It Started With a Giggle by Kirsty Ferry

My thanks to the publishers Choc Lit, for sending me an ebook of It Started With a Giggle. As always the decision to read and review was my own, and this review forms my honest opinion.

Blurb

Sometimes the best things start in the strangest ways …. with a giggle!
On a night out in Edinburgh, single mum Liza-Belle Graham finds herself revealing her hopes and dreams to a green-eyed stranger. Liza always wanted to run an “arty-crafty-booky” business, and she’s seen the perfect empty shop to make her dreams a reality. No harm in telling the stranger. It’s not like she’ll see him again …
But Scott McCreadie is no mystery man – he’s an interior designer looking for new premises. And who does Liza bump into when she arranges a viewing? None other than Scott trying to steal her perfect shop!
Is Liza’s arty-crafty-booky dream in jeopardy, or is a new dream about to begin?

Review

The latest novella from Kirsty Ferry is the latest in a series of books which involve a cat named Schubert! This is an entirely new series for me, and whilst it can be read as a standalone, it’s a bit of a different ‘flavour’ to what I’ve got used to from the author, and so it took me a little while to settle into it.

With this series, there seems to be a touch of the mystical thrown in – something I hadn’t expected, and with no back story or understanding of the wider picture, I think that perhaps some of it went over my head a little, which is a shame as by the end I was intrigued and wanting to know more, which immediately led to me exploring the earlier titles in this series.

As ever with Kirsty Ferry, she has a wonderful knack for creating characters you really wish would come to life so that you could go and have drinks and laughs with them. Here, Liza-Belle encounters Scott McCreadie and drunkenly reveals her desire to own an arty-crafty-booky business to him, only to find him hijacking her dream when he gatecrashes the viewing she has arranged on the vacant shop premises in which she has set her heart on beginning her business.

There is a great cast of characters, most especially Liza’s daughter Isabelle, and Scott’s sister, Nessa (and of course the rather mysterious Schubert the cat) and I enjoyed the dual perspective narrative as both Liza and Scott share their perspective of events, which in turn provides humour and crossed wires!

There is a great sense of warmth which emanates from this gentle, mythically enhanced novella. Although it hasn’t had the same instant impact as The Tempest Sister’s series had for me, it still bears the marks of all that makes Kirsty Ferry books such a joy to read. An enjoyable, quick read from a series I will definitely read more of in the future.