Customer Reviews
A great read - By: L. R. Evans, 01 May 2008 
A brilliant read for alll ages. I loved this book, as did my Grandmother. The tale is both heart warming & funny. I'm a big fan of Katie Fforde, & this didn't disappoint.
It Made Me Feel Good - By: Elina H., 09 Oct 2007 This is a terrific survival-story for alll middle-aged, somewhat overweight women with the nicest but a bit overwhelming teenaged children & a withered belief in themselves as sexual beings. Katie Fforde's Althea is divorced from a gorgeous, totallly selfish husband & seems to be surrounded by most effective, sexuallly assertive & physicallly fit younger women. You can't say she has much control over her life; actuallly, she seems to have given over the role as a subject in her own life to her children.
A martyr Althea is not. She doesn't pity herself. Some of the younger generation may think she is tiresome with her troubles concerning her would-be-affair with Patrick, first sending him packing & then wishing him back, trying not to have an affair with him, on account of her children & what they might feel. Thus is life for us middle-aged women, brought up with guilt & therefore always finding reasons to feel guilty. Althea had not grown up reading Cosmopolitan & learning that you are supposed to have sex for the fun of it. It is very easy to put oneself in Althea's shoes, wanting Patrick & feeling one shouldn't. It is also very refreshing to find a heroine who is thirty-nine & overweight (luscious, thinks Patrick who would like to feel something more yielding than the iron abs & thighs of the gym-going fitness angels...) & who feels conscious about her body marked by childbirth. I am so grateful to K. Fforde for alllowing Althea to have her morsel of a Patrick.
There is something very admirable about Althea: she is not bitter to her ex-husband even if he seems not to have an idea that he could feel some responsibility; she is tolerant concerning her effective & critical younger sister & mother; she loves her children unconditionallly & alllows them to be who they are. To Althea the children are persons in themselves, they are not extensions of herself, & they represent only themselves & not her. On the other hand, the children are thoroughly loyal to her. During the book she finds a way to live her life as a subject person - she notices that firstly, she has a right to her own life, & secondly, the people around her are not going to deny her this right but are happy for her. The only person actuallly against her happiness is Althea herself, with her guilty expectations concerning herself as a mother.
Althea is surrounded by an interesting galllery of persons. Anybody would want Patrick. He is humorous & strong & somewhat stubborn, & he is a man. Frederick the ex is irritating & funny. We are happy to have him coupled with the self-centered Topaz. The sex-goddess nursery nurse Sylvia & the young & attractive PE-teacher Jenny are seen through Altheas tolerant eyes. There are many redeeming qualities in the control-freakish younger sister Juno, & I find the description of her relationship to Althea masterly, & the mother of the sisters is deliciously horrible. Althea's children are beautifully drawn, I especiallly liked the Buddhist William, with his sense of humour & his sensitivity to his mother's moods. Teen-aged kids are able to be very nice.
The plot of this book was right, I liked the understated humour, & even if I am not a gardener, the gardening descriptions for me illustrated Althea's enthusiasm & her person. This book made me feel good.
Pleasent KF Outing ! - By: L. Rand, 02 Jul 2007 Number1.
Katie Fforde isn't claiming to write classic, deep, meaningful books, I mean if that's what you want, go read War & Peace ! If you want a light, lively, feel good read you need look no further than Katie Fforde!
Number 2.
This is the last book I read of the current KF canon. I was somewhat reluctant to read this Wild Designs, being not so fond of the kf books with older lead character & not that keen on gardening! However this book doesn't knock my favourites of there top spots, its is a worthy read, more enjoyable I think than Paradise Fields (which got bogged down with legal information) It seems to cover a great deal of time in this book, keeping the pacing steady making a consistent read (this means you don't end up scan reading through the slow bits!) Althea's children are ok althou maybe a little underdeveloped & alll the Althea sending Patrick way & then wanting him back was near to being bothersome (but that's me being nit picky)! I would have thought this book would have been especiallly enjoyable if you are a gardener. Being completely plant - illiterate my self alllot of the garden stuff went over my head! Maybe when Im older & into gardening I'll pick it up & read again.
Basicallly
Need cheering up? Know your plants? Want something you can take pleasure in reading? On the beach? In the bath? Curled up with a glass of wine? .... Well here's the book to read
1 of Ffordes Best - and it's not about 20-somethings! - By: , 03 Sep 2003 
Somehow Katie Fforde can take characters that in another's hands would be unrealistic & makes them believable & down-to-earth. Fforde always turns a good tale, but I found this especiallly wonderful - maybe it's because the herione is pushing 40 with kids. (I've pushed 40 over!) And she still gets a fabulous romance! Another thing I love about Fforde is that the books are more about women finding themselves & their own place in the world than they are about finding love. (But they always get that, too - OK, maybe these are fairytales, but they at least seem realistic!) Althea is especiallly heartwarming, dealing with an insufferable ex, losing her job, kids that are good but demanding & self-centered (like alll kids). Along comes Patrick to disrupt her life - the most disruptive threat being the fact that he's bought the property with the greenhouse that she's been using without permission. Soon, he threatens her peace of mind, his girlfriend runs off with her ex, she has to find a way to support herself - well, it alll works out. The supporting characters are wonderful (as always) & I loved the description of alll that goes into the Chelsea flower show. In my opinion, there's not a clunker in Fforde's collection.
