Summer Harvest by Georgina Penney **Guest Post & Review**

Summer Harvest by Georgina Penney **Guest Post & Review**


Hey Everyone!

I'd like to introduce you to Georgina Penney who has just released her latest contemporary romance, Summer Harvest.

Georgina Penney first discovered romance novels when she was eleven and has been a fan of the genre ever since. It took her another eighteen years to finally sit in front of a keyboard and get something down on the page but that's alright, she was busy doing other things until then. Some of those things included living in a ridiculous number of towns and cities in Australia before relocating overseas to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Brunei Darussalam. In between all these travels, Georgina managed to learn to paint, get herself a Communication and Cultural Studies degree, study Psychotherapy and learn all about Hypnotherapy. In the early days she even managed to get on the IT roller coaster during the early noughties boom, inexplicably ending the ride by becoming the registrar of a massage and naturopathy college. There was also a PhD in the mix there somewhere but moving to Saudi Arabia and rediscovering the bodice ripper fixed all that. Today she lives with her wonderful husband, Tony, in a cozy steading in the Scottish countryside. When she's not swearing at her characters and trying to cram them into her plot, she can be found traipsing over fields, gazing at hairy coos and imagining buff medieval Scotsmen in kilts (who have access to shower facilities and deodorant) living behind every bramble hedge. Georgina’s debut novel Fly In Fly Out was published in early 2015.

Connect with Georgina via

Guest Post


Getting Sorted by Georgina Penney

A while ago I decided to reorganize my bookshelves. This tends to take a bit of time because I’m rather eccentric about my filing system. So much so that my husband frequently points to our book shelves when we have visitors and asks them if they can guess my logic. They never can (she says with just a tiny bit of smugness.) When faced with a Japanese Manga series, Anaiis Nin, Zadie Smith, Jim Butcher and David Attenborough’s autobiography all on the same shelf, who can blame them?

The joy of being a book owner is that we get to arrange our books however we please. No wonder librarians have always put me in mind of undercover superheroes… or supervillians. Think of getting to arrange an entire library of books! All that power! I can already hear the maniacal laughter in my head… but I digress, back to my bookshelf rearranging.

It took me most of a day to sort the shelves in the living room and the bedroom but then I got to my study where I keep my romance novels. I stood there with my cup of tea in one hand, Tim Tam in the other (vital sustenance for such tiring work) taking in the hodgepodge of books I’d crammed in any old how and wondered what the heck to do.

The common sense solution would be to classify by country and topic: Westerns, outback, paranormal, historical... you get the idea. But that didn’t feel right. I don’t read my books because they’re from any particular country or place. Usually I go by how they make me feel.

I tried to work out why I read some books more than others, why some novels were falling apart from re-reading while others were once-read still-perfect. And then it came to me: Diversity. The romance novels I love the most don’t just have a hottie hero and a hilarious heroine. They have friends, family, pets and most importantly, mature characters. Put quite simply, throw in a feisty octogenarian and a contrary cat into your book and I’m yours for life.

Almost all the romance novels I own contain fantastic three-dimensional mature characters who drive the plot along. They might be funny like Uncle Fred or fearsome like the ‘Aunts’ in the P.G. Wodehouse books (and I do classify Wodehouse as romance) or they might be feisty, sexy or complicated like they can be in the books of Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Amanda Quick or Loretta Chase. And don’t even start me on the brilliant older characters (and pets) in Kristan Higgins’s body of work or I’ll be here all day.

So I got to work and sorted, stacking and shelving away, ordering my books by how much I love the entire cast of characters, not just the hero and heroine. I won’t lie, it was a four Tim Tam job, but by the time I finished, it felt right. If felt even better when my husband dropped by and tried in vain to guess my filing system. I might have laughed a little manically when he couldn’t work it out.


Now if I could only work out where librarians buy their super hero costumes….


Summer Harvest by Georgina Penney



English dog trainer Beth Poole is having trouble getting her life back together after beating a life-threatening illness and divorcing her husband. When her Aussie-soap-obsessed grandma sends her to Australia to recover, it seems a great opportunity for some rest and relaxation while she figures out what's next.

But when Beth arrives in Australia things get off to a rocky start. To begin with, she's on the wrong coast and there are deadly creatures everywhere. And if that weren't enough, her neighbours are driving her crazy. She's staying in the beautiful Margaret River wine region, right next door to a family-owned vineyard. It should be perfect, but the boisterous Hardy clan just don't seem able to leave her alone. The usually reserved Beth is soon reluctantly embroiled in their family disputes and romantic entanglements. And eldest son Clayton Hardy is proving surprisingly persistent.

The more Beth gets to know Clayton and the Hardys, the more she sees what she wants for her future. But as the end of summer approaches, her past comes back to haunt her and will test her newfound relationships to the limit.

From the author of Fly In Fly Out comes this entertaining and touching story about family, friendship and love among the grapevines. 



Hey! Here's my review.

I loved the familiar Australian setting and the small town rural feel. I seem to be drawn to these vineyard romances lately. I loved Beth, a wonderful blend of worldly and naive. I'd love to have a cuppa with her, but I think I'd trust her tea more than her coffee. The romance was quite raunchy and I enjoyed the strong themes of mateship. The topic of cancer was handled very well, exploring the issues of body image and what life is like as a survivor. 


I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 


★★★★

  • Where: NetGalley
  • Format: ebook


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