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Title/Author

Love Potions

Christina Jones

Average Review Rating Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : Piatkus Books

Published : 2006

Copyright : Christina Jones 2006

ISBN-10 : HB 0-7499-0835-1
ISBN-13 : HB 978-0-7499-0835-5

Publisher's Write-Up

When aromatherapist Sukie Ambrose starts using her cottage garden as inspiration - and raw ingredients - for her products, she thinks she's just hit on a good way of saving money while offering her clients a way of de-stressing and relaxation. However, Sukie lives in a village where strange things have been known to happen. She discovers that her new improved lotions and potions are making her massages distinctly magical - and producing more star-crossed lovers than Shakespeare could ever dream of...

'H.E. Bates for the 21st Century.'

Katie Fforde

'Sexy... unputdownable... a heart-thumping read.'

Company

'Bloody good read...Funny, romantic book...a lively romp through rural England.'

New Woman
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Reader Reviews

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Review by Chrissi (300411) Rating (7/10)

Review by Chrissi
Rating 7/10
Sukie is a newly qualified aromatherapist, she has got all of her oils and the other substances necessary but before she starts properly, her oils go accidentally missing and she has to resort to the plants in her garden. This is a garden planted many years before, and which she is warned against by Topsy, a very elderly lady who knows stories of what happens when you start to use plantlore and the effect that it has on people’s lives.

I loved Sukie as a catalyst for the changes that she brings, mainly accidentally, to the people around her when she starts to practice aromatherapy. As a character I found her a little lacking, but as a central catalyst, she was just lovely. It seemed to take ages for her story to really develop, but in the meantime, we learn about those around her and how people are not necessarily how we may perceive them at first.

It is easy to forget that older people were young once and that there was an entire generation who never had the opportunity to get married because their young men went away and never returned. This was sad, the retelling of stories which ended with a woman spending her life alone rather than settle for anything less than the love she had briefly experienced a lifetime ago, compared with a later discovered story of a woman who accepted the suit of a man and did her best to be happy with him.

Essentially this is a story of second chances, with an unexpected opportunity at a new life, assisted a little with the many unknown properties of locally grown and harvested plant extracts. The story, as ever, is an affectionate look at people, whom you may not like at first but whose stories are much more than they seem. I must say that I would like to retire to live in Christina Jones’ villages, they are so nice and full of possibilities, but I rather think it is not safe to take anything from one of the locals, you never know what might happen!
Chrissi (30th April 2011)

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