Crack open an Easter read

Submitted: 30th March 2018

It’s Easter weekend so it’s time to relax. There are some lovely books to bring sunshine into your reading even if there’s none in the sky where you are. We all need sun this time of year now that those pesky clocks have lost an hour. Get your daily dose by opening a book if all else fails. Or better still, top up that reading tan by sitting in the sun with a book:

Instead of searching for chocolate eggs…

Step aboard the SS Oceanic like Maisie Porter and sail into the Australian sunset in order to get married. Alright so she goes to marry a distant cousin who turns out to not who she had hoped he would be. But she ends up arriving in Australia where the pearl industry was at its peak and where diving for pearls was one of the most valued jobs. It’s in this changing world that Maisie starts to realise that she feels as trapped as those pearls and the shell around her will be harder to break.

When trouble is breading like Easter bunnies…

War might be over in this book, but for Alexa who is growing up in Cornwall, her life is a series of problems and heartache. She grows up with Harvey, a close friend, and her mother, but tragedy forces her to take a path she would not have considered otherwise. This girl has to stay strong for she is tested and wants to find out about her family and the secrets she knows they aren’t telling her. But a visit to Venice in search of answers might not be the best solution.

Wake up and smell the spring flowers!

This book is so evocative it’s almost like wandering into a field of violets. Isabella lives in London but goes to stay on a violet farm in Devon, and really starts to appreciate the beauty of nature and starts to appreciate that the old adage of taking time in life to smell the flowers can actually be sensible advice. Violet farms were a very important part of life in Devon and brought in lots of jobs and money to the area. The legacy of this can still be seen and smelt today and this book will make you appreciate the work which goes in to that single bunch of flowers which now sits on your table

Sick of chocolate? Get yourself a gemstone shaped like an egg….a sapphire..

There’s definitely sun in this book! Set amongst the cinnamon plantations and the sapphire industry, there’s sun and sparkles all around. Of course, there’s an awful lot of drama too and some heartbreak. Dinah Jefferies evokes setting and exotic locations so well, you’ll forget hunting for that little bit of blue sky and end up feeling the heat of the sun on your face.