View source for Bring Me Home by Alan Titchmarsh

{{infobox1
|title=Bring Me Home
|author=Alan Titchmarsh
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=A story which keeps the pages turning, gorgeous location and whilst some of the characters might be a little two-dimensional that point only struck me after I'd stayed up until three in the morning to finish the book.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=310
|publisher=Hodder & Stoughton
|date=March 2014
|isbn=978-0340936917
|cover=0340936916
|aznuk=0340936916
|aznus=0340936916
}}

When we first meet Charlie Stuart he's half wishing that the guests at his annual summer party at his Scottish castle would hurry up and leave - and half hoping that he could delay what he knows will have to be done once everyone has gone.  He knows that life will never again be the same, but to understand why we have to go back from June 2000 to 1960 when Charlie was just a young boy being shown the ways of the loch and the surrounding land by the ghillie, who, oddly enough, was also his uncle.

We learn something very quickly - the Stuarts might have the castle, but they don't have a lot of money.  They struggle to make ends meet, but there's a lot of love, until Charlie's mother dies unexpectedly young and he's set on decades of guilt, dark secrets, death and betrayal.  The Stuarts have an amazing fund of loyalty - but will that be enough to see them through?

Sometimes what you need is a book which you don't have to work at, a books which wraps itself around you like a warm blanket and allows you to float away from reality for a few hours.  It's a great story, much in the way of R F Delderfield who captured the rural way of life so well.  I'm not a fan of this type of fiction and I'm still not ''quite'' certain why I started reading ''Bring Me Home'' but I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself still reading at three o'clock in the morning to find out what happened.

I liked Charlie, but loved his father Angus more and Angus's second wife, Charlotte, was suitably monstrous.  Don't think in terms of subtlety - that would be over-egging the pudding: think in terms of a book with lots of flamboyant characters, a brilliant location and a story which keeps you turning the pages.  I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

When I read [[The Haunting by Alan Titchmarsh|The Haunting]] I was convinced that I could hear Alan speaking (spooky, eh?) and I had the same feeling as I read ''Bring Me Home'' - it feels just like a story being told by someone you know well.

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