Portobello Book Blog

I’m very pleased to be joined by Bella Osborne, author of the Willow Cottage series of books. Part three, A Spring Affair, has been published today by Avon UK and is available to download for only 79p by clicking here. Bella has written a guest post about the kind of spring cleaning I think I should be doing too – spring cleaning the to-be-read pile!

Part 3 of Willow Cottage is set in springtime and, for some people, spring is about cleaning. In theory this is a great idea but seeing as we have to keep on top of the cleaning throughout the year, otherwise the dust bunnies mount a rebellion, it doesn’t seem like much fun to add on extra chores just because the daffodils are popping up. So instead I decided to have a look at my To Be Read (TBR) pile and decided to give that a dust off instead.

So here is a list of books I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time but for various reasons** just haven’t managed to get to them.

This is on the list because it is my friend’s favourite book and because it is special to her I have been meaning to read it for a while. So this spring I will push it up the TBR list and hopefully be in for a treat.

I completely fell in love with Louisa and Will in Me Before You and was excited to get hold of the sequel when it came out but I just haven’t started it. Perhaps there is a small part of me that wants to leave the characters untouched as it is a very hard thing to do to match a novel as good as Me Before You, I don’t know, I will see if this is the case when I read it.

This is on the list because it was a really big thing at the time. It is one of those books that had a huge amount of publicity a few years ago and everyone said I must read it. I think I may have rebelled a little and not read it simply because everyone was telling me I must, but the time has come to see what all the fuss was about. 

This is definitely my kind of spring cleaning!

What is on your TBR pile?

**By various reasons I mean they have been overtaken on the reading list by impulse book purchases, book club reads, the ‘ooh it’s the latest thing and it’s sooo good you have to read it’ reads, the latest from my favourite authors, as well as my favourite sort of jump to the top of the book pile, a friend’s debut novel.

About A Spring Affair – Willow Cottage Part Three

Beth is running away. With her young son Leo to protect, Willow Cottage is the lifeline she so desperately needs. Overlooking the village green in a beautiful Cotswolds idyll, Beth sees a warm, caring and safe place for little Leo.

When she finally uncovers the cottage from underneath the boughs of a weeping willow tree, Beth realises this is far more of a project than she bargained for and the locals are more than a little eccentric! A chance encounter with gruff Jack, who appears to be the only male in the village under thirty, leaves the two of them at odds but it’s not long before Beth realises that Jack has hidden talents that could help her repair more than just Willow Cottage

Over the course of four seasons, Beth realises that broken hearts can be mended, and sometimes love can be right under your nose…

Willow Cottage is part of a serialized novel told in four parts, following the journey of Beth and her new life in the Cotswolds. The full book will be out next this August, but for now, enjoy Willow Cottage seasonally.