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    Farm Fatale: A Comedy of Country Manors
    Farm Fatale: A Comedy of Country Manors
    Farm Fatale: A Comedy of Country Manors
    Audiobook13 hours

    Farm Fatale: A Comedy of Country Manors

    Written by Wendy Holden

    Narrated by Gerri Halligan and Phoebe James

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    This enchanting book is an international best-seller. City folk Rosie and her boyfriend have always dreamt of a countryside cottage. The nouveaux-riche Samantha and Guy are also seeking rural bliss: a mansion with a mile long drive and a team of gardeners. The village of Eight Mile Bottom seems the idyllic hide-away for them. But as dreams become reality, they soon realise that village life can be far from peaceful.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 4, 2012
    ISBN9781456122614
    Author

    Wendy Holden

    Wendy Holden was a journalist for eighteen years, including a decade at the Daily Telegraph. She is the author and coauthor of more than thirty books, among them several internationally acclaimed wartime biographies, plus the New York Times bestsellers A Lotus Grows in the Mud (with Goldie Hawn) and Lady Blue Eyes (with Frank Sinatra's widow, Barbara). She lives in Suffolk, England, with her husband and two dogs, and divides her time between the UK and the US.

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    Reviews for Farm Fatale

    3/5

    84 ratings6 reviews

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    • 2/5
       Oh dear me. I'm reluctant to mark this as awful, because parts of it were actually quite amusing. But, taken as a whole, it was really very disappointing. Grace is a PR person in a small, specialist (read struggling and esoteric) publishing house in Bloomsbury. She's typical "girl next door" material, although does have a bit of a tendency to put her foot in it and isn't always the most professional person. She's got trouble with her socialist, no-hoper boyfriend and her mother trying to set her up with Counts and Dukes and other landed gentry. She gets in a pickle when promoting Henry Moon's book at a literary festival, gets drunk with him & sleeps with him. See what I mean about professionally putting her foot in it? Anyway, with such a small press office, she continues to have to deal with him and a series of excruciatingly embarrassing press opportunities follow. It was toe curlingly embarrassing, but quite funny, the scrapes she got into. Then there's the flip side of the story, Belinda Black. She is a mean, scheming, gold digger who makes Cruella D'Vil look like a well rounded character. She's got a poxy little interview column and she aspires to the main interview column of Mo Mills. She does something rather underhand and gets her chance, which she blows quite spectacularly by being a complete bitch (and it serves her right). The thing that doesn't quite work is that she is two timing Grace with the Socialist no hoper. not that either knows this. You think they'll meet, have it out and it never quite happens - seems like a bit of a redundant connection, somehow. It all gets even more out of hand when Grace is asked to handle the press for a celebrity's book, which he thinks is ground breaking and is a pile of tosh (by the sound of it). Belinda wants to interview the star for her column, Grace puts her foot in it (again) and I found myself screaming at the stereo in frustration. Honestly. The end is pretty much where you think it'll end up after chapter 1, so no surprises there. But it just goes off the deep end. I feel it would have been a better book had Belinda been less of a cartoon character, had the interlude with the celebrity not happened (I didn't feel it added anything and descended into slapstick farce) and had there been less in the way of co-incidence relied upon. Three people share a cleaner, despite living in (apparently) quite different areas of London. Two protagonists share a boyfriend. It was made important for part of the story, but it didn't convince. Make Belinda less extreme, remove the celebrity disaster and focus on Grace, her trials, tribulations and general idiocy with men and I think this would have been more satisfying.
    • 3/5
      In "Gossip Hound" by Wendy Holden, Grace Armiger is a publicist for an ailing publishing house. The book begins with her "accidentally" sleeping with one of her clients while she is dating a wannabe socialist. Your typical single-girl-in-the-strange-world-of-(fill in the blank here) shenanigans ensue.
      The book was fun enough that I read it in about two days but there was something lacking overall. The characters were, without fail, flat and undeveloped. They fit neatly into the categories of "best friend," "matchmaking mother," "weird boyfriend," etc.
      Despite this, there were moments when I laughed out loud while reading. Holden does a fairly decent job with the plot although the end felt rushed and the thread of plot about her ex boyfriend was dropped. I was most irritated not only by the flat characterization but also the complete predictability. It was almost painfully obvious to see where this was going
      Overall, I gave this a three because it's an average, chick-lit read without any real sparkle to delineate it from other chick-lits.
    • 2/5
      This one just didn't do it for me.

      Two London couples pick the same small village as their get-away-from-it-all destination. Largely unlikeable or clueless characters and an author who is inordinately pleased with her "inside" jokes drag everything down.
    • 4/5
      Oh I've got another great chick lit title for your beach bag! Wendy Holden was an author new to me but one I will be reading again for sure. In Farm Fatale, Rosie has her heart set on moving to the country from London, England. Her boyfriend Mark only says yes after his newspaper agrees to let him write a column about the goings on in Eight Mile Bottom - the village they move to. Their little cottage needs some work and there are some issues with the neighbours, but Rosie is determined to make it work.Also moving into Eight Mile Bottom are Samantha and her husband Guy. Samantha saw a magazine spread about a country estate and decided she should have one too. With more money than common sense, they end up buying a local manor house.But not everything is coming up rosy in the country.....Holden has created a wonderfully warm, funny, lovable character in Rosie. She's real and is the kind of person I'd like to have as a friend. Her search for love and happiness is one we can all identify with. Who hasn't dreamed of escaping to the country?But it was the character of Samantha that had me laughing out loud. She is just so blatantly over the top, it's hilarious. The details of the designer (Basia) who redoes her London house are priceless. "...at the vase, more than a meter square, which Basia had placed in the center of a coffee table the size of a double bed. Vase fascism, Samantha had hotly retorted, is a central tenet of Basia's design philosophy. She wanted to challenge the fact that I filled the same vases in the same place with the same flowers every week."I also really enjoyed Samantha's daydreams - she writes the copy for the magazine articles she envisions herself in. Holden perfectly captures and delightfully skewers every glossy magazine layout you've ever read.The supporting cast of characters are no less engaging. I particularly enjoyed the local pub owner - his dialogue was quite witty, as were his various tee shirt logos.There's lots of misunderstandings, missed cues, romantic entanglements and untangling along with the search for greener pastures. A light-hearted read chock full of witty dialogue and fun!
    • 5/5
      Rosie convinces her boyfriend Mark that they should move to the country where they will both be able to work from home and just be able to get out of the big city and live a less hectic life. She finds a cottage in Eight Mile Bottom, somewhere in England. What ensues is a very funny story about what happens when several couples relocate to the countryside. Rosie is an artist, Mark is a writer. Another couple are Guy and Samantha. Samantha is an actress and her main focus is, well, herself. Eight Mile Bottom is a quiet small town with a variety of quirky characters. Duffy is the postman who just walks into the residents homes with their mail and offers advice and gossip. Matt is the reclusive rock star that everyone speculates about but Rosie befriends him at Samantha's party. Guy has a daughter Iseult who despises her stepmom. Then there is Jack, the farmer who allows Rosie to paint his sheep for her illustrations. Rosie's and Mark's next door neighbors are Mrs. Womersley who is Jacks aunt. So needless to say it is a tight knit community and everyone knows about everyone else. I found Farm Fatale to be a funny, witty and just plain fun book to read..
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful fairytale of a chicklit story. Wendy has great tongue-in-cheek humor that makes you laugh out loud while you are gloriously skipping along. She does not dissapoint, tells a fun tale, and wraps it all up in a nice fairytale bow in the end (even though she throws in doses of reality here and there). Way to go once again!!! A great read--my second time around btw.