NEW RELEASE
The Honeymoon Hotel - Hester Browne (2014)
The Bonneville Hotel is all Rosie McDonald has ever known. She's worked there since she was sixteen and thrives on her role as events manager, arranging the perfect wedding for her clients down to the tiniest detail. And after all the work she's put in, Rosie finally hopes to land the coveted general manager job, she just needs a few more weddings to reach her target. Unfortunately, when Joe, the free-thinking son of the Bonneville's owners, turns up unexpectedly, he's forced upon Rosie to shadow her, to learn the ins and outs of the hotel. Joe, however, can't help but put his twopennies worth in and suddenly Rosie's meticulous, ordered system is coming under attack. In the Bonneville hotel, Hester Browne has created a great setting, a central focus for the novel and a place you can really imagine. The writing is assured, with plenty of great one-liners and one of my favourite lines ever in: 'I never realized how like The Hunger Games weddings are.' At times the narrative jumps quite quickly and some of the climaxes are a bit underwhelming, so too to some extent is the central romance. But it's a solid chick lit read that you can relax with. (JC)
Honeymoon Hotel, by Hester Browne, is about an event planner who finds herself at odds with her new helper. The summary says: "The Bonneville Hotel is the best-kept secret in London: its elegant rooms and discreet wood-panelled cocktail lounge were the home-away-from-home for royalty and movie stars alike during the golden age of glamour. Recent years haven't been kind, but thanks to events manager Rosie, it's reclaiming some of its old cachet as a wish list wedding venue. While Rosie's weddings are the ultimate in romance, Rosie herself isn't; her focus is fixed firmly on the details, not on the dramas. She lives with a professionally furious food critic and works tirelessly towards that coveted promotion. But when the hotel owner appoints his eccentric son Joe to help run Rosie's department, she's suddenly butting heads with the free spirit whose predilection for the unconventional threatens to unravel her picture-perfect plans for the most elaborate - not to mention high-profile - wedding the hotel has ever seen, a wedding that could make or break not only the hotel's reputation, but also Rosie's career." Honeymoon Hotel is out in September 2014.