Spotlight: Making Your Mind Up by Jill Mansell

Love is a complicated thing...

Lottie Carlyle is happy enough. Living in a beautiful cottage with her two adorable-sometimes-kids in an idyllic village, on good terms with her ex-husband, and with friends all around, everything is going just fine. But when she meets her new boss, her peaceful world is thrown into delightful, exciting, and frustrating chaos. Tyler is perfect for Lottie, but her kids do not agree. To make matters worse, the handsome and mysterious Seb appears on the scene, intriguing-and distracting-Lottie and charming her children, making it more and more difficult for her to make up her mind...

Read an Excerpt from Making Your Mind Up:

The lane opened out into a sandy clearing that sloped down to meet a small artificial beach. Freddie Masterson had had this constructed several years ago, chiefly for the benefit of visitors to his lakeside vacation cottages, but also—-as Tyler had just witnessed—-to be enjoyed by the inhabitants of Hestacombe. Shielding his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun as it bounced off the lake, Tyler saw a girl in a bright turquoise bikini floating lazily on her back in the water. There was a faint unearthly wailing sound coming from somewhere he couldn’t quite place. Then the noise—-was it singing?—-stopped. Moments later, as Tyler watched, the girl turned onto her front and began to swim slowly back to shore.

It could almost be that scene from Dr. No, where Sean Connery observes Ursula Andress emerging goddess–like from a tropical sea. Except he wasn’t hiding in the bushes and he had all his own hair. And this girl didn’t have a large knife strapped to her thigh.

She wasn’t blond either. Her long dark hair was a riot of snaky curls plastered to her shoulders, her body curvy and deeply tanned. Impressed—-because an encounter like this was the last thing he’d been expecting—-Tyler nodded in a friendly fashion as she paused to wring water from her dripping hair and said, “Good swim?”

The girl surveyed him steadily, then looked around the tiny beach. Finally she said, “Where’s my stuff?”

Stuff. Taken aback, Tyler gazed around too, even though he had no idea what he was meant to be looking for. For one bizarre moment he wondered if she had arranged to meet a drug dealer here. That was what people said, wasn’t it, when they met up with their dealer?

“What stuff?”

“The usual stuff you leave out of the water when you go for a swim. Clothes. Towel. Diamond earrings.”

Tyler said, “Where did you put them?”

“Right there where you’re standing. Right there,” the girl repeated, pointing at his polished black shoes. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Is this a joke?”

“I guess it is. But I’m not the one playing it.” Half turning, Tyler indicated the narrow lane behind him. “I passed a couple kids back there, carrying off stuff.”

She had her hands on her hips now, and was surveying him with growing disbelief. “And it didn’t occur to you to stop them?”

“I thought it was their stuff.” This was ridiculous, he’d never said the word stuff so many times before in his life. “I guess I just thought they’d been swimming down here in this lake.”

“You thought the size ten pink halter–necked dress and size seven silver sandals belonged to them.” The sarcasm—-that particularly British form of sarcasm—-was evident in her voice.

“The sandals were wrapped up in something pink. I didn’t actually get a close look at the labels. I was thirty yards away.”

“But you thought they’d been swimming.” Gazing at him intently, the girl said, “Tell me something. Were they…wet?”

Shit. The kids hadn’t been wet. He’d make a lousy private eye. Unwilling to concede defeat, Tyler said, “They could have come down for a paddle. Look, did you really leave diamond earrings with your clothes?”

“Do I look completely stupid? No, of course I didn’t. Diamonds don’t dissolve in water.” Impatiently she shook back her hair to show him the studs glittering in her earlobes. “Right, what did these kids look like?”

“Like kids. I don’t know.” Tyler shrugged. “They were wearing T–shirts, I guess. And, um, shorts…”

The girl raised her eyebrows. “That’s incredible. Your powers of observation are dazzling. OK, was it a boy and a girl?”

“Maybe.” He’d assumed they were boys, but one had had longer hair than the other. “Like I said, I only saw them from a distance. They were climbing over a stile.”

“Dark hair? Thin and wiry?” the girl persisted. “Did they look like a couple of gypsies?”

“Yes.” Tyler was instantly on the alert; when Freddie Masterson had been singing the praises of Hestacombe he hadn’t mentioned any gypsies. “Are they a problem around here?”

“Damn right they’re a problem around here. They’re my children.” Intercepting the look of horror on his face, the girl broke into a mischievous smile. “Relax, they’re not really gypsies. You haven’t just mortally offended me.”

“Well,” said Tyler, “I’m glad about that.”

“I didn’t see a thing, little sods. They must have crawled through the bushes and sneaked off with my stuff when I wasn’t looking. That’s what happens when you have kids who are hell–bent on joining the SAS. But this isn’t funny.” No longer amused, the girl said impatiently, “I can’t believe they’d do something so stupid. They don’t think, do they? Because now I’m stuck here with no clothes—-”

“You’re welcome to borrow my jacket.”

“And no shoes.”

“I’m not lending you my shoes,” Tyler drawled. “You’d look ridiculous. Plus, that’d leave me with nothing to put on my feet.”

drey’s thoughts:

The Plot: Boy meets girl, boy is rejected by girl’s offspring, boy and girl move on. Jill Mansell’s Making Your Mind Up has quite a few bumps on the road to happily-ever-after…

The Characters: I quite enjoyed Lottie Carlyle’s sense of humor and particular brand of practicality, even as her waffling drove me a little batty. She’s funny, just-enough sassy, and adorably protective of her children (who’re quite capable of totally bratty behavior). Lottie is such a people person, she gets along with everyone – including her ex-husband, and his girlfriend. Then she meets Tyler, her new boss. And she doesn’t quite know what to do when her children instantly dislike him.

Tyler Klein is instantly taken with Lottie, but he’s not quite as enamored with her children. Or rather, he’s not quite sure what to do with them. Or how to talk to them. Or what to bribe them with. All in all, he’s not quite sure about children in general. Pretty big bump in the road, that…

The Story: Making Your Mind Up is an apt title for this quirky love story. There’s drama, of course, but overall this is a pretty light read, filled with Mansell’s sense of humor. I didn’t love it as much as some of her other titles, but this is still one to add to your summer reading.

drey’s rating: Pick it up!

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About Jill Mansell

Jill Mansell lives with her family in Bristol. She used to work in the field of Clinical Neurophysiology but now writes full time. She watches far too much TV and would love to be one of those super-sporty types but basically can’t be bothered. Nor can she cook – having once attempted to bake a cake for the hospital’s Christmas Fair, she was forced to watch while her co-workers played frisbee with it.

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