The Best Is Yet To Come – Jessica Redland

Published By: Boldwood
Pages:
Released On: 03/09/2024

Emma is having a fresh start.

After a successful teaching career, an exciting new chapter awaits Emma – helping her fiancé Grayson run one of Beatrix Potter’s farms. While imagining days spent supporting Grayson with his dream, working the land and helping with the animals, Emma harvests a dream of her own – to set up an alpaca-walking business around the farm.

But working together isn’t as easy as Emma expected. Soon her dreams are in tatters and, broken-hearted, she must start over yet again.

When Oliver, Rosie and the team at Willowdale Hall welcome Emma with open arms, she can’t believe her luck. But starting a new business in a new place is a daunting prospect, especially when it comes with unexpected obstacles. With a reserved, prickly groundskeeper as a partner, rapidly changing family dynamics to contend with, and time running out to get her new career off the ground, Emma may have bitten off more than she can chew.

But even though things are not going to plan just yet, the best is yet to come for Emma, if she can just take a leap of faith and follow her heart…

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Boldwood for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

If my maths is correct, which to be honest is very rare, I think this is my 13th Jessica Redland book, and all of them have come from being sent early ARCs to read, and I am so grateful for that as she is now one of my absolute go-to authors now for feel-good, uplifting stories.

I have loved this series, mainly because I love the Lake District, and she’s managed to infuse each page with the wonder and splendour that the Lakes offer. But also the characters have been lovely and the plots interesting.

I enjoy that they’ve all been sent in the same area, and so whilst each story focusses on a different one or two character, we do get to see the others in the background throughout the series, which is nice. It really hammers home that sense of community.

It can be read as a standalone book, but personally I think you get more out of it if you read the whole series from the start, as you begin to invest in everyone and everything.

I really liked Emma as a main character, she was hardworking, passionate, and selfless. Whereas Grayson was rude and selfish and obnoxious and I disliked him straight away. He gave off his negative energy that everyone was beneath him, when in fact Emma was far better without him.

Whenever you look at the book prize lists, they’re always full of literary fiction, books that have a moral, books that may be quite difficult to read (I know this is a generalisation and it’s not necessarily a bad one, just an observation), but rarely, if ever, do you see books like Jessica’s, romance, uplifting, happily-ever-after types, and I think that’s a shame because her books are as worthy as any other. Her books, and this is no different, are so uplifting, they’re about friends and community, family and love, hope and joy.

There are some difficult subject matters, such as career changes, relationship issues, affairs, breakups, potential verbal abuse, family dynamic problems, illness, bereavement, trust and the lack of it etc. but it all works within the context of this uplifting story.

It’s bizarre, it’s very much not a festive book, but there were bits about it that put me in that frame of mind, that whole curling up under the covers with a hot chocolate whilst it rains outside, that kind of thing, which bizarrely really put me in this cosy wintery mood and warmed me right up.

Jessica has a talent for ensuring that no matter what the reader might be going through or feeling at the time, they will always feel warm and uplifted by the end of her story, and that’s exactly what she’s done here.

I’m so happy to see in her acknowledgements that Jessica plans to write a whole lot more stories set in this series, which I am so glad of as I’m not quite ready to leave this wonderful family she has created.