Book Review: The Unpredictable Consequences of Love by Jill Mansell

"When Josh Strachan, newly returned to his home in north Cornwall from sunny California, first meets Sophie Wells, he's immediately smitten. Sophie's pretty, she's funny, she has lots of friends and she clearly loves her job as a photographer, despite the sometimes tricky clients. There's just one problem: Sophie has very firmly turned her back on love. It's nothing personal, she tells Josh, but she just doesn't do dates. And no one - even Sophie's scatty best friend Tula - will tell him why. Josh is sure Sophie likes him, though, and he's just got to find out what's put her off romance. And then put things right..."

Rating: 5/5

You can buy The Unpredictable Consequences of Love as a hardback or an eBook now.

I am a huge Jill Mansell fan and have read as many of her latest books as I can get my hands on. Her stories always seem to stay with me as well, they are touching and wonderfully written books that you know you can read more than once. I always pass on her books to my friends and family too and they never fail to enjoy them either, she is one of the most popular authors I know! Her latest book The Unpredictable Consequences of Love is another one of those fantastic reads! I love the bright yellow cover, it certainly cheered me up whenever I looked at it and really suits the story beautifully. I really can't recommend this highly enough, and here's why.

Sophie Wells loves her job as a photographer, and given the amount of commissions she is getting, she knows she is pretty good at it. However, since she moved to Cornwall, she's kept herself to herself and well away from any males in the vicinity too. When Josh Strachan returns from the sunny beaches of Cornwall to help his grandmother Dot run the family hotel, he sets his sights on Sophie and is shocked that she rebuffs all of his attention. When Sophie's best friend Tula has to move to Cornwall and work at the hotel owned by Josh and his gran, she tries to get her friend to open up and see that Josh isn't a bad guy and that they could be good together. But Sophie is hiding a secret and Josh is determined to crack it and make her finally fall for him....

This book is set in beautiful Cornwall, and I do love that Mansell choses to set her books in the UK rather than abroad in sunnier climes or more fancy locations such as America. They always have such a charm about them, and I always enjoy them from start to finish. This book was lovely from the start, with our puzzling leading lady Sophie hiding a secret that we don't get to find out about for a while, and it wasn't something I had guessed either! Sophie is such a realistic character, pretty and real, good at her job and hard-working. I really enjoyed reading about her, and I was so curious about what it was that had put her off men in her past. She livened up a lot when her best friend Tula arrives in Cornwall, and she was a brilliant addition to the cast, full of life and fun, and had me chuckling away too.

Josh was a great leading male character too, it was nice to not have to read about a bad guy, and instead I could just work on liking him and hoping that he could make Sophie see sense and see past whatever it is that has put her off men! I liked the references to his previous job in sunny California, but also really loved that he preferred Cornwall and his slower life pace. All of these characters felt very realistic in the book, like people you might know or could easily bump into on holiday as well. As such, I could really get invested in their stories, and I really liked them all. The secondary characters are just as good too, Josh's friend Riley and his famous author aunt were fantastic, they added a totally different element to the book and I was completely interested in their stories as well as the main one, it was all so well written.

There were quite a few plot threads going on in the book, but for me it was really easy to keep up because of Mansell's writing and the pacing of the book. There was enough characters to keep it interesting but I didn't feel overloaded, it felt just right - enough of a cast to keep me hooked yet care for each of them. The hotel in Cornwall sounds picturesque - in fact, Mansell describes Cornwall so beautifully that it all really comes to life in your mind, from the restaurants to the houses to the beaches, I loved reading about it all. The book only took me a couple of evenings to read because I just didn't want to put it down once I'd started reading, I totally lost myself in Sophie and Josh's world in Cornwall. I feel there's something in here to appeal to every demographic as well, Mansell's books rightly appeal to a broad age range and there's a real talent in that. This book was stunning, possibly one of my favourites of Jill's books so far and that's no mean feat given how much I have enjoyed her others. You will be missing out if you don't pick up a copy of this, I loved every page. Women's fiction at its utter best.