The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid by Catherine Robertson is the 1st in her eponymous The Catherine Robertson Trilogy of loosely-linked chick-lit journey-of-self-discovery comedy w/romantic elements novels, this installment starring the titular New Zealand-based romance writer who decides to take a life-changing trip to London with a Nancy Mitford novel as her guide, free courtesy of publisher Random House New Zealand's Black Swan imprint.
Incidentally, if I were to pick a Nancy Mitford book as a guide to proper Englishness, I'd choose her non-fiction
Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy. The section on
U and non-U English alone would be invaluable, I should think.
Currently free @
Amazon UK &
AU.
This doesn't even seem to exist in the other UK stores, but may or may not cross the pond where Amazon is concerned, since it's apparently the same edition in North America.
Description
A romping chick-lit with heart-ache, misunderstandings, travel and love.
No one knows 'happy endings' like romance novelist Darrell Kincaid. She's delivered eight of them to her readers with pleasure. But it's not to be with book number nine. In the act of adding the final full stop, Darrell has a revelation: it's not the ending that really matters but what comes next.
Darrell now sees that when her husband Tom died (twenty-one months and three days ago, but who's counting?) she lost more than the man she loved. She lost her own 'happy ever after'. The life she expected to live has gone, vanished forever in a puff of fickle, unfair smoke. Darrell knows she has a choice. She can stay in New Zealand and live a half-life, or she can leave in search of something - perhaps someone - else.
So Darrell decides upon London, the least romantic capital she knows (why set yourself up for disappointment?). Armed with Nancy Mitford's Love In A Cold Climate as her guide to proper Englishness and the ideal romantic hero, she sets out to live the sweet second life she deserves.