Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

I must confess I couldn't get past the first chapter. The story wasn't my cup of tea and I found it hard to relate to the main character. Might give it another try sometime, though, because I've heard many great things about the author.

Honestly? I don't know how to rate this book. On one hand, I would say it's between 2 and 3 stars, even though it is not bad at all. 

Maybe I was not in the mood for it, even though from the cover blurb it really sounded like my kind of book. It took me forever to finish and I could not get involved with any of the characters. It seemed to me that the book was all description and no action. Most of the time you are given characters' thoughts, but hardly ever their actions and after a while it started getting on my nerves. 

You are constantly shown what characters think they are going to do, but almost never what they are doing.

A well written story that I was drawn into from the start and kept me reading right through to the end. Well written characters with a great plot. I liked how incomers to the village are viewed with suspicion but they soon settle in and make friends. The are a few twists and turns in the plot which I enjoyed. 
The story flows along - it is an easy read. I enjoyed how the storylines all came together at the end. I would love to read a sequel to this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

People talk about comfort food but let me tell you this book is comfort reading.  I loved this book, it was so good I did not want it to end.  It takes place in England in a small village where everyone knows everyone else's business.  The characters were so much like people you meet on a daily basis.  The characters would have problems with their lives and everyone helped their neighbor.  
When I seen this was written by Catherine Jones I wasn't expecting Little Woodford  to be that good.  I take that back now and hope to see lots more books written by the author.

This is a delightfully fun story. I always love a story that lets me visit Britain and this author places you right in a lovely small village where you get to know the townspeople. I loved the characters, the fun quirky village and the exceptionally fun antics of small village life in a beautiful English village. 
Thank you for the ARC which does not influence my opinion.  This is a charming book  I highly recommend.

Little Woodford is a quintessentially British small town.  This women's fiction tells the stories of those who live there including a busybody councilor, the minister's wife and the widow who moves from London to Little Woodford with her two young sons and stepdaughter.  The reader becomes involved in these character's less than perfect family lives. If you would like to armchair travel to Britain, this one may be for you.

Little Woodford is a typical country village, everyone knows everyone and you are hard pressed to keep anything secret, so when Bex moves into one of the big houses the hotbed of gossip starts!  Olivia is the type of woman that every village has, on the parish council, member of the WI and at the heart of everything,  Heather is the vicar's wife, warm hearted and lovely whilst Amy is the single mother who cleans for the others.   A great cast of characters and a great storyline involving them.

I loved this book and enjoyed the pace and also matching the characters to people in my own village....i hope there are more stories of little Woodford to follow

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher.  I want to live in Little Woodford and meet Olivia and the residents of the village.

I did enjoy this story but I will admit that I found it a little slow going at the start but I am so glad I continued as it is a great story, so if you do feel the same I really encourage and urge you to keep going!

There are some great characters in the story, and I loved the plot. It is written in a very easy way that you can pick up and dip in to the story as and when you want. The flow is great and the writing style is ideal for this kind of book, a nice relaxing read that lets you peak behind the scenes of village life!

Four stars from me - I enjoyed it and highly recommend it!

What a pleasure to read this book. I was very grateful to be invited to be part of the blog tour.

Like all small towns, things are not always as they seem. Even those with seemingly perfect lives, like Olivia, have their problems.

The characters are what makes this book so readable. Olivia is the person involved in everything, the WI, the local council, and everyone’s business. She is a bit of a snob, but has a heart of gold, and the best interests of the town and her family at heart. Amy cleans various houses in the town and is a bit of a gossip. Heather is the vicar’s wife, kind and caring. Bex arrives into this host of characters, and everyone is curious about the person who has bought the big house that had been been empty for so long. As Bex’s story unfolds, we learn a bit more about what brought her to Little Woodford.

I really enjoyed this lovely well-paced, readable book. It took me quite a while to read as I savoured it, not wanting it to end.

Very enjoyable, I hope we’ll hear more about Little Woodford in the future, I’d love if there was a series.

This is the first book by Catherine Woodford that I have picked up but rest assured that it certainly won’t be the last book by her that I pick up.  I really enjoyed it but more about that in a bit.
The book centres on four main characters- Bex, Heather, Olivia and Amy, who have very different personalities.  Bex is the newcomer, who has moved to the ‘Big House’ in the village with her two children.  I get the sense that she is trying to settle into the village and she is wanting to make friends.  The other three ladies already live in the village and although different in personality, all of them have one aim and that is to neb on the newcomer and find out all about her but it appears that the newcomer is hiding something.  On the outside the four women like to appear as happy with their lot and they like to keep up appearances as the saying goes.  However it soon becomes clear that each of the women are either hiding something or they can’t see what is happening right under their noses.  Just what is it that the newcomer is hiding?  What is really going on in the lives of all four women?  Well for the answers to those questions and more you are just going to have to read the book for yourselves to find out.
This book is very well written.  The author’s writing style is such that you can’t fail to be drawn into the story and before you realise it you are immersed in village life.  The author seems to have perfectly captured village mentality in that newcomers are always viewed with suspicion and the other villagers almost break their necks (not literally) to find out the dirt about the newcomers.  This made me laugh as it is something that happened to my family, when we moved into our current village.  We may have lived her for over 30 years but at times we still feel like newcomers.  I also liked the way in which the author managed to show that a village has two fronts.  On the one hand at first sight a village looks like a sleepy place where nothing happens but on the other hand, scratch the surface slightly and you find out that the village is anything but sleepy and is really a hotbed of gossip, rumours, secrets, lies and deceit.  Again this reminded me of my own village.  I thought that nothing ever happens here but it appears that I was wrong.
Once I started reading ‘Little Woodford’, I became rather addicted to it and I couldn’t put it down.  I guess I am just a nosy old bat, who likes to snoop amongst the lives of others and have a good old gossip.  As I indicated above,, I found that I immersed myself fully into the lives of the people who live in Little Woodford and I felt as though I was an honorary villager.  The characters are so well written and described that you can’t help but take to them in some way and I found that I genuinely started to care about them and what happened to them.  It was almost as if they became friends.  There were a few ups and downs, twists and turns and moments that you just didn’t expect to happen.
In short, I really did enjoy reading ‘Little Woodford’ and I can’t wait to read more from this author.  I would definitely recommend this book to others.  The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a well deserved 4* out of 5*.

Little Woodford by Catherine Jones is a novel which perfectly captures the essence of small English towns and the plethora of secrets hidden among the residents. Little Woodford itself is the quintessential English village which very much reminded me of locations in Midsummer Murders. Like many of these villages there is the rich /poor divide with some living in huge houses at one end and those who live on the council estate at the other.
Little Woodford focuses mainly on the lives of four women for varying parts of the village, Bex, Heather, Olivia and Amy. Bex Millar has recently moved to the village into the villages premier home The Beeches with her two young boys and step-daughter Megan, but just what are they hiding. Olivia is a local councillor and lives in another of the large houses The Grange, she’s so involved with keeping the village in order that she fails to see the destruction happening right under her own roof. Heather is the Vicar’s wife’s and one the villages’ cheeriest people, but with husband Brain becoming more and more withdrawn Heather is finding it hard to keep a smile on her face when dealing with others. The final woman is Amy, a single-mum who lives on the council estate with son Ashley and knows the other three women as she cleans for them. When boyfriend Billy starts spending more time and money around Amy doubts about their relationship start to creep in. All four of these women find that despite appearances, not everyone life is as perfect as they are making it out to be.
Little Woodford is one of those books where you can totally immerse yourself in the lives of others, the writing is so detailed that everything just came to life for me. I loved the beginning of the book and getting to know all the main characters, but I did feel the middle part of the book dragged a little bit, with perhaps too much unnecessary detail. However, I really love the second half of this novel where everyone’s secrets are divulged and there are few twists before everything is wrapped up nicely at the end. I felt there was also potential for the author to write a second book as some of the endings could easily be developed more. 
Little Woodford is a book full of village life, keeping secrets and learning that the grass isn’t always greener in behind the closed door of the big house. It’s a book I enjoyed very much and can recommend to anyone who enjoys books with many different storylines which all connect seamlessly at the end.
Thank you to Head of Zeus for sending me a copy to review and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the Publishers, Aria, for this review copy given in exchange for an honest review.  Also thank you to Melanie from Aria for organising the Blog Tour.

Little Woodford is a little village in the heart of England.  It has what you would expect – a little High Street, a village pub, a weekly market and, of course, the old stone church.  No one in Little Woodford knows more what is going on that the Parish Councillor, Olivia Laithwaite.  All the villagers, especially Olivia, are intrigued to find out who has recently bought The Beeches, one of the more prestige houses within the village, and one by one all introduced themselves to Bex and her three children.  The question they all ask is why did she leave London?

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this book before I started reading it.  The title, if I’m to be honest, didn’t particularly jump out at me although the cover is beautiful.  I also wondered going on the synopsis how you could fill a book with antics from such a tiny little village.  How wrong was I?!  Little Woodford was fabulous!!  Within a few chapters, I was hooked on the tales of all the villagers and I needn’t have worried about the sleepy little village because it was far from sleepy!

I won’t go into the story too much as I wouldn’t want to give away any spoilers, but it’s safe to say the stories of all the different characters kept me well and truly hooked until the last page.  All of the characters were enjoyable in their own way and I particularly loved Amy who I felt was probably the most believable character of them all.

There was plenty of gossip within this village and I’ve chuckled my way through some of the antics that went on.  It was also a story of love and friendship, with some unlikely allies being formed!  The characters all intertwined with each other, and the stories were told from various viewpoints throughout the book.  My first book by this author and I absolutely loved it!  Could this be the start of a series of books?  I hope so!!  Well recommended!

Catherine Jones’ latest novel Little Woodford should come with a warning: make sure that before you start reading this book, your phone is switched off and you have no pressing engagements because this is an engrossing and hugely enjoyable read you will not be able to put down!

Bex Millar has come to the charming market town of Little Woodford for a fresh start and a new beginning. Escaping from a past which she would much rather forget, Bex and her children have come all the way from London to Little Woodford after buying a huge rambling Victorian mansion called The Beeches. After a traumatic episode in her past involving a tragic incident with her stepdaughter, Bex hopes to shut the door on old memories once and for all and to immerse herself in the new community she finds herself in and thrive in this quintessentially English town with its quirky high street shops, allotments and pubs full of character and bucolic charm. But will Bex find the happiness which she has been searching for in Little Woodford?

She is certainly trying as she has got a job in the local bookshop and even joined a pub quiz team. Bex is determined to put her past to bed and to ensure that, alongside with her children, she makes the most of this second chance she has been given. However, Bex soon learns that keeping secrets in a small town like Little Woodford is easier said than done! As the truth about her past begins to emerge, Bex’s rural idyll is jeoparized by the threat of discovery. Will all her dreams of settling in a sleepy town in middle England come crashing down around her ears? Or is a second chance impossible?

Will Little Woodford ever be a place Bex and her family can call home? Or is Bex destined to spend the rest of her life running from her past?

I’ve read many books by Catherine Jones under different pseudonyms in the past and have thoroughly enjoyed them, so my expectations for Little Woodford were pretty high – and she has managed to exceed them with this compulsively readable tale which is absolutely impossible to resist. Packed with characters that leap off the pages, humour, drama, warmth and pathos, Little Woodford grabs your attention from the get-go and will keep you engrossed and entertained until the very last page.

An addictive and enchanting read that will appeal to fans of Fern Britton, Veronica Henry and Jill Mansell, Little Woodford is a terrific novel that I highly recommend.

This story is a cute telling of a slice-of-life in an English village. After her husband dies, Bex moves to tiny Woodford with her children – and there she has to navigate the stereotypical town gossip, church ladies, and the snooty do-gooders — all while trying to move in, fit in and make her own footprint as the new lady in the fancy house.

I enjoyed this predictable bit of fun, despite having to suspend my disbelief a couple of times. I mean, does Bex ever grieve?! Is Olivia that perfect?! In Little Woodford Miss Jones gives us a new adventure, a little mystery, a romance or two, teenagers figuring out life, some good guys, some bad guys, and a bunch of regular Joes making the most of small town living. Charming.

Review: I would like to thank Aria Fiction for asking me to take part in a blog tour for this book.

Upon reading the blurb for this book it sounds interesting. A typical English village full of some typical English characters that you might find in such a village. The story follows many characters, which I did find difficult to read at first, and their lives in a small village. A fuse has been lit in this village and all manner of things are discovered about people.  

Unfortunately, for me I did not get all the excited feels I normally get when reading. However, it is well written and shows strength in the characters. 

A good book but not for me I am afraid.

Living in a market town is explored in this easy to read story of country life, secrets and gossip. Everyone in the town has secrets, and the characters are complex and vivid, not all of the characters are likeable, and some do border on the stereotypical, but they do work well together in a well-paced plot with lots of opportunity for them to interact and their lives to entwine. 
Olivia is the serial committee member,  the pillar of the community, so busy doing good; she misses the problems in her own life. Heather is the vicar's wife; her door is always open, her life is not easy but shares her husband's calling. She is the community agony aunt, trustworthy, loyal and full of common sense. Bex is the newcomer, attractive, lovely but with a broken heart, children who depend on her and secrets she doesn't want to share. Amy is a single mum who works hard in the town, she has a good heart but is a terrible gossip which leaves her open to manipulation.
Little Woodford is like a 'Midsomer' village without the murders, fun to read with a sense of community, lots of humour, a little romance, and a web of lies and secrets an enjoyable way to pass a few hours.
 I received a copy of this book from Head of Zeus via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Lovely feel good book. I just loved reading about this lovely little town where not much happened until a widow and daughter and stepson turn up. Its the typical gossipy town people wanting to know everyones business. Enjoyed it very much and made me giggle very often.

Little Woodford is a small town in England where everybody knows everybody else's business - and where everybody has a secret. The Beeches, a house that has been vacant for a long time, has been sold to a woman named Bex and her family. Why did they have to leave London for a fresh start in Little Woodford? What will happen when people find out? People like Olivia, who thinks of herself as the town supervisor, Brian, the vicar, Amy, a housekeeper, and a host of other townsfolk who are flawed and charming ans so very relatable.       

Catherine Jones has written an engrossing story about the lives of people in a small town - their ups and downs, their triumphs and tragedies, their relationships to and with each other, and their secrets. Reading Little Woodford is like watching your favorite television series - you hope it never ends because you love the characters, you wanna know more about them, and you wish you could live with them. Now, how 'bout a cuppa?