A Cottage in the Country - Linn B. Halton

When I first selected this book I was skeptical, thinking it might just be a British knock-off of Under the Tuscan Sun (the movie, not the book—the book was absolute rubbish). Thankfully, Linn B. Halton's A Cottage in the Country is a wonderful story of its own.

Madeleine (Maddie) Brooks has been on the hunt for a retreat in the country for some time after discovering her husband Jeff has been having an affair with her best friend. Nothing seems to be in her price range until a cottage in Forest is listed as a probate sale and she snaps it up, the first viewer on the first day it is listed. She moves in on December 19th during an onslaught of rain and flooding, wanting the heaviest renovations done by Christmas Eve at a time when everyone and everything is getting ready to hunker down for the holidays.

Here enters handyman Lewis Hart, the Man Who Can, who also happens to be a bit of a jerk. Or is he? Toss in Maddie's hot boss Ryan, and we have a fun and funny little love triangle set in a beautiful country setting, wrapped up in Linn B. Halton's prose.

This was an ARC that I was given on a read-to-review basis, and so it contained some typos that I'm sure will be polished up before actual publication. There were also a couple repetitive phrases that made me cringe and some unnecessary fleshing out that I found myself skimming through. All this aside (and likely no longer an issue once it is in the hands of "real" readers), I adored this story. It is witty and entertaining, with wonderfully descriptive landscape and characters that you cannot help but love. My only regret is that I now want a bathroom with a slipper tub and a full skylight, but have no Man Who Can to build it for me…so Halton's book will suffice instead, for now.

I would like to thank HarperCollins UK and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion, which this certainly is.

FOUR STARS.

Amazon Link: A Cottage in the Country

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