Cooking up stories is just the beginning for Lydia Livingston…

Ever since she could read, she’s craved her very own fairy-tale ending and her own Prince Charming.

Unfortunately, despite kissing a fair few frogs, none of them have turned into a prince.

Maybe her dad, a chap who wants nothing but the best for his one and only daughter, is right?

She’s just too picky. 

Perhaps, but there’s lots to like about Lydia Livingston, the narrator of Suzie Tullett’s new romance Little White Lies and Butterflies.

That name for a start – look at the luscious way it lollops off the tongue…Lydia Livingston. Lovely.

And she’s an endearing character too – likeable, lively and lamentably old-fashioned.

Where most women her age have spent years climbing the corporate ladder, Lydia’s made a career out of bagging her perfect man.

Unfortunately, now nearly 30, and still single, she’s beginning to wonder if she’s made the right choice…

Clearly, things need to change, so much against the wishes of her family, she goes travelling in the hope of finding a new direction.

At least, that’s the plan.

But things go awry when Sam comes along and Lydia decides to re-invent herself as a professional chef.

Little white lie

Not the best identity for a woman who can’t cook.

What begins as a little white lie soon takes on a life of its own and, when Lydia’s family turn up unexpectedly, things go from bad to worse…

Can Lydia find love? Will she ever learn to cook?

Well, if you believe Lydia, food preparation is no different from driving – any Tom, Dick of Harry can do it.

Positive

Except, she observes, not everyone has the necessary aptitude to follow a recipe.

Although, being Lydia, it’s always possible to put a positive slant on things.

So, she didn’t just fail the cookery course on which she had optimistically enrolled. According to the tutor, she failed it spectacularly which, she says, ‘has to be better than failing miserably’.

Possibly…but Sam seems impressed which makes Lydia wonder if she’s made the right career choice.

Lightly ironic

‘Maybe I should be an actress?’ she asks herself. ‘The man obviously believes every word I’m saying, so I must have some talent.’

Little White Lies and Butterflies is a delight, page after page of lightly ironic humour. Sam, for instance, doesn’t quite swallow Lydia’s little white lie.

‘I bet if I was to go over to that computer and put your name in Google,’ he says, ‘as a bona fide restaurateur, your name would be on there somewhere.’

Hitting the net

Which, of course, it wouldn’t.

Shit! thinks Lydia. ‘Why hadn’t I realised he’d do something like that? Especially when hitting the net was exactly what I’d have done were there even a whiff of anyone potentially interesting in the vicinity.’

Tullett, who was a scriptwriter before she became a full-time novelist, writes with such pace and vim it’s hard not to fall just a little in love with Lydia and the rest of the Livingstons.

Let’s hope Sam does too.

Review by Sue Featherstone.

Available to buy on Amazon.