Portobello Book Blog

Happy New Year to you all! Hope everyone had a great time over the holidays and got lots of lovely new books. My first review of 2016 is A Parcel for Anna Browne which my husband bought me for Christmas and what a fabulous book to start off this year’s reading. Anna is a receptionist in a tabloid newspaper’s London office. It’s not a demanding job or her dream job but she enjoys it, is very good at it and is liked and respected by her colleagues. She lives a quiet life having fled her native Cornwall to escape her dreadful mother. But life starts changing for Anna when she starts to receive parcels at work. There is no hint as to the sender but each gift is just perfect for Anna – a beautiful scarf, a vintage brooch, an old record. Her colleagues are intrigued as is Anna – who is the sender and how do they know Anna so well?

Well I was very intrigued as well of course. I had a few suspicions as to who the sender might be as I read the book and one by one it became clear that all my ideas were wrong! This is a beautifully written book and I just loved getting to know Anna and her hopes and quiet dreams. As each parcel arrives we get to find out more about how each gift affects Anna and starts to give her more confidence. We also get acquainted with her friends, neighbours and work colleagues and see how they all start to notice the change the gifts bring about. Anna is such a lovely character, the kind of person you feel you would love to have as a friend in real life. She is caring and unassuming yet seems to have a knack of being liked by everyone she meets, with the possible exception of her mother. When she gets caught up in a news story and is very hurt by people she thought she could trust I just felt so sorry for her and wished I could have given her a hug.

This is a sweet, heart-warming novel that I just loved. I haven’t read anything by Miranda Dickinson before but I will certainly be looking out for her books in future. She has a very engaging style of writing and a knack for capturing the emotions and essence of her characters. A perfect mix of intrigue and romance and so charming – a lovely book to start off 2016.

A Parcel for Anna Browne was published by Pan on 24th September 2015. You can order a copy here: A Parcel for Anna Browne

A Parcel for Anna Browne

Anna Browne is an ordinary woman living an ordinary life. Her day job as a receptionist in bustling London isn’t exactly her dream, yet she has everything she wants. But someone thinks Anna Browne deserves more. When a parcel addressed to Anna Browne arrives, she has no idea who has sent it. Inside she finds a beautiful gift – one that is designed to be seen. And so begins a series of incredible deliveries, each one bringing Anna further out of the shadows and encouraging her to become the woman she was destined to be. As Anna grows in confidence, others begin to notice her – and her life starts to change. But who is sending the mysterious gifts, and why?