This heartwarming tale about family, love and regret makes for perfect summer reading.
With The Honey Farm on the Hill, Jo Thomas has created a warmly affectionate story of family, love and loss covered with an attempt to save a honey farm in Crete.
The story follows Nell, forced to revisit her past in Crete and to confront what happened eighteen years ago when she fell in love and returned to England heartbroken. But as well as bringing up memories of her past, Nell has to try and help return the bees to the honey farm where she is staying and she learns that the things worth fighting for isn’t always easy to get.
Wonderfully evocative, The Honey Farm on the Hill is filled with wonderful sights, sounds and flavours of Crete that the reader is so swept into Nell’s story and surroundings that it makes it a difficult book to put down. It is gently entertaining and never too taxing or complicated to keep up with, making it an ideal summer holiday read.
But it is also emotionally engaging – the reader really feels for Nell as she struggles to deal with long lost family, while having to let her daughter go and all the while trying to create a new life for herself. Yes, there is no real strong conflict that isn’t easily overcome and tidied up nicely but the reader believes in the characters and each of their individual pain which helps to maintain interest in the outcome of the story.
It is the sort of novel that can easily be read in one sitting because of the way in which the story flows with ease, helped by the straight forward structure of the book that brings Nell’s past and present cleverly together.
While it not be too taxing to read, there is no denying that it is a heartfelt and emotionally engaging story that reveals how sometimes revisiting your past can in fact help you move forward with your life.
The Honey Farm on the Hill is available to buy now.