‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’ by Pauline Morgan

Synopsis

Is it ever too late for Happiness?

When Edel Marston, a fifty-year-old retired teacher spots her dream cottage in a magazine she makes the life-changing decision to relocate back to Northern Ireland following the death of her husband Ben.
But starting again is never easy, a rocky start with her new neighbours, and the knowledge of her past being a little too close for comfort, leaves Edel questioning whether she has made the right decision.
As Edel tentatively starts to immerse herself into the local village life of Ballynoon , friendships are forged, wires are crossed and new love blossoms, she struggles to protect her new life from the secrets of her past.

Now Edel must decide where her future lie
Will she choose happiness a second time round?

My Review

This Ginger Book Geek loves discovering new authors and Pauline Morgan is certainly a new author for me.  I read the synopsis for ‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’ and it certainly sounded like an interesting read and then some.  So without further ado, I grabbed my Kindle, grabbed a cup of tea and settled down for what I hoped would be an entertaining read.  Well it was all that and more.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’ but more about that in a bit.

I liked the character of Edel Marston even if she was a bit prickly to start with.  Edel returns to Ballynoon following the death of her husband.  She used to live in the area before but something happened and she left.  I won’t say exactly what happened as I would hate to give too much away.  Edel decides that she wants to make friends and create a new life for herself following the death of her husband so she takes any opportunity that she has to socialise.  In a sense she is taking herself out of her own comfort zone.  Some of the residents are a bit prickly but somehow Edel seems to get them to open up.  Will Edel find happiness in Ballynoon?  Well for the answer to that question and so much more you are just going to have to read the book for yourselves to find out as I am not going to tell you.

It didn’t take me long at all to get into ‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’.  Within the first five minutes of starting to read this book, I knew that I would find it increasingly difficult to put this book down.  So it proved to be.  I had my own theories as to what was going to happen so of course I had to keep reading to see if I was on the right track or if I had wandered down the wrong track entirely.  I would become so wrapped up in the story that I would lose all track of time and just how quickly I was getting through the story.  I found ‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’ to be an interesting and fun read.

‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’ is extremely well written.  The author has an easy going writing style that is easy to take to and easy to get along with.  She certainly knows how to grab your attention and draw you into what proves to be a compelling story.  Pauline describes Ballynoon so vividly and realistically that I got a real sense of the place and of the people who live there.  This book did take me on a bit of an emotional journey too and I found that I went through all the emotions that Edel went through.  I felt part of the story and that’s thanks to Pauline’s very vivid and realistic storytelling.

In short, I did really enjoy reading ‘The Ballynoon Friendship Circle’ and I would recommend it to other readers.  I will certainly be reading more of Pauline’s work in the future.  The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 4* out of 5*.