Blog Tour: The Start of Something Wonderful by Jane Lambert (Review!)

Title: The Start of Something Wonderful 

Author: Jane Lambert 

Genre: Contemporary 

Forty-year-old air stewardess Emily Forsyth has everything a woman could wish for: a glamorous, jet-set lifestyle, a designer wardrobe and a dishy pilot of a husband-in-waiting to match. But when he takes off to ‘find himself’ (forgetting to mention the bit about ‘…a younger girlfriend’), Emily’s perfect world comes crashing down. Catapulted into a mid-life crisis, she is forced to take stock. She ditches her job and enrols on a drama course, positive that, in no time at all, she’ll be posing in Prada on the red carpet, and her ex will rue the day he dumped her. Right? Wrong! Her chosen path proves to be an obstacle course littered with rejection and financial insecurity. 

While juggling a string of odd jobs with some humiliating auditions, Emily meets dashing chef Francesco. But her plans for a romantic happily ever after are turned upside down when she’s offered the role of a lifetime in Vienna. The adventure she’s about to step into will change her in ways she could never have imagined.

The Start of Something Wonderful is a bittersweet, romantic tale of self-discovery about how we sometimes have to hit rock bottom in order to find the courage to make a positive change.

Review: 

Jane Lambert's The Start of Something Wonderful is a quirky and fast paced tale of one woman's quest to follow her dreams. 

What I Liked: 

1. Emily (the main character) - Emily is representative of anyone who has ever felt "stuck" in their life, like somehow somewhere they got lost and ended up in the wrong place. When the book first begins she's unhappy. She's double thinking all of her life choices while also trying to figure out who she is as a newly single woman. I give her major props for going after her dreams, especially so late in life. Not many people would do that - most would stay in their comfortable yet boring jobs - but Emily takes a daring leap. The leap brings the good as well as the bad. Emily finds out what she likes and doesn't like over the course of the book. While sometimes I felt that she acted slightly young for age regarding her decisions (especially regarding her office cleaning job!), it didn't bother me too much overall. 

2. Acting - Throughout the book Emily stars in a variety of shows. Some are good. Some are mediocre. Some are terribly bad. I always enjoyed seeing how each turned out. They brought out some good laughs, and I loved the secondary characters they introduced. Petra, for instance, was a bright light. I admired her passion for acting as well as her desire to help others reach their goals. 

3. The romance - The romance in The Start of Something Wonderful is very low-key, and I was completely okay with that, because at its heart The Start of Something Wonderful is about finding yourself as well as not defining yourself based on another. The romance happened late in the book, and I thought it was sweet. 

4. The ending - I'll admit at first I thought "wait, that's it?!" but the more I think about the ending the more I appreciate it. It's very open-ended but at the same time it's hopeful. In a way it lets the reader decide what happens next. 

What I Didn't Like - 

1. The flow - The Start of Something Wonderful is broken into 15 chapters. Each chapter covers a different month of Emily's life. Overall, I liked the month break down. It gave a fast paced feel to the book; however, it didn't always flow well. Just as I would get comfortable in one chapter, it was BAM, next scene. It was a tad bit confusing at times, and sometimes I thought plot and character development suffered because of it. 

Overall, The Start of Something Wonderful is a short introspective tale of Emily's eventful year.

3 stars!!

The Start of Something Wonderful is now out! 

Source: eARC provided by publisher for blog tour 

Add on Goodreads!

Buy Links: 

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes and Noble | Kobo 

About the Author: 

Jane was born in Yorkshire and brought up on the west coast of Scotland. She studied French and German at Stirling University, taught English in Vienna and travelled the world as cabin crew before making the life-changing (and slightly mad) decision to become an actress in her mid-thirties.

She has appeared in "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time", "Calendar Girls" and "Deathtrap" in London’s West End.

While hanging around as an understudy in draughty theatre dressing rooms and grotty digs on tour, she wrote her first novel, “The Start of Something Wonderful” and has now discovered her true path in life.