Author: Lizzie Allen
Format reviewed: Ebook
Source: Purchased
Publisher: Maze
Publication Date: 25th August 2015
Rating: 3 Stars
Sun, sea . . . and a summer of endless possibilities.
From the glossy streets of Chelsea to a tiny Greek hideaway, Faith Cotton is about to have a summer that she will never forget!
Young, bored housewife, Faith Cotton, escapes her stifling Chelsea life when her husband suggests they decamp to a tiny island in the Greek Cyclades for the summer.
He works for the foreign office and has the inside scoop on ‘the Greek situation’. Europe is pouring money into Greece and, far from going down the plughole, Andrew believes that the island of Iraklia will soon see a tourist boom.
Faith is left in charge of finding them a permanent holiday home on the island, but things don’t go to plan – over the course of a summer, Faith’s doomed marriage begins to unravel, and far from finding the house she set out for, she finally discovers the person she really is. . .
From the glossy streets of Chelsea to a tiny Greek hideaway, Faith Cotton is about to have a summer that she will never forget!
Young, bored housewife, Faith Cotton, escapes her stifling Chelsea life when her husband suggests they decamp to a tiny island in the Greek Cyclades for the summer.
He works for the foreign office and has the inside scoop on ‘the Greek situation’. Europe is pouring money into Greece and, far from going down the plughole, Andrew believes that the island of Iraklia will soon see a tourist boom.
Faith is left in charge of finding them a permanent holiday home on the island, but things don’t go to plan – over the course of a summer, Faith’s doomed marriage begins to unravel, and far from finding the house she set out for, she finally discovers the person she really is. . .
Unsurprisingly it was the cover that seduced me to buy this book originally. With such a gorgeous summery picture, I was expecting a light hearted romantic comedy, full of laughs, great descriptions of a Greek Island, sexy men and Greek food. Well there was a sexy man in this book...but that is where my expectations really ended.
What P.S. Olive You is I can't exactly say, but it felt far more like fictionalized travel writing, without much of the history and facts about the place which makes travel writing great, mixed with a huge political slant with an emphasis on the Greek financial crisis, oh and a story about a women who having been forced to move to Iraklia, who ends up finding out who she truly is.
I found this to be an incredibly slow starter of a book, to the extent that around the half way mark I very almost gave it up completely, as although it had some interesting bits, the political rants by a couple of the characters were really grating on me (I'm not a huge politics fan). However after deciding I would give it a small bit longer, just in case, I was glad I did, as it took me under an hour to read the second half which packed into it all the elements that would make this a good book.
Unfortunately if I start saying what the improvements in the second half actually are, then I would give away the better parts of the book. Needless to say, they include romance, lots of action, some emotion and some life changing events for various of the characters.
If you come into this book with realistic expectations about what the content is likely to be then I'm sure you will enjoy it a lot more than I did. I found that the main Greek references were the financial crisis, but not really much about the island. I didn't find myself caring that much about the island itself, but the characters that live on it, were all believable and some of them were likeable at least.
What P.S. Olive You is I can't exactly say, but it felt far more like fictionalized travel writing, without much of the history and facts about the place which makes travel writing great, mixed with a huge political slant with an emphasis on the Greek financial crisis, oh and a story about a women who having been forced to move to Iraklia, who ends up finding out who she truly is.
I found this to be an incredibly slow starter of a book, to the extent that around the half way mark I very almost gave it up completely, as although it had some interesting bits, the political rants by a couple of the characters were really grating on me (I'm not a huge politics fan). However after deciding I would give it a small bit longer, just in case, I was glad I did, as it took me under an hour to read the second half which packed into it all the elements that would make this a good book.
Unfortunately if I start saying what the improvements in the second half actually are, then I would give away the better parts of the book. Needless to say, they include romance, lots of action, some emotion and some life changing events for various of the characters.
If you come into this book with realistic expectations about what the content is likely to be then I'm sure you will enjoy it a lot more than I did. I found that the main Greek references were the financial crisis, but not really much about the island. I didn't find myself caring that much about the island itself, but the characters that live on it, were all believable and some of them were likeable at least.
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