As the sun crests the indigo Lake District hills and blossom froths in the trees, midwife Zoe Padbury reaches for her boyfriend’s hand. Her life, at this moment, feels perfect. She has no idea of the storm clouds that lie ahead…
The villagers of Thimblebury know that midwife Zoe Padbury loves babies and now that she’s settled at Hilltop Farm with her boyfriend Alex, they can’t resist wondering when she’s going to start a family of her own. Yet it doesn’t feel like quite the right time. Alex is so busy and Zoe has her hands full with all her new mums to look after. Still, she has hopes for the future…
But what she doesn’t expect is to walk into her cosy kitchen and find Alex’s glamorous ex-girlfriend sitting at the scrubbed pine kitchen table. Virginia claims to be helping Alex with work but as she looks Zoe up and down and offers her a perfectly manicured hand to shake, Zoe can’t ignore a shiver of foreboding. What will this mean for her and Alex?
Zoe tries to quash the pangs of jealousy that wash over her, but with Virginia around what feels like all hours of the day, she and Alex end up in a devastating argument. And when she receives some news that changes everything, she doesn’t know if she can share her troubles… Can they find their way back to each other? Or will these storm clouds break their bond forever?
Review: This is the fourth book in a series of stories featuring Zoe Padbury, a midwife who is attached to the medical practice in the small Lake District village of Thimblebury, having moved there from Manchester. She lives with her partner, Alex, and his daughter and baby granddaughter in a farm outside the village. The books in this series feature lots of recurring characters and references to previous stories set in Thimblebury, but I feel that this book, like the others, can be read as a standalone.
As this story begins, Zoe is feeling happy with her life. Her relationship with Alex is going well, she is getting closer to his daughter and his business is finally getting off the ground. She has no inkling of the troubled times ahead. Nobody could have predicted how many problems were going to come along and disturb her life. On top of helping Alex when serious difficulties arise in his business, there is an outbreak of a virus affecting many of the Thimblebury residents, the arrival on the scene of Alex’s glamorous ex, problems with Zoe’s mothers and babies, friction within the medical practice and, most devastating, bad news for her that she is unable to share with anyone else. Everything seems the be conspiring to put a strain on Zoe and her home life. Can her relationship with Alex weather the storm?
This was yet another dramatic instalment in this series. I began to wonder what was going to happen next as Zoe’s problems heaped up on top of her. I like Zoe as a character; she’s very level headed thankfully. I didn’t like Alex so much in this story; he was being uncharacteristically selfish a lot of the time. On the other hand, his daughter is much more likeable as she matures. As with the other books in the series, this one had plenty of glimpses of typical village life where news travels fast and rumour abounds. I am looking forward to the next book in this series, where the village will come alive with Christmas festivities.
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