A Place Like Home by Rosamunde Pilcher

Blurb

A Place Like Home is a spellbinding collection of short stories by internationally bestselling author Rosamunde Pilcher, never before published in book form. The collection contains fifteen stories, which range from “Our Holiday”, in which a wife surprises her husband of twenty-five years with a holiday full of Mediterranean sunshine, red rocks and blue seas in an effort to rekindle the romance they had before children; “Through the Eyes of Love”, which takes the reader to a village by the sea where old flames meet again; and “A Place Like Home”, where a lonely young woman goes to recuperate in the Scottish countryside after a brief illness. The fruit orchards and fresh sea air offer much needed respite–but not as much as the handsome, mysterious farmer she meets.

Each unforgettable story is the perfect slice of romance written with warmth and passion featuring wonderfully memorable, smart, and feisty female characters that will transport the reader to another time and place.

Review

People who have been following my blog for some time know that one of my favourite authors is Pilcher. I absolutely adore her full length novels but I do struggle with some of her short stories. I find Pilcher’s strength as an author was in the epic novel where she had the freedom to create such powerful female characters that were strong and in control of their own futures. 

This set of fifteen short stories has been sat on my kindle since last year as it was a holiday read that I never got around to reading. These stories all focus around marriage and courtship and quite a few strong female characters. Each story is beautifully written and has Pilcher’s wonderful charm about it but I did find them all rather similar and could guarantee what the ending would be of each story after finishing the third story. 

Whilst there isn’t anything very remarkable about this book of short stories the stories were all enjoyable and a nice read and of course beautifully written. I did find myself wanting to know more about several of the characters and would have loved a full length novel instead of a short story. This was the case for the stories that had the romantic couple as the main characters of the story. The stories which had the romantic interests as side characters were much better suited to the short story format. 

This was an enjoyable read and one that was perfectly suited for reading when you have a short space of time but it really lacked the special something that I expect from Pilcher. I give this book 3 out of 5 Dragons. 

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Purchase Links

Bookshop.org | Waterstones | WH Smith

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About the author

Rosamunde Pilcher was born on the 22nd September 1924 in Cornwall. She began writing when she was 7 and published her first short story at the age of 15. From 1943 to 1946 she served with the Women’s Royal Naval Service. In 1946 she married her Graham Hope Pilcher and they moved to Dundee, Scotland together. In 1949 Pilcher’s first novel was published under the pseudonym Jane Fraser, she went on to publish a further ten novels under that name. In 1955 she published her first novel under her own name, by 1965 she had dropped the pseudonym entirely. Pilcher retired from writing in 2000, two years later she received her OBE.

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