Review: Lovers and Newcomers by Rosie Thomas

by Susan Roberts

November 2016; Overlook Press; 9781468302653;
ebook & print (448 pages); women's fiction
a free book was provided by the author

Miranda Meadowe decides a lonely widowhood in her crumbling country house is not for her. Reviving a university dream, she invites five of her oldest friends to come and join her to live and to stave off the prospect of old age. All have their own reasons for accepting.

To begin with, the omens are good. They laugh, dance, drink and behave badly, as they cling to the heritage they thought was theirs forever: power, health, stability. They are the baby boomers; the world is theirs to change.

But as old attractions resurface alongside new tensions, they discover that the clock can’t be put back. When building work reveals an Iron Age burial site of a tribal queen, the outside world descends on their idyllic retreat, and the isolation of the group is breached. The past is revealed – and the future that beckons is very different from the one they imagined.

Comments:  
"Spellbinding...Honest and compassionate. (Thomas's books are a delight from start to finish."  Daily Express

"Her characters are so interesting and realistic that readers will be reluctant to let them go." Library Journal Review

"Thomas writes with a sharp nib, not a dull computer key.  She is neither mawkish or squeamish, but full of fresh images." Washington Post Book World.

My Review of Lovers and Newcomers:

Six college friends reunite in their 60s to live together on the same property.  It sounds like a great premise for a story - can friendships be re-ignited after people have lived totally different lives for many years?  Once I got all of the characters figured out, I really started to enjoy this book.  I think that it's a book that will be most enjoyed by readers the same age as the characters because many of the topics focus on aging, health and the struggles in  long term marriages.  Younger readers will enjoy it too but I think that older readers will understand the characters better. My favorite characters were the three women and I identified parts of each of them in my life.  By the middle of the book, I wanted to keep reading to find out how the women adjusted to the changes in their lives and how they lived with often strained friendships.  To me, the women in this novel are the reason that it's such a great book to read.

Buy Lovers and Newcomers at Amazon

About the Author:
Rosie Thomas is the author of numerous critically acclaimed, bestselling novels. She has won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award twice, for her novels Iris & Ruby and Sunrise. Born in a small village in northern Wales, Thomas discovered a love of traveling and mountaineering when her children were grown. In the years since, she has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas, competed in the Peking to Paris car rally, trekked in the footsteps of Shackleton on South Georgia Island, and spent time on a tiny Bulgarian research station in Antarctica. She   ranks among the top 100 authors whose books are borrowed from United Kingdom libraries.

Susan Roberts grew up in the Detroit area but after deciding that city life wasn't for her she moved to North Carolina after college. She and her husband have several acres of land and they enjoy gardening and they travel extensively. Susan reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook.

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