Love Hunt...Erm...Too much going on

Title: Love Hunt
Author: Fiona Walker
ISBN: 9780753143872
Rating: 4/10
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Woman's Fiction, Chick Lit
Book: Audiobook

I found this audiobook really difficult to follow. I only realised once I had withdrawn it from the library that it is 20 hour and 55 minutes long. This took me nearly two months to complete in the car. Each chapter is about 40 minutes long and there are that many different characters to follow I found it really hard to follow who was who and why they were doing the things they were.

There are 39 chapters in the book and the final 10 or so chapters has more than one section. There is that much going on within the story I did really struggle to keep up with what was happening. I am unsure if I would be able to continue following the story if I had read the book as a physical copy rather than listening to the story as an electronic copy.

The main characters in the story, Trudy, Liv, Finn, Rory, Faith, Nell, Pixie, Flipper, Giles, Anchor, Jamima, Martin and the list goes on! This is the fourth book in the Lodes chronicles and I am unsure whether if I had read the other stories I would be more understanding and able to follow the story better.

Trudy and Finn are a married couple living in the Cotswolds, a former pop star and the son of an antique dealer. They are bitterly miserable with one another. Avoiding each other and not talking to each other properly out of principle. Finn has become a possessive, jealous, spiteful husband who doesn't want his wife to go anywhere, speak to anyone or be taken away from him for any reason. He has come to following and hacking Trudy's email account and deleting any emails he doesn't think Trudy should be sending to anyone undesirable or just any person male or female who may take his wife away from him. Trudy has come into the habit or regularly smoking and drinking her evenings away whilst she is supposed to be working on her music and writing her memoirs for publishing. Both items which she does not want to complete or work on due to lack of motivation, lack of love and just not wanting to have a reason to leave the office to see Finn if she completes them.

I have absolutely no experience of actually being in the Cotswolds, however, if I were to base my knowledge of the Cotswolds based on this book then I would be under the assumption that every grown person, male or female, will sleep with any other male or female. There is the assumption that wives in the Cotswolds are bored, lonely, poor little housewives who need some excitement and some thrill in their lives whilst their husbands work abroad, or have not had an interest in their wives for the past 5 years, whilst they sleep with the nanny, the housekeeper, the cook and any other member of staff which they think is below their status. That the glorious, caring and frankly pig-headed husbands are giving these hard working women the thrill of having them in their beds that they should be grateful for their sex. This did rather annoy me that Walker, as an author, a female author at that, wanted to portray these women not only strong and independent but as weak and innocent beings who would rather ignore their husband's infidelity if it meant keeping the use of their money, houses and agricultural benefits. This is something which annoyed me, none of the women stood up for themselves, they were all seen as wilting flowers and that is not something which I want portraying for any women.

I felt that a lot of the story was extended for longer than it needed to be. The whole story could have been shortened and said in a more effective and specific manner. The story goes into a lot of detail

and the story is extended in a number of places. This made the book longer and unnecessary. There was a lot of text which could have been cut out.

There are two hunts going on in the story. The initial antique search with the promise of a £50,000 winning prize and the mysterious treasure hunt which someone has set up for Trudy. Trudy thinks the treasure hunt personalised for her is set by one specific person, a local family flirt who would do anything to get to know her, this is soon disproved. I personally always believed it was another admirer who was keeping himself quiet to Trudy but very vocal to the reader, however, there is then the suggestion that a third and final person could possibly be setting the hunt for Trudy, I absolutely did not think that it was the third person. Who was to know which one of the admirers was the true love hunt setter.

Trudy makes a good friend of Liv, who is married to Martin who works in Singapore. Liv is a very timid and scared young lady who has recently arrived in the Cotswolds. She has two children who attend the private school and attends every extracurricular activity which costs a fortune, fencing, horse riding, no doubt they also play golf and lacrosse amongst a range of other sports compared to the average child's football, rugby, gymnastics etc. Trudy encourages Liv to become more confident, more self-assured and more independent from the assertive, frankly horrible Martin. Martin does not like Liv being friends with Trudy, he believes Trudy is a bad influence for Liv and she is leading his wife away. It is with the help of Liv that Trudy can find out the answers of her love hunt and work out where and what she needs to buy in order to find the answers.

Overall, I did not particularly enjoy this book. I found it long winded and unnecessary. The book was long winded and extended unnecessarily. No, I wouldn't recommend it to someone else. This,
however, is not to say that I would not read another book by Fiona Walker. I am always one to give an author another try when I have not found a good book first time round.
Rating: 4/10
10-Word-Review: Long winded but could still read another by Fiona Walker.

I think I am going to have a little break from listening to audiobooks. I will not be giving up on them though and I will be returning to them soon, I just feel this book has given me the opportunity to listen to something else. I have realised now that the longer audiobooks are not for me. Especially if I am listening to them in broken intervals, like in the car. If I was going on a long journey or a coach or flight somewhere then yes I would listen to this kind of audiobook, but not for light car journies.

I am still currently reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and I am very much enjoying it. I am finding the old fashioned English sometimes difficult to follow and I do have to concentrate but I am enjoying it.

I hope to review The Woman in White soon, but I will be posting new and updated posts and reviews about other books, opinions and thoughts. Thank you again for reading and hello to my new
followers on Facebook, Twitter and Bloglovin! It's great to have you on board and I hope to hear from you.

I have received two recent books from independent authors which I hope to review their books shortly, however, this may be longer than usual as The Woman in White is over 600 pages long!

Thank you again! Steph xx