Welcome to My World

by Miranda Dickinson

[Leah]

Close your eyes and imagine the world is your oyster… And now imagine never seeing it. Welcome to Harriet Langton’s world. All her life she’s dreamt of travelling the globe – fate always got in the way. Working as a travel agent, the closest Harri comes to her dream destination of Venice is booking the trip for someone else. But everything changes when travel fanatic Alex drops in. With her boyfriend Rob tied up with work, Harri is persuaded to help Alex in his quest for love. But in her attempts to help, Harri soon discovers that she’s alienating those around her. Desperate to leave her life behind, will her dreams finally come true? Or will Harri’s leap of faith be her biggest mistake yet?

Last year I read and adored Miranda Dickinson’s debut novel Fairytale of New York, I thought the story was excellent, and the ending made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside which is all I ask from a novel. So when I saw her second novel up on Amazon, I was thrilled and it became one of the novels I was desperate to read and it killed me I had to wait until November to read it but when my copy finally arrived, I immediately finished up my previous novel and got stuck into Welcome To My World.

I was sucked into Welcome To My World immediately as the full extent of Harri’s problems isn’t immediately told to us. All we know from the first paragraph is that Harri is not the type of person to lock herself in a toilet, yet that is where she finds herself. We then travel back to the fateful day that sets the night in question in motion and from then on, at the beginning of each chapter we get a snippet about Harri’s present situation before diving back into how it all came that Harri found herself locked in a toilet stall. I thought it was such a clever way of writing the novel as it really built up the suspense over why exactly Harri had seen fit to lock herself in a toilet. I’m not the most patient person in the world, and used to have a habit of skipping to the back of the novel to learn how it all ends, and you have no idea how desperate I was to do the same with Welcome To My World. However, I kept my patience in check and was handsomely rewarded come the end of the novel.

But what Miranda really excells at, is that she manages to make her characters so real and she connects us to them so well. I fell in love with Harri from the first line, and she’s such a wonderful character that I truly hoped the story would end well for her. The fact that she’s a travel agent who has never actually travelled made me feel so sad. I wasn’t entirely convinced by Rob, Harri’s boyfriend, because he worked away a lot we barely get to see him, and I admit he did seem nice at first but I always had a few doubts about him. The main man for me, though, was the lovely lovely Alex. I loved how he fed Harri’s travelling addiction, and I loved how easy-going their relationship was. For me, that was my favourite part of the novel. Alex’s mum Viv is a prominent character and really sparkled and Harri’s best friend Stella and Aunt Rosemary (who you may recognise from Fairytale of New York as she’s Rosie’s mum!) add to the cast nicely.

I must admit, I did worry that Welcome To My World wouldn’t live up to my expectations, and wouldn’t match the fantasticness that was Fairytale of New York but I am very happy to announce that I was wrong. Welcome To My World was just as good as Fairytale of New York. It’s true, there’s not a lot going action-wise, but for me, I read Miranda’s books for the story, for the unravelling of the plot, not for cliched action scenes that appear in a lot of Chick Lit novels. Miranda has a very distinct writing style, and a distinct way of telling a story and for me it’s a huge hit. You have no idea how sad I am to have finished the novel as it means a wait of another 12 months before Miranda’s next one It Started With A Kiss, but believe me, it will definitely be worth the wait.