What’s Saving Saffron Sweeting about?

Saving Saffron Sweeting is light-hearted contemporary fiction, sure to appeal to Anglophiles and any woman who has ever been tempted to run away. It has reached the quarter finals of this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Grace Palmer’s British friends all think she’s living the American Dream. But her design business is floundering and when she discovers her husband is cheating with her best client, she panics and flees home to England.

The tranquil village of Saffron Sweeting appears to be a good place for Grace to lick her wounds, but the community is battling its own changes. Reluctantly, Grace finds herself helping her new neighbours as they struggle to adjust and save their businesses. However, not everyone has the same opinion on what’s good for the village. The charismatic new man in her life may have one speculative eye on Grace, but the other is firmly on profit. How will she navigate the tricky path between her home and her happiness?

With gentle humour and generous helpings of British tea and cake, Saving Saffron Sweeting explores one woman’s need to define herself through her career and community, before she can figure out who should be by her side.

What genre is it?

Contemporary women’s fiction.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?

Women who love to read about England, tea, cake, heroines getting their lives straightened out, misbehaving husbands & spaniels, and intelligent humour.

Let’s try something out. Describe this book in 5 words.

Bridget Jones meets Bill Bryson.

That sounds a little quirky. Where does that come from?

I believe most of my quirkiness can be traced back to the day my Aunt introduced me to the Somerset custom of eating cheddar cheese and fruitcake, together. You either think that’s delightful, or detestable. There are no in-betweens.

We know where we stand! Back to the book, how do you expect it to leave the reader feeling?

Satisfied, entertained, amused, optimistic.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

British by birth, I moved to California eight years ago and, apart from a yearning for afternoon tea and historic homes, have never looked back. My work has been published by House of Fifty, Open Exchange and Alfie Dog Fiction. Saving Saffron Sweeting is my first novel.

When not writing, I can be found getting the steps wrong in a Zumba class or calculating how many miles I have to run to justify an extra piece of cake. My ambition is to sell enough books to cover the cost of flying myself and a reader to London for tea.

How can we follow you online?

www.paulinewiles.com
@paulinewiles
www.facebook.com/scribinglimey.

What’s next?

I’m plotting and planning my next novel, probably set in the same village of Saffron Sweeting, but taking place one or two years earlier.