Neighbor Dearest by Penelope Ward

There is just something about the tone and lilt of Penelope Ward’s work that has me drooling, I was late to find her work but have made up for it since, reading everything she has written, so when this book hit my screen I was so keen it get stuck in it was tempting to take a duvet day but …don’t tell the boss, I put the Kindle app on my laptop at work and my productivity for the day was zero!!!

This is Chelsea’s story, left emotionally broken when her partner Elec, the man she loved without question, left her for his step sister Greta. Now that isn’t a scenario you come across in everyday life very often so I sort of got her need to still be in therapy.

Having moved to a new apartment she was doing what she could to start again but it wasn’t easy, she had a pain in the a$$ neighbour who seemed to revel in the fact that despite how many times she complained, his dogs just refused to stop barking and it was compounded by the fact that the afore mentioned dogs just happened to belong to the same Mr Angry who seemed to like to spend his time painting graffiti art on the wall in the courtyard.

Chelsea was ready to read the landlord the riot act about those dang dogs until she got to his office and was smacked with the fact that Mr Angry and the landlord are one in the same, the gloriously attractive Damien Hennessey. Way to go Chelsea!

From that minute I just knew that the two of them were going to be fabulous together. The unusual friendship that ensued as was so engaging, so much fun that I read the book with a happy smile on my face as I flipped from page to page.

For me, everything really got going for the two of them after Chelsea realises that Damien has overhead her telephone therapy session, I chuckled to myself with his snarky comment at the end of her conversation – but she is mortified.

This sexy, angst artist/landlord and his dogs are wheedling their way under her skin but in all honesty it isn’t somewhere she is comfortable with him being and neither is he because Damien can’t be the guy that Chelsea would either need or deserve, he has his reasons and the disclosure of what that is comes in time but can they find a way to survive?

I loved the honesty that Damien lived by, the fact that he didn’t feel the need to sugar-coat anything, the fact that he tried to be nothing more than her friend but could see that she was looking for more, and despite the fact he couldn’t be what she wanted, it didn’t mean that he had to like it. His jealously was something he couldn’t hide from her and in that respect the pair of them had to fight the fact that for much of the book it looked as if neither of them would get what they truly wanted…each other.

A read that had just about everything you could possibly want in a story and it had it all in equal measure, I loved it!