More Or Less Annie
Discovering home isn’t home and you aren’t you is no walk on the beach.
Life’s turned out just as Annie expected. Unfortunately. Low self-esteem, abandonment issues and a twenty-year-old marriage that’s going nowhere trap her in a dull existence. Browsing luxury travel websites is her only pleasure but escape from her gossipy English village seems nothing more than an internet reverie. That is, until Luck launches a new window and whisks her away to Casa Luna.
Taylor controls everything about her penthouse Chicago life until scandal sends her tumbling down Luck’s corporate ladder. Unemployed, and unemployable, she packs her Louis Vuitton suitcases full of vengeance and heads to Central America. There, her former boss is rumoured to be setting up a new venture. If she’s going down, he’s going with her.
Annie and Taylor collide in the exotic waters of Costa Rica, where life becomes anything but a walk on the beach. Why has a tabloid reporter followed Annie to paradise? And what’s a fifty-year-old cold case got to do with it? As Annie’s past slides into shocking focus, Taylor smells opportunity. Annie has a decision to make: Give up control of her life once and for all ‒ or wrestle command from past demons.
Spectacular tropical beaches and luxury villas beckon as More Or Less Annie sweeps the reader along on a journey of hope and self-discovery. Join Annie as she fights for a new identity ‒ one piña colada at a time.
Inspiration:
If you’ve been to Costa Rica you will understand my choice of location. It’s a beautiful country, eco-friendly, quiet, and full of exotic plants and wildlife. It’s exactly the kind of place you’d go if you could go anywhere. Annie’s character came to me during a discussion about what I would do if I could do anything. We want to believe if money were no object life’s problems would dissipate. Deep down we know better, and Annie finds this out in no uncertain terms when a windfall signals the beginning of a whole new set of problems. No matter where she goes, her old baggage travels with her.
‘Annie stared at everything that should feel so strange: the flowers with huge waxy heads that would never survive an English frost, the speckled islands surrounded by shimmering skirts of azure and turquoise. None of this should make sense. Yet, somewhere in her soul, this place settled like a handful of glitter thrown into still air.’
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Tracey has a unique gift of combining both tragedy and hilarity to tell the wonderful story of what it means to survive in a crazy world.
The tropical location, witty prose, and plot twists made this hard to put down.
Wonderful book, I was so disappointed when it was finished! Ready for another one Tracey Gemmell!
We are all trying to make and find our homes. Lucky for us Annie has opportunities and adventures that keep us laughing, guessing, and turning the pages as she creates hers.
Author Tracey Gemmell’s sharp eye for absurdity informs every page of this funny, fast-paced, delayed-coming-of-age novel.
Gemmell’s writing is smooth and easy to read. I loved how this novel played on the theme of finding home, alongside finding yourself.
Dunster’s Calling
What’s a heart to do when family and home are continents apart?
Sam knows exactly where she wants to spend her life: Exmoor, England. Its heather-clad moors and stunningly beautiful coastline own her heart and soul. She imagines no better existence than the life she leads with Dunster—her handsome and loyal, though always hungry, Exmoor pony. Why would she ever leave?
One transatlantic relocation, two decades, and an empty nest later, Sam desperately needs an answer to that question. An unexpected request from her American husband awakens the crushing realisation she may be living the wrong life in the wrong country. Her apprehension is compounded by the discovery of an ancient Celtic word: hiraeth. Its meaning—a deep yearning for home with a sense of loss—sends her tumbling through the longitudinal cracks of an expat life, crash-landing in national-identity-crisis territory. Second-guessing decisions made years earlier, she must determine where her heart truly resides. But will the answer force her to choose between her husband and her homeland?
Told with humour, deep reverence for England, and compassion for the human-equine bond, Dunster’s Calling speaks to world travellers and homebodies alike of the love between a girl and her pony, and a woman and the country she left behind.
Inspiration:
Dunster’s Calling was my attempt to cure my own bout of hiraeth. As I contemplated returning to England after more than thirty years in the United States, Dunster encouraged me to look deeper into what I thought I was returning to. The revelations left me both laughing aloud at long-forgotten memories and sobbing into my keyboard at all I’d missed during my time away. Writing this novel turned out to be a more emotional journey than I’d originally planned to take.
‘The little colt with a mealie muzzle and soft eyes stared at Sam, unblinking. They’d met before. Sam’s presence was acknowledged with the same interest as a breeze or a view or a starry night, and she knew what it was to be a truly naturalized citizen.’
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It is a remarkable writer that can take you on a journey that allows you to feel something beyond the scope of your own experience and leave you changed because of it.
The dual interwoven story will stir your heartstrings and also make you laugh out loud.
I’m not a horse lover and have never been to England, but the storytelling made me love both.
Anyone who has moved far away from where they spent their childhood can relate to Dunster’s Calling.
This is a beautifully written book with the most wonderful descriptions of the Somerset countryside, particularly wonderful Exmoor.
Dunster’s Calling is an easy read. Characters are believable. Setting is magical. Highly recommended for girls with dreams!
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