The House at the Bottom of the Hill by Jennie Jones

Title: The House at the Bottom of the Hill

Author: Jennie Jones

Genre: Romance

Opening line: Daniel Bradford leaned his shoulder against the doorframe of Kookaburra’s Bar & Grill and settled in to watch the ruckus at the northern end of Main Street.

Blurb: The murder of her mother has left Charlotte Simmons jumping at shadows for too long. The only way to move forward is to get answers, and those answers can only be found in one place. So Charlotte buys a Bed & Breakfast establishment in Swallow’s Fall, a small town in Australia’s Snowy Mountains, as a ploy to get close to the man who might have the answers. She’ll renovate the old place, sell it, get her answers, and be gone in two-months. What she doesn’t count on is opposition from the dogmatic and slightly eccentric members of the town council, and the hotshot owner of Kookaburra’s Bar & Grill and his two-hundred-squats-a-day physique who offers to act as mediator. Easy-going Daniel Bradford knows that progress can be slow in Swallow’s Fall. He’s finally about to put his plans into place to upgrade the hotel when a prim-and-proper, citified redhead blows into town, putting everyone on edge. The only way to contain the trouble she’s about to cause is to contain her – but it soon becomes very clear that there’s absolutely nothing containable about Charlotte.

My Thoughts: Charlotte has lots of issues which she has carried with her from childhood. Born in Australia she was taken to England after the her mother’s murder and has now returned to face her demons head on. She is not in Swallow’s Fall to make friends or make a new start and she’s certainly not here to fall in love. She is here to talk to the son of the man who murdered her mother, then flee. The first chink in the armour is when she adopts Lucy an abandoned pooch, the second is when she realises that she has no idea what she wants to do once her objective is reached. Then as she does battle with the local town council over changing the exterior paint from pink to yellow to make the B&B more sellable, Charlotte gradually realises she is coming to see the community’s point of view and actually have friends. Not part of her plan and she now has to decide whether she should just leave town now before she gets swallowed up. She has problems of her own she doesn’t want to deal with other people’s problems; does she? And then there’s Dan, lots of nice single ladies in town – but it is the one problematic female he wants. She seems to be resisting him every step of the way – as prickly as an echidna he needs to approach her with caution. Still Lucy the dog adores him – that should help, shouldn’t it? As with all the books in the Swallow’s Fall series THE HOUSE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL has a believable story, real to life characters, love, drama, laughter and tears. I am convinced if I go driving out past Canberra into the Snowy Mountains I will find this settlement and have drinks with them at the pub. Jennie Jones has captured the Australian rural town ambiance to the tee. I was so glad to discover that there are two more Swallow’s Fall based books to follow this year – The Turnaround Treasure Shop and Magic on Main Street. I will certainly be keeping an eagle eye out for them.

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(A) 5 Stars – Excellent Stuff – a real page turner and hard to put down. I carved out extra reading time just so I could finish it. This book got carted into the bathroom with me, read over meals, read at work, and/or kept me up late at night. If this author has more work, I will certainly read it

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With thanks to Harlequin MIRA Australia and the author via Netgalley for my copy to read and review.

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