She lives in Chipping Norton others include Great Rollright, Shipston-on-Stour, Stow-on-the-Wold, Moreton-in-Marsh, Wotton-Under-Edge - I think I just want to live somewhere with a hyphenated name! The author talks about her longing for an Aga - oh yes please! Plus the place names are just so great.

The Cotswolds are exactly the place I would love to live. As soon as I saw the words 'Cotswold' and 'family', I was there! And the author is a writer so loves books as well. Sometimes you just need a delightful read that you can laugh out loud with. My thanks go to netgalley and Little Brown Books for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this, and I very much look forward to reading her next novel. Through her observations of these changes and her humorous and witty recounts of her family life, you feel yourself being drawn in, sharing these times with a real sense of empathy, knowing how many of us have experienced such similar times in life, causing us to either laugh or cry with her.

Alongside such busy lives we can often overlook these, but Mackintosh takes the time to remind us of these continuous cycles of natural life, which, as a nation so obsessed with the weather, we would be so lost without. Her vivid descriptions of seasonal changes in the Cotswolds remind you of how lucky we are in England to live in a country with such landscape and countryside, each season bringing its own unique element of natural beauty. The memoirs are related to the twelve months of the calendar year, where she describes the seasonal changes and traditions that come with each new month, and how these relate to family times at various times of the year. She reminisces of treasured family times, always with great love and fondness but also shares some moments which evoke great sadness. She has captured these moments with such wit and humour, often highlighting how farcical life can be at times.

Mackintosh retells moments of many everyday incidents in life that many of us can relate to as we all try to juggle the copious demands of everyday life, such as the daily school run, running a home with three children, the constant demands of the school PTA as well as managing a job and finding time for oneself and husband. The book is in the main highly entertaining, provoking those ‘laugh out loud’ moments when reading alone, and leaves you with a great ‘feel good’ factor at the end.

Having read three of Clare Mackintosh’s novels, and enjoyed all of them greatly, I was keen to read her written memoirs of her family life in the Cotswolds.

A Cotswold Way of Life by Edward Jewell