A wonderful read based in beautiful Cornwall. Ella is a great main character- warm, friendly and completely relatable- just the right characteristics for a community midwife, and I loved how her friends and family were such a support.
Jo Bartlett’s writing is warm and friendly and draws you into the characters lives. I loved all the relationships in the story and definitely feel there needs to be further instalments so we can get to know Ella and her friends more.

I had not read this author before and was delighted to have found her. A lovely light easy but engaging read. enough romance to to make you smile and invested in the characters, but plenty of other stories happening around the main characters.

It is not too difficult to predict the end of the book, but that is what makes books like this a comfort read. One to curl up and enjoy.

Ella and Dan were first loves, they parted, lost contact but meet again. Both hold feelings for the other but have a past to get over. Set in a beautiful setting and full of family love, we watch as the couple navigate their way back to each other and see the love and care they show to others along the way.

Lately, I’ve been reading more and more romance books and I’m so happy I found The Cornish Midwife too.

The story follows Ella who after moves back home to Port Agnes after her seemingly perfect life comes crashing down around her. She is a midwife now and happy to care for the community’s pregnant mums and their baby’s. But she has to face her first love, Dan. Dan who is still as gorgeous as he used to be and who still seems to have feelings for her. And so does she. But can they forgive each other for past hurts and start a new life together?

The Cornish Midwife gave me what I expected. A lovely, funny story with adorable characters and just enough tension. It was obvious what will happen in the end but I had great fun watching Ella and Dan dance around each other and find each other again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I am a sucker for an illustrated cartoon type cover, so when I saw this on my recommendation shelf I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I have also read a couple of other books by the author and enjoyed them. Jo Bartlett books are the type that make you curl up in your favourite chair with a nice cup or tea or wine and forget the world for a little while, whilst you get swept up into the story.

Having been publicly humiliated by her ex boyfriend on camera in front of millions, Ella Mehenick returns to the small Cornish town of Port Agnes to be close to her parents and take up a job as a community Midwife. Arriving back Ella bumps into lots of all friends, and her first love Dan who is still as gorgeous as he ever was. Could the pair of them start again from where they left off?

It is a really lovely book about family, friendship and second chance love all set on the beautiful Cornish coast.

Thank you for Netgalley and Boldwood Books for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date 15th April 2021.

I had never read a Jo Bartlett book until last year and I instantly fell in love with the wonderful midwives and couldn't wait to visit them again.

Set against the wonderful backdrop of St Agnes I loved this story right from the beginning. Ella is looking for a stop gap whilst she reassess and returns home and that is how we meet her.

A story full of wonderful characters and full of love and hope. I really enjoyed my visit and felt keen to keep turning the pages to sit what birth story or what dilemma Ella would face next. Over the past year we have all cherished time with family and this story is brimming with the importance of family and unconditional love.

I can't wait to read more by this wonderful author and revisit these lovely ladies that are so important within our community.

Thanks to Boldwood Books and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for a review.

I don't think I've ever read anything by Jo Bartlett before but the setting of Cornwall and the story of a midwife appealed to me.

This is a lovely light read - it's a story of coming home, of not really knowing what you want, lost loves and is told in a really engaging way. I'd love to go back to Port Agnes again and hear more of the characters we met in this book.

I found this to be a lovely, light hearted and easy, enjoyable read. Having never read anything by this author I was pleasantly surprised and will look to read more.

When her London life falls apart and she becomes infamous for all the wrong reasons, Ella returns to her childhood home town. She joins the community midwifery team just for a few months in order to figure out what she will do next. Going home also means confronting some of the old ghosts she’d laid to rest – or so she thought. She soon finds herself face to face with her childhood sweetheart, the one that got away.
I enjoyed this from start to finish, its predictably full of will they/wont they romance and of course, we can all guess the outcome but its still fun all the same.
There is fun and plenty of drama as you can imagine with a midwifery unit; I loved the bunch of characters she works with and feel we will get plenty more stories from them. The characters are really relatable and well written.
Hearing this is the start of a series of books means there will hopefully be plenty more fun and frolics from the community of Port Agnes.

Coming home to Cornwall and finding love again. A great setting for a good read. You will love the characters and the setting.

It has been a good few years since I last read a Jo Bartlett book but I seemed to recall enjoying my previous experiences of her writing, so to see she had a new release and signed with one of my favourite publishers, well I was hardly going to ignore it.

And I'm so glad I did decide to read it, from the first chapter I felt rather comforted by the writing style. I can't put my finger on what it was, but it felt familiar and warm, and almost like I was coming home. The fact the first chapter was full of drama possibly helped too.

In fact just due to Ella being a midwife, there is a fair bit of drama involved in this book as let's face it babies have a mind of their own when it comes to when they want to enter the world, and giving birth never sounds like the simplest of things either.

And Port Agnes the Cornish setting for this gorgeous book, was just perfect. I loved the sense of community there, even if Ella isn't as keen on it, given the circumstances of her own homecoming. She perhaps would have preferred a bit more anonymity than she has.

I really loved getting to know the other midwifes in the unit where Ella is working temporarily, as well her her catching up with old friends and loves.

I get the feeling that this may be the first of a series, in which case I can't wait to see which of the midwifes we get to know better next, as well as more of Port Agnes.

And any book that gives me a brand new book boyfriend to fall in love with, is a winner in my eyes, and there is definitely one rather stunning candidate in this novel for that role! I'll miss him!

This is a fabulous book to read on a bright and sunny day in a garden, or well anywhere! Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you to Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Great book on love second chances and opening your heart. This writer reminded me of Betty Neels. Great story and characters.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.


Ella, a midwife, left home in Port Agnes for London and has never looked back.

But then what she thought was a perfect life, all of a sudden comes tumbling down around her. Now, with a broken heart, she knows there’s only one place it can mend. Home.

Back home, she starts working with the community midwife team, but she knows that being back home means she’ll also run into her ex Dan.

Dan, not changed at all since she last saw him, apart for, he’s never forgiven her for leaving. It seems there’s unfinished business between them.

So will coming back home and seeing Dan again be a good decision Ella’s made or will she once again feel she’s got to leave?

*I was provided a free eARC of this book in exchange for my review. All opinions are mine.



In good conscience, I've gotta start by saying I don't usually read women's fiction. I've read Bridget Jones's Diary and a few Jodi Picault novels.

(Here's a great article, by the way, that differentiates women's fiction from romance. Main difference? Women's fiction is about a woman's journey, often emotional or spiritual, and growth. Romance has the romance as the central arc of the characters, and there's a happily-ever-after or a happily-for-now.)

(Side note: do not challenge a romance author on that last point. It will end poorly for you. Just change your definition of romance right now. You'll live longer.)

The Cornish Midwife starts with Ella Mehenick's carefully-planned life being towered. (Think of The Tower from a tarot deck, or just read this.) So she moves back in with her parents and take a job in the small coastal town in Cornwall where she grew up.

Most of this book is Ella coming to terms with the fact that she needs to rethink her childhood definitions of success. She catches up with old friends, make news friends, and reconnects with an old love. It is her journey, and that's why I'm categorizing this as women's fiction.

If you like the type of story that has a lot of internal struggle and self-inflicted strife that could be corrected by some straightforward conversation and trust, you'd probably love this book. It will also introduce the typical U.S. reader to some Cornish slang and scenery.

And you should stop reading this review and go pre-order the book now..
More details are available here: https://thefamilyaddiction.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-cornish-midwife-by-jo-bartlett.html

This book is a beautiful warm hug of familiarity. It was hugely relatable and a brilliantly crafted novel. Great characters and so much scope to develop more.

Thank you NetGalley, author Jo Bartlett, and Boldwood Books for giving me an Arc of this book in exchange for an honest review! All thoughts and opinions are my own.
5 stars
This book gave me so much nostalgia for the TV series "Call The Midwives." I loved the premise of this book. Author Jo Bartlett captured a wonderful sense of family, village life, and love. The beginning of the book had a bit of a slow start, but really picked up and had me hooked until the very end. I really enjoyed the characters within this story. Each of the members of the midwife unit are strong and steady in their dedication to helping the community mothers have safe deliveries! Dan was such a sweet man. I loved how Dan and Ella did not let their past cause them not to move forward with a long lasting relationship. Overall, I am so excited to read each and every installment in this new series!

Ella is a young woman living in London. She is to be married but is jilted at the alter in a very public spectacle. She decides to move home to St. Agnes on the Cornish Coast for some peace and quiet and to try and recover from this humiliation. She begins work at the local midwife hospital and soon discovers that her high school sweetheart is still living in town. Will being back home be enough to heal what is missing in her life? While I found that this book started slow, it picked up towards the end. A light enjoyable read. Thanks to Net Galley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely loved everything about this book, from start to finish! I couldn’t put it down!

Ella is such a likeable character from the very beginning that you are just wishing for her to get a happy ever after. In fact, all the characters in the story are so well written, believable and likeable. I must admit, I think Dan is my favourite.

I loved the whole book and I’m glad that everyone got a slice of happiness.

Nice light hearted easy read which I thoroughly enjoyed. First book I’ve read by this author & look forward to reading more.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Ella was ready to marry her Prince Charming. Standing outside waiting for her groom to show up after car trouble. The vicar insisted their wedding happens now or the next couple needs to start their ceremony. Oh yeah, they are internet royalty. So Ella's break up is streamed around the world.

Ella escapes London to go back home to Port Agnes to serve as a substitute midwife for the local medical facility while figuring her next move.

Will the move be temporary or is everything she ever needed in Port Agnes?

Returning to your childhood home and making the most of what life has to give is what this is about and how Ella copes. After leaving her career as a midwife in London she joins the midwifery unit in Cornwall. It’s nice how she falls back In love with her first love too.

Adorable, heartwarming, and wonderfully paced!

Perhaps for readers who read small town romance fiction often it would be obvious that this book would be a super enjoyable and easy read, but for me I was just pleasantly surprised with this gem of a book! It is not my typical genre, but it was fantastic. I fell right into the life of Ella, a young woman who returns home to recover from the trials of big city life and has to figure out where she belongs and what her heart wants. I loved the side characters, especially the other midwives. The setting was a glimpse into a location and culture I know very little about. While the overall arc of the plot is appropriately predictable (I never complain about a happy ending), there were plenty of times where I thought the book was going to take a completely different direction than it did. I was consistently surprised and could barely put this book down!

A note about the midwifery aspect of this book: As someone who has worked in birth for 8 years and has had homebirths with midwives myself, I am most impressed with Jo Bartlett for staying true to community midwifery in this book. So often movies and books twist birth stories into perilous tales in order to add drama to the plot, so it was really refreshing for me to read a book about a midwife that showed a much more realistic take on what it looks like to support women through homebirth and low risk pregnancies.