About Books #91: Sunshine over Bluebell Castle

If there’s one thing that Sarah Bennett always does right, it’s transporting you right into England creating a beautiful atmosphere, and making sparks fly. The best thing? She does all of those things brilliantly in Sunshine over Bluebell Castle.

I was offered an ARC by Netgalley in exchange for a review. All opinions are strictly my own.

The Story

The summer she will never forget…

Time’s running out for Iggy Ludworth to restore the wild gardens of Camland Castle in time for the Summer Fete, so she ropes in hotshot gardener Will Talbot…

But she regrets her decision as soon as he sets foot in the historic grounds – not only is Will arrogant and bossy, he’s totally gorgeous!

And very soon, sparks are flying amongst the bluebells. Yet with summer nearly over, will their summer fling convince Will and Iggy to go the distance?

The Opinion

This is one of those cases where I read the first page of a book, and just fell in love with it right away. Sure I first went and bought the first book in this series just because I wanted to know what happened before the book started… But, honestly, you don’t really need to do that to be able to follow along with the story.

Maybe to start off with: I love the concept of the family history. More than in the books I’d previously read by Sarah Bennett, Sunshine over Bluebell Castle really delves into history. Not only with the castle, but also with the different parts of the property the family history, siblings’ ancestor’s obsession with King Arthur …

Something that I am starting to recognise as a typical thing for Bennett’s series, is the emphasis on the relation between siblings. I’m obviously not part of triplets, but it was really nice to see how close a connection these three have. Not to mention their non stop support for each other. That was maybe my favourite part of the book.

Well, you know next to the richness of the story, the gradual development of the romance with such a lovely deep burn… And other small details, such as the wealth of information on the development of large gardens, the upkeeping of an estate… The fact that we got to see both character’s perspective on the happenigns? And some further insight into the family back ground?

Honestly, this was just one of those cases where all the elements were so good, and fell together perfectly as well!

The rating: 4/5

I feel like it’s pretty clear that I really enjoyed this book. It was such a perfect escapism-read, that had me dreaming away at the beautiful description of the countryside. The combination of established romance and new sparks was just perfect. If you’re in need of something like that Well, I guess I just can’t recommend this book enough, then, can I? (Goodreads)

-Saar