Country Lovers (A Barleybridge Novel)

by Rebecca Shaw

Book Overview

Tender, delightful, and full of humor, this third novel in Shaw's beloved series that began with A Country Affair and Country Wives continues the saga set in a small village in Dorset, where everyone,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: 0739480111
• ISBN13: 9780739480113
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press, New York
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good read

A new couple takes center stage in this third book about the Barleybridge veterinarian hospital. A client, Megan, lives with her elderly and invalid father. She and one of the vets, Rhodri, are in love, but Megan's father makes their relationship difficult and is a continuous strain. Meanwhile, Kate continues to make inroads on her quest to go back to school and become a vet herself, and the practice becomes embroiled in a legal battle when an outbreak of a chicken disease threatens area farmers. Quote: "Dan climbed over the gate and was immediately mobbed by all seven of the goats. Dan crouched to examine Sybil and found himself with pygmy goats endeavoring to raid his pockets, steal his mobile, climb on his back, and generally get in on the act by making their own diagnosis." As you are reading this novel, you can't help but feel that there is something missing, the spark of the character Scott who is still MIA. The characters attempting to fill this void, Rhodri and Megan, are too narrow minded and weak willed respectively to do so well. However, the village and the practice are still engaging enough to be worth the read, even just as a filler between this work and the promising fourth book in the series.

Entertaining story

For the life of me, I don't know why I enjoyed this book so much. Very little happens. It's just a rather sweet, enjoyable tale of English country life, filled with characters that do things that puzzled me greatly. Kate, for instance, seems a throwback to earlier times. Why any modern girl her age would put up with the antics of her so-called boyfriend and imagine for one moment they are normal, is beyond me. I've been to England. I know English girls are pretty smart. Yet Kate seems more a 50s kind of girl than one living in today's world. Still, this book was fun and good enough that I ordered the other Barleybridge novels and enjoyed them, too.