Customer Reviews

Flora's Lot

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Flora Stanza has inherited a major share in the family antiques business and is determined to prove that she is not just a pretty face and to contribute her share in making the business more profitable. She sub lets her London flat and settles into a tiny cottage in the country town where her distant cousin, Charles Stanza is presently running the antiques auction house with the aid of his horsey, dominating fiancee, Annabella. They, naturally, resent her being there, and do everything to convince her to sell her shares to them and move back to London. Flora takes to the trade at once and is determined to put up with any inconvenience to prove herself. There are lots of references to the TV shows, Antiques Roadshow and Bargain Hunt and to the real grinding slog of house clearing, including the disgusting filth of some of the premises that auctioneering firms have to endure. It's a chick lit book, light and amusing...lovely for an in-between read and I knew that I loved the author when I read her bio at the beginning of the book...."The authors' hobbies are housework and ironing, but, unfortunately, she doesn't have much time for either as she feels it her duty to keep a close eye on the afternoon chat shows!"

Bidding for Love, released in England as Flora's Lot, is another charming and engaging novel from Katie Fforde. Her heroine finds herself deeply involved in helping to run a low-profile auction house and bring it into the twenty-first, post Antiques Roadshow, century. While her innocence is a trifle overdone, she is nonetheless delightful, impervious to insults and perhaps more crafty than she initially appears. Her adventures as she works her way towards success in love and in business have their humorous side, even as the reader knows that she will succeed in the end.

Ms Fforde is an excellent author whose works, concededly not heavy going, draw the reader in to the world of her heroines. She is a superb writer who makes her characters and their worlds come alive. The high quality of the writing, the charm of her style and her characters, and the humor place these books on a higher level than the usual chick-lit.

For reasons I do not understand, Ms Fforde seems to have remained relatively unheralded in this country. Fans of Rosamunde Pilcher and Georgette Heyer will love this author. To say nothing of fans of Antiques Roadshow.

Katie Fforde writes lighthearted and fun romances, often with a small village theme or some other 'hook' to add a bit of interest.

Flora's Lot is about Flora Stanza, a Londoner through and through, who inherits the controlling share of an auction house business in the west country and decides to spend a couple of months working there to see how it all works. Of course she's a decidedly spare part, knows nothing about antiques or auctions and discovers that the other director, her sort-of cousin Charles, is firmly wrapped round the thumb of the horsy Arabella, to whom he is engaged. Neither Charles nor Arabella want Flora - they want her to sell a few of her shares to Arabella and trot back to London.

Flora, evidently a recalcitrant young woman, decides to stay and help out around the office as a kind of office junior, something for which she is apparently qualified. And despite her cousin and his fiancée wanting her to leave, they provide her with both accommodation (a holiday cottage in the middle of a wood in the middle of nowhere) and a land rover to use when her car is damaged.

A few more people join in the plot - Henry, a mysterious local handsome man she keeps bumping into; William who sleeps on the holiday cottage's couch occasionally; some of the staff of the auction house and the choir that Flora joins - and her cat Imelda's kittens who are born in her shoe cupboard.

What was interesting about reading this book is that it felt very familiar... And I soon realised why. If any of you have read Georgette Heyer's "The Grand Sophy" you will find that this is a modern take on that story. The hero even has the same name! The events aren't exactly the same, of course, but the overall plot is very like The Grand Sophy. I think this is probably something Katie Fforde recognised as at one point she mentions, in a scene at the auction house, that someone had a whole series of first edition Georgette Heyer novels, perhaps a little nod and wink to those of us who spotted the similarities.

Flora's Lot is of course a modern story - sex doesn't wait until marriage, people are seen wandering around in states of semi nudity, people get drunk and make improper advances. But it's a fun story with likeable characters, including the cat, and a satisfying, if slightly facile, resolution. Read and enjoy!

Flora's Lot

Katie Fforde

To enjoy Flora's Lot wait for a rainy day, crack open a slab of chocolate, pour a glass of red wine... and put your mind into neutral gear.

Katie Fforde has produced a prime example of fluffy, frothy chick lit with her latest best seller.

The predictable plot follows young city slicker Flora Stanza as she makes her hapless, bumbling way into the family antique business set in a rural English village, complete with choirs, eccentric old men and Landrovers.

She (obviously) falls in love with the unsuitably stuffy, yet devastatingly handsome Charles Stanza, who is engaged to the inevitably horsey Annabella.

Flora tries in vain to keep her hormones in check and her hands of Charles while at the same time warding off the advances of the lecherous town philanderer, Henry.

Katie Fforde has written a number of formulaic best sellers and while you can guess right from the first chapter how it's all going to end, Flora's Lot is nevertheless compulsive reading.

What I couldn't get over, though, was the glaring fact that Charles Stanza is Flora's cousin. Why Fforde introduced this complication is beyond me, and I read on in morbid fascination to see how the blood relative / incest thing would pan out.

I would not recommend this book to anybody with high expectations of a high brow read. But, if you're looking for an inconsequential, light read that will fill a few hours, Flora's Lot is harmless fun.

If you are a Katie-holic like I am, you are going to eat this book up with a spoon. Like all her books, Bidding for Love is a sugary concoction, light on substance, heavy on delicious guilt. Because honestly, all her books are pretty much alike, and honestly, they say little--but in such a captivating, wonderful, can't-put-it-down way! And this one is truly one of her best, I don't know why, because all the characters in her books characters are charming, and all her plots are equally lovely--but this one has KITTENS in it!

We meet Flora on page one. A beautiful young trendy Londoner with a closet full of designer clothes and a social life full of the best clubs and restaurants, she has sublet her flat and come to a sleepy countryside village to check out a business she has inherited from an uncle. Stanza and Stanza is a struggling auction house, and Flora now has more than 50% ownership. The other owner is her unbearably stuffy distant cousin Charles (Fforde often has people named Charles in her books!), who loathes Flora on sight, and ditto.

But Flora is more than she seems. And she is determined to learn the business, take an active hand in it no matter what Charles (and his horrible fiancee Annabelle) has to say--and to make sure that her pregnant cat Imelda (because she loves shoes!) has her kittens in peace.

All of this fluff comes together for a perfectly satisfying ending, and of course it is happy, this is Katie Fforde!

A perfect summer read. Simply lovely.

I enjoy Katie Fforde's books as a light, unpretentious take-your-mind-away-from-problems kind of reading. She has sweet romantic-comedy plots and nice characters. However I think she tends to fall short on some characters development and her "dénouements" are often under-developed and almost anticlimactic. The story is nice and entertaining but I am usually left with a sense that she could have done a little better disentangling the story. I think the editor should have picked on that. All in all, a nice read for a rainy day.

I'm a fan of Katie Fforde's books! "Flora's Lot" is the one book of hers I read over and over. Fforde's characterizations are well thought through and creative, as is the plot for this book. The story from the first page to the last is a great read! I'm not going to waste your time by including a summary of the book, except to say it was great to read of a young woman starts working in a family business where the family members don't care for her. The twist near the end will surprise you. This was a fun, read. Flora's Lot

A couple of hours' gentle, easy reading, with a few quiet chuckles - and I always appreciate a cat or two.

Was interested to read a few references to this as a tribute to Heyer's A Grand Sophy, which is amusing if true.

Found the repeated cries of "OMG! inscest!" a little stupid: they are second cousins something or other removed (says so at the start), which isnt much more related than many people - but is a lot to say each time, so cousin is shorthand (overlooking that cousins are technically legal in most countries - although you'd need a better looking bunch of cousins than I ended up with).

Prefer the UK edition name, which is the one I read...

Inspired me to borrow a few more from the library; just the right sort of book for a gloomy day.

I am actually almost done with this book. It has been interesting enough for a chick-lit read. BUT, what is creeping me out is that Charles is Flora's cousin! And though somewhere at the beginning of the book, it is mentioned tht they are distant cousins, they constantly refer to each other as cousins in the book! Flora flip flops between romantic and "cousinly" feelings for Charles, as does Charles for Flora. Why did they need to be cousins? They could be from the same family without being related somehow. I generally have enjoyed the book so far, but this element freaked me out, quite frankly!

Great book. Wasnt the cover illustrated on the cover as I had hoped but it is still a great book.