Blog Tour: Sunshine Over Bluebell Cliff by Della Galton

A place to make your dreams come true...
Clara King is left in sole charge of a fabulous new cliff top hotel for the summer. The owner has barely left the country when Clara realises that someone is hell bent on putting the Bluebell Cliff Hotel out of business.

It becomes a race against time to hunt down the sneaky saboteur before they succeed in bringing the hotel to its knees.

With her dream job under threat and her personal life in chaos, Clara discovers that, when what you love the most is in danger, it can bring out the very best in you.

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Review

Clara's dream job takes a turn for the unexpected when her boss has to make an urgent trip overseas, placing Clara in charge of the Bluebell Cliff, a boutique hotel that hopes to "make dreams come true". Unfortunately, it seems someone would rather it all ends in a nightmare, and Clara must juggle family drama and idiosyncratic staff with the hunt for a saboteur.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. In some ways, it delivered as a light and fluffy romance with a hint of mystery, the perfect escape for those stuck at home. Dorset sounds so beautiful, they could use this book as a travel brochure, and the wide cast of interesting characters added depth and colour to the story.

There were a few niggles, however, that disappointed me. Firstly, there was a lot of telling, not showing. With Clara as the POV character, every scene and interaction is filtered through her experiences in a way that slows down the plot and bulks out the book. Paragraphs are stuffed full of 'she decided', 'she felt', 'she remembered' which puts too much of the action at one level removed.

Secondly, I felt let down by the ending of the mystery sub-plot. A good mystery needs clues and hints for the reader to find or look back on, but here, the solution is half-obvious and half comes out of nowhere so my vigilance in searching for possible motives went unrewarded. The big reveal happens through a phone call when someone else solves the mystery.

I didn't dislike the book, but sometimes the prose felt stuffy and the mystery could well have been handled better, so I'm giving this three stars.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book via Rachel's Random Resources, all opinions are my own