#bookreview – A Prosecco Christmas by Sylvia Ashby @bysylvia_a @NeverlandBT #blogtour #giveaway
Hooray! I’m posting today as part of the blog tour for A Prosecco Christmas by Sylvia Ashby. I loved the previous book in the Pot Love series – The Sinking Chef – so was really excited to read this third instalment.
Thank you to Jenny from Neverland Blog Tours and the author for the place on the blog tour and the review copy. My review is below, along with a fabulous giveaway to win one of three ebooks.
Here’s what the book is all about:
Family is where life begins.
And what better time to spend with your family than Christmas week?Ashley and Giacomo go to Upper Swainswick, a postcard village ten minutes’ drive from Bath, to stay with Ashley’s mum and stepdad. It’s their last visit before the arrival of their first child.
But babies have a habit of being unpredictable.
So when Ashley goes into labour on Christmas Eve, three weeks ahead of schedule, it takes everyone by surprise.
She’s not ready! Her perfect Birth Plan is packed away in her hospital bag two hundred miles away, she has no going home outfit, and she has a live event planned for New Year’s Eve for her YouTube channel, The Sinking Chef. People have been signing up for it for weeks. She can’t possibly disappoint them on the last day of the year. What is she to do?The tinsel gets even more tangled when Giacomo’s parents decide to fly from Italy to meet their first grandchild. Hotels are fully booked, so everyone has to stay under the same roof.
Would eleven people in the house, not counting the baby, turn out to be simply too much for Ashley?
Buy Links:
Oh, I really do love these Pot Love books. I have still to read the first one (and I really must do so) but I’ve read the second and now the third and they’re just brilliant. Don’t worry if you haven’t read any of the previous ones as they can be read as standalone books and there are some very good recaps during the story which fill in the back story.
In A Prosecco Christmas, Ashley and Giacomo are staying at Ashley’s mother and stepfather’s for Christmas. Ashley is heavily pregnant but not due for three weeks……of course things don’t go to plan and she ends up giving birth on Christmas Eve. Cue chaos (nothing new there for Ashley). She and her mother have a difficult relationship at times and it makes for some funny sections when Ashley has to put up with her and her step-family. Then there’s Eatwell, Ashley’s rival YouTuber who keeps having a go at her for some reason.
I spent most of the time either giggling or drooling whilst reading this book. There’s just something about Sylvia Ashby’s writing style that appeals immensely to my sense of humour. I could throttle Ashley sometimes as I could just see where things were going – she’s a bit of a bury her head in the sand, scatty type of person. But I also love her as a character. She’s just really lovely and so likeable. Not to mention the delicious Giacomo – even Ashley knows how lucky she is to have him.
With a cast of wonderful characters (including the Italian side of the family), delicious food and recipes, and a newborn baby, I found A Prosecco Christmas to be a brilliant read. There’s all the usual madness that surrounds Christmas, even more so with Ashley’s mother, who is a bit of a control freak, and events turn to the almost farcical at times. New parenthood is thrown into the mix and is portrayed really well. I found myself nodding away to myself several times. These books are a perfect mix of serious issues, fun, food, love and life.
Sylvia Ashby – please say this isn’t the last we will see of Ashley and Giacomo. With how this one ended I can certainly see the way book 4 could go. I could honestly read about this couple and their families for many more books to come.
Sylvia Ashby is fond of the written word: books, blog posts, recipes, even an explanation to the HM Revenue & Customs as to why she thinks skirts should be exempt from VAT – she’s written it all!
She likes travelling and has lived all over Europe – London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Sofia, Bulgaria. Currently, she lives in Leuven, Belgium with her husband, daughter, son and a sparrow called Jack, who comes occasionally to peck the seeds she leaves for him on top of the garden shed.
