The Year of Taking Chances (42 page)
A story of love, friendship, calories and cake .
.
.
Maddie’s getting it from all sides.
Her bitchy new boss at the radio station humiliates her live on air about her figure; her glamour-puss mum keeps dropping
not-so-subtle hints that Maddie should lose weight; and her kids are embarrassed to be seen with her after the disastrous mums’ race at their school sports day.
Something’s got to
change .
.
.
Maddie joins the local weight-watching group, expecting more humiliation, but instead finds two unlikely allies – bitter divorcee Lauren who, despite running a dating agency, has signed
off romance forever, and shy Jess, the beautician, who’s desperate to fit into a size-ten wedding dress for her Big Day.
Praise for
Sweet Temptation
‘A healthy helping of friendship and love’
Press Association
‘Dealing with a lack of calories, fat days and man trouble is a lot easier when you have good friends by your side.
Fab!’
Closer
A recipe for disaster?
Or a recipe for love?
Evie Flynn has always been the black sheep of her family – a dreamer and a drifter, unlike her over-achieving elder sisters.
She’s tried making a name for herself
as an actress, a photographer and a singer, but nothing has ever worked out.
Now she’s stuck in temp hell, with a sensible, pension-planning boyfriend.
Somehow life seems to be passing her
by.
Then her beloved aunt Jo dies suddenly in a car crash, leaving Evie an unusual legacy – her precious beach cafe in Cornwall.
Determined to make a success of something for the first time in
her life, Evie heads off to Cornwall to get the cafe and her life back on track – and gets more than she bargained for, both in work and in love .
.
.
Praise for
The Beach Café
‘Romantic, dreamy and fun, this is perfect poolside reading’
Closer
‘From witty to full of wisdom, sassy to sentimental .
.
.
not to be missed’
Woman
New beginnings and an old flame.
Summer just got hotter .
.
.
Polly has always been the high-flier of the family, with the glamorous city lifestyle to match.
Clare is a single mum with two children, struggling to make ends meet in a ramshackle cottage.
The two sisters are poles apart and barely on speaking terms.
But then Polly’s fortunes change unexpectedly and her world comes crashing down.
Left penniless and with nowhere else to go, she is forced back to the village where she and Clare grew up,
and the sisters find themselves living together for the first time in years.
With an old flame reappearing for Polly, a blossoming new career for Clare and a long-buried family secret in the mix,
sparks are sure to fly.
Unless the two women have more in common than they first thought?
Praise for
Summer with My Sister
‘This is a warm and witty read for sisters of all ages’
Candis
‘Seamless, engaging, believable, fun and heartfelt .
.
.
A skilfully executed and charming tale that you’ll want to pass on to all your friends’
Heat
Three charming brothers – which would you choose?
Meet the women in love with three very different brothers .
.
.
Izzy’s determined to escape her troubled past with a new start by the sea – but flirtatious Charlie Jones is causing complications.
Alicia’s been happily married to loyal Hugh for years, but secretly craves excitement.
Maybe it’s time to spice things up?
Emma’s relationship with David was once fun and romantic, but trying for a baby has taken its toll.
Then temptation comes along .
.
.
As the future of the family’s B&B becomes uncertain, Izzy, Alicia and Emma are thrown together unexpectedly.
It seems that keeping up with the Joneses is harder than anyone thought .
.
.
From the queen of summer reading, this is a sparkling tale of heartbreak, hope, friendship and love.
Praise for
Me and Mr Jones
‘Funny, sunny and wise.
An absolute treat’
Katie Fforde
‘The new queen of the gripping, light-hearted page-turner’
Easy Living
How do you say ‘I Love You’ in Italian?
Is Italian really the language of love?
A new class of students hopes to find out.
Anna’s recently been told the father she’s never met is Italian.
Now she’s baking focaccia, whipping up tiramisu and swotting up on her vocabulary, determined
to make it to Italy, so that she can find him in person.
Catherine’s husband has walked out on her, and she’s trying to pick up the pieces of her life.
But she’ll need courage as well as friends when she discovers that his deception
runs even deeper than infidelity.
Sophie’s the teacher of the class, who’d much rather be back in sunny Sorrento.
She can’t wait to escape the tensions at home and go travelling again.
But sometimes life
– and love – can surprise you when you least expect it.
As the evening class gets under way, friendships form and secrets from Italy begin to emerge.
With love affairs blossoming in the most unlikely places, and hard decisions to face, it’s
going to be a year that Anna, Catherine and Sophie will never forget.
Praise for
One Night in Italy
‘Charming, funny and as satisfying as a giant tiramisu.
I loved it’
Milly Johnson
Lucy Diamond lives in Bath with her husband and their three children.
The Year of Taking Chances
is her ninth novel.
When she isn’t slaving away on a new book
(ahem), you can find her on Twitter
@LDiamondAuthor
or Facebook at
facebook.com/LucyDiamondAuthor
.
Also by Lucy Diamond
NOVELS
Any Way You Want Me
Over You
Hens Reunited
Sweet Temptation
The Beach Café
Summer with My Sister
Me and Mr Jones
One Night in Italy
E-BOOK NOVELLAS
Christmas at the Beach Café
Christmas Gifts at the Beach Café
Thanks, as always, to the dream team at Pan Macmillan – Caroline Hogg, Natasha Harding, Jodie Mullish, Becky Plunkett, Anna Bond, Jeremy Trevathan, Wayne Brookes and
Eloise Wood.
Please tell me your collective New Year’s resolution is to keep being awesome.
A million thank-yous to Lizzy Kremer at David Higham for all your hard work, phone calls and genius ideas.
As well as being a completely brilliant agent, you are a seriously lovely person too.
#TeamKremer all the way!
Thank you to Rebekah, dressmaker extraordinaire at Love Design Room in Bath, who answered all my stupid questions with great patience.
Any mistakes are my own.
Thanks to all my lovely readers, especially those who chat to me on my Facebook page and, of course, Lucy’s Diamonds – now there’s a cool group of women, if ever I saw one!
Finally, an extra-special sparkly thanks to my wonderful family – Martin, Hannah, Tom and Holly – who are the best cheerleaders an author could wish for, even when I’m sunk in
the depths of I-can’t-write despair.
(My New Year’s resolution is to stop being such a drama queen about it all!) Thank you for so much laughter and loveliness.
I don’t need a
fortune-cookie to tell me that you four are definitely my ‘Happy ever after’.
First published 2015 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2015 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-5779-0
Copyright © Lucy Diamond 2015
Cover illustration by Kate Forrester
The right of Lucy Diamond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Any
resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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