditional Love by Cathy Bramley

So hi. Sorry for such a huge period of time where i was absent. There are several reasons as to why that is, personal as well as other big points. Anyway, i'm back and hopefully that means that i will be back for a while, before i may be noticeably absent once again.

Today i have a nice book to come back to this blog. It is called 'Conditional Love' and written by an author from Nottinghamshire called Cathy Bramley.

As you can see the awful picture that i took of this book doesn't really show the homely beauty of the book cover in person. The illustration really identifies what the story is all about - a woman with the aim of getting her dream home. It really shows this with the fact that there is a light on downstairs in the house, a warm hearth.

So because of the fact that somehow i have "connections" with this author, she was very kind in sending various amount of goodies back last year. This included this book, as a signed copy, as well as other books i sent to her to sign and some amazing-looking biscuits (which i may have had a slight nibble on! they look far too good to actually eat completely. However, it does break my heart when it no longer looks like the beautiful biscuits that i did begin with!)

Here you are. I know that you are probably dying to know what the biscuits looked like before i malformed them with my teeth!

Anyway, i think that it is time for me to actually have a go at reviewing the book, rather than continuing to give praise to anything other than the actual story. So here i go!

There is something about Cathy Bramley's books, i have noticed as time has gone by that i have never really had a favourite, but rather her story-telling seems to get better and better. This is defintiely the case with 'Conditional Love'.

I loved the characters, the world that they were in, but also i was very able to sympathise for the main character with ease. This can be seen for me to be a difficult thing in the past with other books. Somehow, when it comes to authors writing the protagonist in a book, they either make them too headstrong or wimpy - which can be extremely annoying. Luckily i found that Sophie (the main character) was very balanced and very interesting as a person.

The context of building a dream house for Sophie was a creative idea as well. At first, i was a little bit hesistant, but the language and twists and turns in the plotline, made it engaging, rather than fairly dull paragraphs full of words.

Anyway, i will be looking forward to reading her new serial book, 'The Plumberry School of Comfort Food'. But it clearly shows that from her better story-telling each book that goes along, Cathy Bramley is definitely going to be a author to watch.

*****

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