Follow Me Home

by Cathy Woodman

[Leah]

I love Cathy Woodman’s Talyton St George series, she’s written 8 books in the series so far and one novella, and I have yet to become bored with her tales! There’s always new characters to meet, and it’s the kind of series where the books can just keep coming and coming because the village is a bit like Doctor Who’s Tardis and can fit hundreds (okay, not hundreds, but you get my theory) of new people in time and time again. There’s a few stories I’d like to see – I’m particularly interested in Ally Jackson’s story, she’s been mentioned a few times and I’m hoping to see her get her own book, especially after the events of Follow Me Home, as her life could go in a different direction with the new way her life has gone. After reading the preceding novella The Three Of Us, I was very excited to meet Zara, in Follow Me Home and I wasn’t at all disappointed.

Follow Me Home introduces us to midwife Zara, who I liked immediately. Zara’s a lovely character, so kind and warm and if I were ever having a baby, I would like Zara to be my midwife. I enjoyed her midwife tales, and being introduced to her mums-to-be, especially young Zoe – I would actually have liked Zoe to get her own tale, about her pregnancy, as she seemed such a nice character. I was a bit wary of Zara when she admitted to liking dogs – not liking dogs in Talyton St George is bizarre! EVERYONE has a dog! It’s an animal town! But, I liked that with the help of Lewis, the shepherd who works on her twin sister’s farm, I liked that she could overcome it enough to help out an injured dog and I liked even more when Frosty walked into her heart and refused to let her go! I loved little Frosty, even if she was a bit wild. I enjoyed the fun and excitement she brought to the novel. Dogs just somehow make novels so much better. A good novel can become fantastic with a dog! Especially a loveable dog like Frosty.

I very much enjoyed the dynamic between Zara and Lewis. They seemed to click right from the off, which is always good. I enjoyed their interactions, and Lewis seemed super sweet, but as the novel wore on, I definitely felt that Lewis was quick to flare, quick to make accusations without listening first and by the end of the novel I wasn’t really sure how I felt about Lewis. For so much of the novel, he seemed level-headed and mature, but whenever Zara tried to pull back a touch, or put her grandma before him – an entirely understandable decision, since her Grandma was deteriorating, he was quick to accuse her of not loving him, of having an affair, and it just made him seem really young, which wasn’t the opinion I had had of him from the beginning. Those little flare-ups just made the age-gap more apparent than it needed to be and he needed to tone himself down a little bit, just because he seemed to flare up for no reason, out of nowhere, and that was never really explained.

Follow Me Home was such a sweet read. It had a rather serious centre, though, with Zara’s grandma Rosemary, and it made me super sad to see her suffering and see her falling into a black hole. I really enjoyed the novel, though, it dealt with some pretty difficult things, but did it in a way that didn’t make the novel overly serious. I loved getting to know Zara, and I liked her relationship with Lewis, for the most part, there was just a few quirks to his personality that smacked of him being a touch controlling, which is always worrying. But it was a lovely novel, so good to be back with older characters and see them again (it always gives me a thrill to see a character from an older book) and even better to meet the new folks of Talyton, who we may be meeting for the first time. I can’t wait for Cathy Woodman’s next Talyton novel, it’s one of my favourite book series that keeps delivering again, and again.