- “The Itch” by Polly Samson. About the beginning of a relationship and what may be the beginning of the end of the same.
- “Morro” by Alecia McKenzie. About a woman who is first the ‘victim’ of sex tourism but later becomes a sex tourist.
- “Flung” by Adele Parks. A frothy story about a jilted woman, a holiday and a fling with a younger man.
- “Pull Me in the Pullman Carriage” by Helen Lederer. A woman going through a sexual dry spell meets a hot stranger on a train.
- “The Plain Truth” by Claire Gilman. A plain girl gets to be sexy for a night, with consequences. Some realism, for a change.
- “Mr Charisma” by Yasmin Boland. About a paparazza who secretly hates being one.
- “The Sun, the Moon and the Stars” by Pauline McLynn. About a theatre production and a misunderstanding between lovers. Recommended.
- “The Shell of Venus”, by Victoria Routledge. GNI. Spa treatment as a metaphor for healing a broken heart.
- “Man with a Tan” by Anna Maxted. A girl meets a new guy just as she discovers that an old friend is interested in her.
- “Storm Clouds” by Sheila O’Flanagan. Another relationship problem story, with weather as a metaphor for feelings.
Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
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