Nobody writes contemporary romantic comedy like multi award-winning author Jane Lovering! She has this wonderful ability of balancing humour, sadness, pathos and emotion with flair and aplomb and her latest novel, Little Teashop of Horrors is her best book yet! Quirky, hilarious and a joy from start to finish, Little Teashop of Horrors continues to cement her standing as one of the genre’s most talented writers.

When your best friend is absolutely gorgeous and has men throwing themselves at her on a daily basis, you resign yourself to being overlooked and dismissed as a Plain Jane, sentiments which Amy Knowles is all too familiar with. Working with Jules in the tearoom at Monkpark Hall, Amy has become used to seeing men’s jaws drop whenever her pretty best friend walks into the room. Not that the stately home they both work at is exactly awash with eligible bachelors bearing engagement rings. But there is one man who notices her. One man who who doesn’t think that she is plain, ordinary and not worthy of attention: Joshua Wilson, a man who likes to keep himself to himself and the entire world at bay…

Joshua flies his birds of prey at Monkpark Hall for visitor entertainment and has grown used to hiding behind the walls and defenses which he has built around himself. Wounds from his traumatic past have not yet healed which is why Joshua prefers to interact with his birds rather than with people. Yet, when he met Amy, Joshua thought that he had found a kindred spirit he could relate to and not feel judged or pressured by. Joshua hasn’t felt so ease with another human being for years and years, but could the arrival of hotshot Edmund Evershott to Monkpark Hall put paid to his friendship with Amy and ruin any chance they might have of having a future together?

Suave, sophisticated and charismatic, Edmund Evershott has come to Monkpark Hall as the new manager with plenty of ideas and plans for the future of the stately home. Edmund has also taken quite a shine to Amy. But are his intentions truly honourable? Joshua suspects that Edmund is not as perfect as he seems and that he may be up to no good, but how is he going to prove that? Will he manage to get to uncover the secrets Edmund is hiding and save Amy from a broken heart? Or is an introverted recluse like Joshua no match for a man of the world like Edmund?

Jane Lovering never disappoints and she is on outstanding form with Little Teashop of Horrors. A superbly talented writer who never shies away from tackling hard-hitting issues in her writing, Jane Lovering has this wonderful ability of making you howl with laughter and sob like a baby on the same page and this is evident in her latest tale. At times moving and heartbreaking and at other times riotous and laugh out loud funny, Little Teashop of Horrors is a fantastic tale that will stay with you long after you read the last page.

A writer who has never let me down with her uplifting, believable and engrossing contemporary tales, Jane Lovering hits it out of the park again with Little Teashop of Horrors, a book I wholeheartedly recommend.

Lovely feel good romance book. Totally lioved up to its description and i just adored this book. Have recommend to many friends

Joshua is a damaged soul, a loner who only feels comfortable with his birds. As a falconer on an estate in Yorkshire, Joshua keeps to himself until he starts talking to Amy. Amy lives with her Gran, always feels insecure and second best, particularly since her Mom abandoned her. The characters in this story are quirky, and will steal your heart. A different kind of book, but it will restore your faith in humanity.

The Little Teashop of Horrors is a joy to read. I fell in love with the hero, Josh, when he first appeared in the book, breaking the rules with a bird of prey on his wrist. This book is written with lots of humour, but introduces darker themes too – Josh with his very troubled past and Amy with hang ups from her youth and her body image. Jane Lovering has a wonderful way of evoking an image with minimum words that I greatly admire. The hero and heroine in this book are not conventional hero and heroine material, but that makes them even more special. Add a villain, a stately home and a disabled owl - what more could you want?

Monkpark stately home in Yorkshire has a new administrator, who has his own ideas for making money from the estate and he does not care how many employees gets hurt in the process.
Amy successfully runs the tea room at Monkpark with her skinny, confident, boy mad friend Julia.
Josh, falconer at Monkplace, suffered a turbulent childhood and trusts his wild birds rather than the people around him.
Can Monkplace be saved?
This is a charming story with some laugh out loud moments and some dark demons. A novel to read whilst touring the countryside visiting the delicious tea shops in the beautiful country homes Great Britain is renowned for.

This is such a sweetly endearing story of three lost, broken "birds" struggling the find their own version of happily ever after. I had some difficulty associating the book title with the story, but I think the "Horrors" are a bit more cerebral. After a stuttered climax, things are looking up for the main characters so all is, in fact, well that ends well.

Little Teashop of Horrors
Jane Lovering
Published 28th March 2017



Do you ever look at a book and think to yourself, “I know exactly what this book is going to be about. I know how the story line is going to flow, and the characters and everything else there is to know about this book”? I have to confess that those thoughts went racing through my head as I looked at the cover of this book and got ready to sit down and read it. I honestly thought that I knew what type of book this was going to be. It was going to be a sweet little romance that didn’t take too much concentration to get through and that I would finish in a matter of hours. Well I did finish it in a matter of hours, but that’s because I couldn’t put it down. And I didn’t really have a clue what was going to happen between the covers.

Little Teashop of Horrors is about two main characters, Amy and Josh, who both work for the fictional National Heritage Trust home of Monkpark Hall. Josh works with the birds of prey display and Amy is the whizz who works in the café and creates delicious treats suck as sticky buns and cupcakes decorated with buttercream. Josh is a decidedly withdrawn man who only seems to take solace with the company of his four birds and finds interaction with people a challenge. He doesn’t really appreciate many people who work at the isolated Hall but he is inexplicably drawn to Amy. Amy is someone he feels safe with and he can’t help but feel a certain sense of physical attraction to her, which he feels somewhat confused about. Amy has completed at university degree in Business Administration but is working in the café because she likes the idea of running her own business. Also if she works on the estate she can live in the subsidised housing that is on the grounds of the Hall which is only available to workers which will keep her dotty old Gran in the home she has lived in for sixty years, who brought her up after her own mother abandoned her.

This is a romance story but it’s with a twist. It doesn’t flow the staid old lines of boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love and boy and girl end up together happily forever. The characters are drawn beautifully and are flawed and glorious all at the same time. Amy isn’t your perfect, five foot seven inches tall woman with flowing auburn tresses and captivating sea green eyes. She is, in her own words short and dumpy, with brownish hair and blueish eyes, a chest that would make Pamela Anderson proud and she doesn’t describe herself as beautiful, but rather just average bordering on plain. Josh is incredibly handsome with model like features, tall, blonde with an unshaven chiselled jawline but his assets are hidden behind dirty, scruffy clothes and a lack of obvious hygiene. There is also something slightly unhinged about Josh, although he is aware of it and hates it about himself.

His hair was half on end, he hadn’t shaved for a while and his shirt was untucked at the back and flopped over the seat of his jeans like a gold-prospector’s ‘escape hatch’, but that was typical Josh. Nothing mattered but the birds. I didn’t think he’d ever actually looked me in the face since he’s arrived at the Hall in the winter, but I liked him. He didn’t leer past me at Jules, like a lot of the men who worked here – which always made me want to stand right in front of them waving – or talk to my, admittedly robust, chest. There was something gentle about him, something that made me thing of the old china we had on the dresser in the café. Faded and fragile and a bit chipped around the edges.


Within the first chapter we learn that Edmund Evershott is the new manager of Monkpark Hall, and he has plans to make this Hall one of the best attractions the National Heritage Trust has in the Yorkshire region. But right from the start he puts the cafés existence and thus Amy’s job into jeopardy with his plan to close the café and turn it into an education block. This sends Amy into overdrive and she comes up with several ways to bring crowds and raise money that she shares with Edmund who dismisses them offhandedly as unworkable. But he does take Amy into his confidence and shares that Monkpark Hall is in desperate financial trouble and that the whole estate is open to possible sale because the National Trust would find it unable to maintain its own budget and a burden it cannot continue to own. Over the course of weeks Evershott takes Amy out to dinner and makes sure that the workers see that they have a ‘special’ relationship on the estate. And suggestions that Amy had made to Edmund start to occur at the Hall despite his saying they were impossible.
Edmund was wringing every possible drop out of my ideas…. And I wasn’t quite sure if I felt angriest at this appropriation of my ideas without so much as a hint of a ‘thank you’, or the way he was laying it all on so thickly.
All of this makes Amy feel very uncomfortable, but the idea of everyone losing their jobs and homes because of the Hall being sold to a private developer keeps her mouth shut as he draws her further and further into clandestine goings on of the Hall management. Even when keeping her mouth shut about breaking rules the National Heritage Trust makes her question the moral standard of her new boss.

An unhurried friendship develops between Amy and Josh, and she gradually earns his trust and he eventually reveals the reasons he seems to be deathly afraid of enclosed spaces and frightened of close contact with people. This information is drawn out of him slowly and discloses great suffering in his past, creating a bridge of trust between the two characters.

“Please Josh. You need help.” Now he raised his head. He wasn’t seeing me, his eyes were fixed somewhere on years ago. “S too late,” he said. There was no tone at all in his voice, no sign that he cared about anything. “Too late for anything for me.”
I bend down beside him, but carefully didn’t touch him. There was something in that inward start that told me any kind of physical contact might break him.

“You reckon I'm a nutter?” I put my mug down, nearly empty now and she refilled it from the pot.
“No. And, by the way, there’s no such thing as ‘a nutter’, so you can knock that sort of talk off right now.” She was talking half-stern, letting me know that she meant it, but half-laughing, to stop from sounding like she was angry.
“Sometimes people don’t cope well with things, or they have problems they were born with – none of it is anyone’s fault.” Now she reached out a hand, I saw her fingers kind of creep across the table like she wanted to touch me, but didn’t.

This is possibly the most touching, unexpected part of the story. To have the male character needing to be ‘rescued’ by the female is almost revolutionary in a romance tale. And the effects of the abuse in Josh’s past are carefully written and realistically portrayed by Lovering. He is a sympathetically written character and Amy’s ability to win his trust and know how far she could push him was sensitive and intelligent. This was by far my favourite part of this unexpected romance. It ignores the typical romance tropes and explored a new facet to the romantic relationship.

“Now Edmund thinks it’s a good idea to put it about that the Hall is haunted.”
“Maybe it is,” I said, but really I'm thinking is it a good thing that she smacked me? Does it mean that she reckons I'm enough of a mate now to get a good clip for being out of line? Then I don’t know how I'm meant to feel about that. And over it all there’s that feeling again, that she really sees me. I'm not just that bloke with the birds to her, I'm Josh.

Although not a major portion of the story line, in the authors notes we discover that Monkpark Hall is actually based upon an actual home in the UK called Nunnington Hall and the description of the inside and the gardens of the fictional Hall are all the richer for it. The gardens feel alive and the staff feels genuine. The activities created to attract visitors sound appealing and fun and it’s not difficult to imagine the day to day running of a great old house. And it becomes clear that the workers belong to Monkpark Hall as much as Monkpark Hall belongs to them. The generational lives of the workers at the Hall are apparent throughout the whole book.

Some of the lesser characters in the book add life and colour to the piece. We have Jules, who …had a tendency to go off in pursuit of any man that took her fancy like a whippet after a sausage. And Amy’s crotchety old Gran provides more than a few giggles with such throw away lines like “There’s too much water in that pot, tea’ll be like widdle….” Edmund is the obvious villain, but he plays rotten really well. Now he’d lowered his voice to a deep whisper that was making me slightly uncomfortable. “Just remember, no café, no job; no job, no house. You're a clever girl Amy, you can work it out.” These other characters add vibrancy and zip to the story, making it so you don’t have the claustrophobic feeling on focusing only on the two main characters.

An added surprise to this novel is that Lovering is quite respectable at adding a funny line into the writing that makes you giggle out loud. More than once I found myself snickering at these diminutive little lines that were really quite comical and all the characters have their moments. And it’s not that fake kind of humour that is obvious and really dull, but rather sharp and biting sarcasm, but humorous as all get out.

I do have a problem with the title of this novel. Little Teashop of Horrors just doesn’t really make it clear what this story is going to be about to a potential reader unless you are aware of the 1960’s movie Little Shop of Horrors. But this book has nothing to do with a carnivorous plant or anything fantastical and the only thing it does have in common is the shop aspect. There were no atrocious situations that happen in the book, although there were some terrible situations played for full comedic effect in the café. It just feels as if the title was plonked onto this book without any real thought behind the meaning and it’s just plain wrong for the piece. I fear that the potential market for this book will be lost because of it.

Lovering has revealed herself in this novel to be really quite brilliant at writing the unexpected romance with the offbeat theme and a touch of darkness. The story clips along at a nice pace and there is no insta-love situation that makes many romance novels sickeningly unrealistic. Clever and witty, this will appeal to people who enjoy the psychological side of people and characters who are three dimensional. Yes, the problems are sorted out by the end of the book, and yet it’s not totally done away with, as deep seated psychological problems are never healed with just a cuppa tea and a cake. Quirky and different, the writer’s voice is clear and appealing, the characters fondly drawn and the love storyline is charming and delightful. Ingenious, entertaining, insightful and amusing, this is a great romance novel and a welcome difference from the puerile rubbish so often churned out.

Monkpark Hall is a lovely old manor house in Yorkshire which is open to the public and Amy works in the tearooms. Having to wear an Edwardian costume, which doesn't really suit her slightly too large figure, Amy always feels unattractive and sure that she will not be able to attract any men

Josh is the bird man who flies his birds for the visitors and has a very damaged past so that he spends his time alone and doesn't let anyone in........that is until he becomes friends with Amy and gradually the pair of them start to open up to each other.

A lovely story bringing two people together who can help each other emotionally - as always with this author the books are warm hearted but with twists that keep you interested - great summer read

You’ll fall in love with Josh, Amy and Skrillex the owl in this wonderfully romantic life-affirming story. We have Jane’s characteristic quirky humor and knack of writing endearing characters who will stay with you – exactly what I love about all her books. Josh and Amy are drawn together by an empathy they haven’t found elsewhere and which begins to heal them from the inside out. The character of Monkpark Hall, the Yorkshire estate where they both work, is fascinating in its own right and made me want to visit right now!

As soon as I saw the cover for this book, esp the little owl, I knew I had to read it. Plus I was highly intrigued by the title which was pretty unique in itself.

As for the story/book itself, well there was certainly no disappointments there. I loved it from start to finish, a real delightful and entertaining story. I was drawn into the setting/location pretty quickly as it all came alive and I felt like I was there.

I loved how the Owl Shrillex and other birds of prey had an important role in the story, made a pleasant change from the usual dog/cats that you tend to find in stories.

As for the characters, I loved them, they were all so well written and each had their own individual traits and background stories going on. You really feel for each of them, what they've gone through & how it's made them who they are in the present.

There's so much more I'd love to say but I daren't as I wouldn't want to risk ruining this book for anyone by accidentally giving out spoilers to the story. So my parting words on this, is that if you are considering reading this book, then don't hesitate any longer, as I highly recommend you read it.

Amy works at Monkpark Hall in the teashop with her best friend Julia and she lives with her nan in a tithe cottage. Amy has really low self confidence, she’s the dumpy one whilst Julia is the pretty slim one.

Josh works with the birds of prey, he keeps to himself, does not like enclosed spaces and the dark but he likes Amy.

Edmond joins Monkpark Hall as the new manager and implies to Amy that the Hall is in trouble and they may need to close the teashop, unless they can come up with ways to make some money, Amy puts forward several ideas and Edmond implements them as his own, but he also has his own agenda.

This story is told by Amy and Josh, how they both have trust issues, and the way that they slowly bond with each other, with Josh trying to overcome his troubled past and Amy taking the time to find out what had happened to him.

It was also nice to see that despite the constant bitchy remarks that Julia hurled at Amy, Julia finally stood up for her when needed.

An enjoyable story with interesting characters and the start of a nice romance.

I thought this was a beautiful story of friendship, its importance, and the effect others can have on our lives. It was my first novel by Jane Lovering and I found a refreshing, humorous work of fiction.

I felt like I got to know the characters, Amy and Julia, intimately; as if they were newfound friends whose lives I was given the privilege of witnessing. At times I liked Amy more than Julia just because of personality differences. Amy was definitely the one who pulls the heartstrings more particularly as you discover why she’s at the tea room and why she doesn’t seem to believe in her own self-worth as much as she should. Another character, Josh, is broken in a way that will make your heart ache nearly bringing you to tears at times as his storyline carries out but what is particularly interesting about him is his fondness for birds which become their own unique characters in a way and showcase more of his personality traits.

As great as her well-developed characters appear Lovering still needed a plot equal to the task of carrying out her creations and luckily the rest of her writing proved itself worthy. You’ll be flipping pages faster than you would have believed going in as the drive to go deeper into the story unfolds. The author still managed to balance the various themes and emotions so just as you think the book is going to showcase nothing but the darkness of humanity’s actions the humor fights its way to the surface with some really great laugh out loud scenes along with some witty one-liners that will find themselves stuck in your head ready to make you laugh at the oddest times.

I think my favorite part was that it wasn’t the prototypical book where a gorgeous-cinderella like woman is waiting on her prince charming to rescue her because Amy is definitely not described as the size 0 blonde and Josh is so damaged he needs more rescuing than she does. For a book with such a strong romance theme it appeared to break the mold by not falling into that familiar trap of woman meets man, they overcome some surmountable odds, fall in love and now their life is Disney perfect. Lovering really seemed to want to shoot for some realism in her characters, their interactions and how that would play out. Overall it was such a good book you could easily find yourself getting lost within its pages for hours.

Amy works in the bakery at Monkpark Hall, an estate in Yorkshire. Having always been seen as the dumpy sidekick to her pretty friend Jules, Amy finds kinship with the estate's resident bird guy Josh. When Edmund takes over the estate on behalf of a trust, he seems to take an interest in Amy much to the dismay of both Jules and Josh. Though I liked most of the characters in this book, I felt like the scenario with Edmund was clunky and the end just sort of fell together. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.

Reviewed on Amazon com and co.uk https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1954675210?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

This book is absolutely brilliant and I read it in one day! Moorpark Hall is a Heritage Trust property. Amy is our heroine, she grew up in the local village and still lives and looks after her gran. She is single and has not had many boyfriends. Any is very good hearted and works tirelessly in the estate tearooms. Josh is a troubled young man who works in the estate. He looks after and gives wild bird shows. Josh lives in a dilapidated caravan in the estate. He and Any become friends which lead to attraction. Any realises that the bedraggled Josh extremely good-looking but has had a troubled past and reasons for not wanting to attract any attention to himself. Romance blossoms and Josh learns to confide in Amy. Trouble looms over the employees of Monkpark Hall as Edmond the new, arrogant, lazy, and untrustworthy Estate Manager causes concern for Amy. She fears she will lose her home if she doesn't comply with Edmond's deceipt. Will she be strong enough to report Edmond or will she she still be afraid of rocking the boat and standing up for herself? Read on !

Jane Lovering’s novels are always guaranteed to bring you joy, and Little Teashop of Horrors is no exception! With a heroine you’ll love because she’s just so genuinely, well, nice, and a hero who’ll creep up on you and steal your heart without you noticing, this is a tale that will have you laughing one minute, then sniffling into a tissue the next.

Amy was a joy as our heroine. We all know someone like Amy, who is too nice for their own good (and often wish we were like her when our tempers get the better of us), and one of the many joys of this book was seeing the transformation that Amy made from the beginning to a strong, young woman who stood up for herself, and realised her worth. It beautifully mirrored Josh’s own transformation whose story will have you near to tears. Lovering beautifully creates a tentative friendship between the two that you will root for from the beginning.

Filled to the brim with a quirky humour that Jane Lovering never fails to bring to her novels, you will laugh out loud throughout; Sam and his artichokes, Gran and her spoons – all are so relatable that you feel as though you too are a part of the Monkpark family. There were many moments that I wished I was sitting in the Monkpark cafe, sipping tea and eating cakes and plotting ways to get rid of the snotty manager Edmund.

A delight from start to finish, Little Teashop of Horrors is the perfect book to dive into this spring! 5 Stars!

*Review copy kindly provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Little Teashop of Horrors is a story that will draw you in to a complex world and keep you on your toes throughout. Full of characters you’ll love or soon love to hate, it’s a tale that shows real life with all of it’s happiness, changes, dark sides and yes, quirkiness. I’ve been a fan of Jane Lovering for some time now. I believe I’ve read most of her work, but not reviewed them all (I’ll have to fix that) and I can say without a doubt in my mind that Little Teashop of Horrors touched me more deeply… and I believe it’s her best to date.

When you first meet them Amy and Josh may seem like an unusual couple. Give them a little bit of time and you’ll soon discover two wounded souls who bring out the best in each other, and together they’ll do a lot towards healing those wounds. Part of my enjoyment of this couple was the realistic impression that not all of their personal issues are wrapped up in a bow by the ending of this story, but an ongoing, loving relationship that will continue to ease those old wounds over time. They make a good start and that’s what matters. In that sense their romance is very satisfying to me for the believable factors within it.

Edmund, now there’s a character who at his arrival simply made my skin crawl. You know those moments when a character first appears on the page and you simply know that they are a worthless, nasty piece of work… yeah, that was my first impression of this man who has the charm of a cobra waiting to strike. For all of his surface “charms”, Edmund is a man who takes what’s not his, things people and ideas, and presents it as if he owned it all along. I didn’t like him, and couldn’t wait for him to get exactly what he deserved.

I completely enjoyed my time in Little Teashop of Horrors. There is friendship, family, blossoming love, danger, true friends (both human and feathered) and a very satisfying conclusion. Like life, this story has ups and down, happiness and sadness, danger and comfort, and yes funny and quirky moments as well – it’s a believable romance with characters that we probably see parts of in people we know in real life. That is what I find entertaining about this one, I could put these people down in my neighborhood and they’d fit. Look for a few surprises along the way, I never put everything in a review. Discovering the reason behind the title is a fun aspect of this one.

I would highly recommend this one, and would encourage you to take a chance on Little Teashop of Horrors. I believe you’ll enjoy the experience and perhaps find a new to you author to follow… she’s really quite good. *grin* Go ahead, indulge yourself and enjoy a really good story.

*I received an e-ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley. That does not change what I think of this story. It is my choice to leave a review giving my personal opinion about this book.*

Jane Lovering writes with a flair of reality which is refreshing. Her details and descriptions easily set the scene for the reader. The characters are dimensional and engaging. Recommended.