ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Island in the Sun by Katie Fforde
Island in the Sun by Katie Fforde is published by Century and available now in hardcover, eBook and audiobook. My thanks to EDPR for the proof copy for review.
Dominica. A beautiful remote island where the sun shines and the living is easy.
And where Cass goes to photograph a rare stone carving as a favour to her father.
With her is Ranulph, a deeply attractive, much-travelled journalist, who offers to help Cass with her quest.
But Dominica has just been hit be a severe hurricane, and Cass and Ranulph are spending all of their time helping the local community.
Cass knows she must not fall in love with him… He is just looking out for her. He’s being kind.
There is no way he could be even the slightest bit interested in her. Could he?
Island in the Sun is a sweet and generally rather gentle story of Cass, a young woman charged by her father with travelling to Dominica to try and locate and photograph a petroglyph using a very old and hard to read map. In some ways it seems like rather an odd assignment for Cass but she has her father’s friend, Ranulph, accompanying her and taking care of her. She finds herself very attracted to Ranulph but isn’t sure if he feels the same.
It’s clear that Katie Fforde loves the island of Dominica and she describes the hurricane-hit island very well. I must admit that I would have preferred more of the remote Scottish island where Cass’s father lives but that’s just because I have a thing about remote Scottish islands. Cass has a bit of a time of it on Dominica as a horrid man called Austin is also looking for the petroglyph and is determined to make her life difficult.
I found Island in the Sun to be an easy and unchallenging read and I enjoyed following Cass’s journeys to Scotland and Dominica. I feel it lacked the charm of some of Fforde’s other books, for instance I absolutely adored her last book, One Enchanted Evening, but I still felt like I wanted to see what happened, whether Cass would find the petroglyph, whether her feelings for Ranulph would be reciprocated and if she would get her life together, stop drifting, and stand up for herself against some of her rather overbearing family members and do what she wanted to do. As I say, sweet and gentle, with some rugged and enticing landscapes, a dastardly villain, romance, and an arty feel to the storyline.
Katie Fforde lives in the beautiful Cotswold countryside with her family, and is a true country girl at heart. Each of her books explores a different profession or background and her research has helped her bring these to life. She’s been a porter in an auction house, tried her hand at pottery, refurbished furniture, delved behind the scenes of a dating website, and she’s even been on a Ray Mears survival course. She loves being a writer; to her there isn’t a more satisfying and pleasing thing to do. She particularly enjoys writing love stories. She believes falling in love is the best thing in the world, and she wants all her characters to experience it, and her readers to share their stories.
To find out more about Katie Fforde step into her world at www.katiefforde.com, visit her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @KatieFforde.
