Jenny Kane, Misty Mornings at the Potting Shed

I was drawn to this title because it was about running a nursery (my sister works in one, and I love my garden, so I visit local nurseries when I can). Also, I enjoyed Jenny Kane's Mill Grange series - her books are pleasant, easy reads which assume that people will do jobs they enjoy, like gardening or archaeology or running historic houses - all of which happen to be the sort of jobs I enjoy, so I can identify with the aspirations of the characters. And they are people whose lives are often interesting and complicated, so that they don't necessarily fit into society at large. For instance, here, one of the characters, Ed, is a barrister, who cares about the law, but is unhappy commuting and working in a high-pressure office; Tristan, an old friend turns up and is puzzled that Ed is "wasting" his law training. Ed is the sort of person I understand, who values helping people and being there for his partner, so I enjoyed his story as much as I enjoyed that of the other people who work at the Potting Shed, which anyway sounds like the sort of place I'd like to spend time - we do have a lovely nursery nearby, where we go to sit in the garden and eat delicious food and drink coffee served in pretty mugs, before browsing the plants and "preloved" garden accessories (there's an idea for the Potting Shed!) 

That's a nice cheerful cover, isn't it?

Other characters? Well, there's Belle, who has an autistic teenage son, who resents her new job at the nursery. Sara, meanwhile, is young and bright - will she be beguiled by awful Tristan into a more ambitious life (and when will she notice just how awful he is?) Maddie is trying to run the Potting Shed while her sister is away despite a desperate staff shortage, Jo is struggling with his complicated feelings for a co-worker and his anxieties about his elderly mother. The author writes with sympathy and insight into their problems and appreciates that not everyone fits into conventional categories. You know that all will be well in the end, because this is romantic fiction, but you can also appreciate good storytelling and intelligent writing along the way. Oh, and it's part of a series, which is all to the good.

Thanks, as ever, to NetGalley and Aria for an advance copy.