#BlogTour-‘Bring Me Sunshine’ by Laura Kemp

About the book…

HUGE thanks to Alainna from Orion for my blog tour invite and gifted paperback copy of ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ by Laura Kemp, we all need this wonderful book in our lives!!

‘A delight from the first page to the last’ Milly Johnson

‘Laugh-out-loud funny, as warm as it is witty…If you love Milly Johnson you will love Laura Kemp’ Debbie Johnson

Charlotte Bold is nothing like her name – she is shy and timid and just wants a quiet life. When her job doing the traffic news on the radio in London is relocated to Sunshine FM in Mumbles, she jumps at the chance for a new start in Wales.

But when she arrives she discovers that she’s not there to do the travel news – she’s there to front the graveyard evening show. And she’s not sure she can do it.

Thrust into the limelight, she must find her voice and a way to cope. And sWhoon she realises that she’s not the only person who finds life hard – out there her listeners are lonely too. And her show is the one keeping them going.

Can Charlotte seize the day and make the most of her new home? And will she be able to breathe new life into the tiny radio station too…?

Charlie Bold is an enigma-a radio host without a voice, who exists as a running joke on the station she works at. Something horrific, something catastrophic has led her to be mute whenever she goes near a mic BUT knowing she was on borrowed time she has limited options. When those options are leave, be transferred or reapply for a speaking role, she finds herself backed into a corner.

So she moves to Swansea, to Sunshine FM where she mistakenly believes she will be an associate presenter-turns out that she is the main act. What is she going to do? Her boyfriend isn’t ready to move in with her, her flatmate was overheard planning on turning her room into an office as Charlie was leaving.

Her first show ‘Evening Mumbkes’ totally lives up to its name, and things get worse before they get better.

Laura introduces memorable characters such as Ivor Mone, handsy elderly resident of the old guard DJ, Del the health and safety officer who wants to be more, DJ Disgo,and Tina the station manager with her own, dark backstory,

I have talked before about how I find many people’s choice of the word ‘chicklit’ as reductive. If the author owns and uses that word then absolutely that is up to them , I just personally dislike the inherent dismissive attitude towards modern women’s writing. Laura has done an excellent job bringing Mumbles, Swansea and Wales to light, she tackles subjects that moddern women constantly have to tackle without flinching whilst building the characters up slowly. We get to know them as Charlie gets to know them.

It’s a beautiful thing, a book written with a lightness of touch, humour and sensitivity to modern dilemms.

There’s just one word to use to describe this book-lush !

About the author…

Laura Kemp writes tender but hilarious romantic comedies which are unashamed love letters to the everywoman.
Her uplifting message – based on the notion that everything is research apart from the rude bits – is ‘You Don’t Know How Brilliant You Are!’.
A journalist who has written for The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Sun amongst others, she is married with a son in Cardiff, where she pretends to be a domestic revolutionary so she doesn’t have to do the ironing. Runs to eat crisps and drink wine, adores her mates and loves her dog, Lego and sweary cross-stitch.

Links-@Laurajanekemp

@orionbooks