I’m so delighted today to be helping launch the blog tour for Love Letters on Hazel Lane by Jennifer Page, and sharing my review: published on 4th January by Aria Fiction, it’s now available for kindle and in paperback. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for the invitation and support, and to the publishers for my advance reading copy (provided via netgalley).
When I read Jennifer’s first book, The Little Board Game Cafe (available free via Amazon Prime, I notice – it was one of my 2023 Books of the Year, and I’d hate you to miss it!), I called it “a total delight from beginning to end”. Actually, I didn’t stop there – after setting out everything I loved about it, I also said that it took my breath away that it was her debut, and that it was “a book she must be immensely proud of, and I can’t wait to see what she does next” (you can read my full review again here). That’s a lot for the second book to live up to, but I couldn’t think of any better way to start my new year of reading than diving in and finding out whether she’s managed to do it again…
Scrabble fan Jo always seems to pick the wrong guys. Now she’s moved to the Yorkshire village of Hebbleswick, and decided to give dating one last chance. This time, there’s a catch: she will only date men whose names would score highly in her beloved word game.
After Tarquin (16 points) proves just as disappointing as the rest, she meets low-scoring local doctor Ras (3 points). Her rules mean she can’t date him – but when he asks her to organise a Scrabble festival with him, she can’t say no.
As the event draws nearer and Jo and Ras grow closer, will Jo ignore her rule and let true love blossom over the triple letter scores?
I think I might just start by saying that I honestly thought this book was even better than the author’s excellent first – immensely enjoyable, really original with its focus on Scrabble (who would ever have thought that could work?!) and such a well-told story, but also with a heroine I immediately took to my heart and was rooting for throughout, a (very!) slow-burn romance I really believed in, a wonderful community around them, and an overall depth to the story that I found particularly satisfying.
Since the end of her toxic marriage, Jo has been sharing a flat with Gemma, the kind of friend we all need when things are tough – but, when Gemma moves away, she finds herself living in a new Yorkshire village where friends and a social life are hard to find. She’s less than happy at work too – although she’s immensely organised and good at her job, she’s never been part of the in-crowd, and there are those who make her working life particularly difficult. And her attempts at online dating, egged on by Gemma at a distance, have been… well, pretty disastrous really, even when she jazzed up her profile a little, with the help of professed dating expert and tentative new friend Kate. But then there was Ras, not too promising at first, but he did go to a lot of effort to make their first date particularly memorable – for them both, in different ways – and she was a little disappointed when he didn’t follow through.
The one thing she didn’t include on her dating profile was her passion for Scrabble – and she’s delighted to find a local club, and surprised to find that it’s run by Ras. With a busy life as a local GP, he’s looking for someone with the time and organisational skills to plan a weekend event – and when Jo picks up the baton, it turns into a full-blown Scrabble festival, taking her well outside her comfort zone at every turn, but increasing in confidence with every small victory. It becomes increasingly obvious that she and Ras are made for each other, but she’s vowed to only look seriously at someone whose name would score highly on the Scrabble board – you’d really have thought she’d have learned her lesson with Tarquin (16 points), wouldn’t you?
Life really hasn’t treated Jo well, with childhood bullying followed by a coercive and controlling marriage, and now the way she’s being treated in the workplace – all issues handled with particular sensitivity by the author – and it was an absolute joy to be at her side as she learned how to move on, gradually regaining her confidence and sense of self-worth, and looking forward to a happier future. And she’s surrounded by a cast of quirky and superbly drawn characters – some of them familiar if you visited the (now not so little) Board Game Cafe – who provide support and brighten her life in their different ways, as she begins to realise she’s far from unloveable, lonely or alone. The whole story is quite beautifully told, with the loveliest touches of humour and an all-enveloping warmth, plenty of unexpected twists and turns, and so much poignancy at times that it brought a tear to my eye (closely followed by a smile and laughter). And those Scrabble elements? They make the book very different, and are so very cleverly done – I was quite disappointed to find out that a WordPals app that Jo uses didn’t exist when I became increasingly convinced that Scrabble might be something I might be missing in my life too (but Words with Friends looks like a good alternative!).
My first book of 2024, and I’m happy to call this one a book of the year already – it was just gorgeous and so delightful, heart-warming and uplifting, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
About the author
Jennifer Page wrote her first novel – a book about ponies – when she was eight. These days she prefers to write romance. When she isn’t writing, Jennifer can usually be found playing board games which were the inspiration for her first novel. She has worked as a television producer, a music teacher and has even run a children’s opera company. She now lives near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire with her husband and his large collection of games.
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A truly beautiful book!