This HaBO comes from Elizabeth, who is looking for the first romance she read:
I have been looking for a book that I read in the 90s for about 5 years now with no luck finding it as I don’t remember the title nor the author. It was significant to me because it was the first romance book I ever read. It caused me to start drinking Earl Grey and it brightened my dull days of being a single, young mom.
So this is the only thing I remember from the book: I read it in the early 1990s (1993 maybe); the setting was in England; the protagonist was a woman living in the city, but temporarily was able to live at an estate in the countryside (or did she just go there on the weekends?); she drank a lot of Earl Grey tea; throughout the book there were frequent mentions of tapestries.
Ah, to be a romance heroine. Drinking tea. Living in or visiting estates. Can we help Elizabeth out, Bitchery?
Was this book a historical one or contemporary? Was she restoring the tapestries?
Sounds rather interesting. Earls Grey tea is a pleasant way to relax….
What about the Hero? Did he joking her in the tea ceremony?
Oh, boy! , that corrector!
Did he join her in the tea ceremony?
This was a contemporary novel. I seem to remember that the protagonist spent a lot of time looking at the tapestries hanging in different rooms in the Manor House.
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Hmm. I remember a JAK from the 90s where the heroine was very particular about her tea (a couple of them actually) but I doubt they were set in England.
The only thing I can think of that remotely resembles that description is The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell.
Was it Brit chick lit – as in written by a British author – or was it by an American? That would narrow the field. The amount of tea drinking makes me think it’s Brit because Americans don’t put it into the plot as repeatedly as Brits do.
I am confident it was a British author as I bought the book in Europe. I was trying hard to remember more about the plot, and I think that the heroine had just broken up with her boyfriend and that is why she was visiting family (her sister?) out in the country side. The hero obviously comes in at some point, whom I don´t recall too much about, but there were some steamy scenes for sure several places in the book. The book cover was a drawing of the Manor House, I think, in light yellow colors mostly.
#1) As Double Bergamot Earl Grey is my favorite, I’d love to read this book. #2) As a fiber artist, I’d love to read this book. #3) Just for giggles, I googled “Tapestry-Loving, Earl Grey-Drinking Heroine” and as I thought, it didn’t bring up a book but I did learn that Dame Judy Dench hates Earl Grey. I think I have just the teeniest bit less respect for her now.
Sounds like the sort of thing Madeleine Wickham wrote (aka Sophie Kinsella, but this sounds more like her Wickham books). Not sure which one, if any.
I think that Kerry may be right with the Dorothy Cannell suggestion.
This sounds an awful lot like one of Katie Fforde’s titles–“Restoring Grace” or “Stately Pursuits” maybe? Several of her early books involve art restoration, antique-hunting, crumbling manor houses restored to glory etc. and there’s always a lot of tea-drinking and cake-eating going on. The date is about right too. I found my first Katie Fforde while traveling in the UK in the late ’90’s. Good luck in your quest!
The suggestions are great, but many of these books are published after 1995, at which time I no longer lived in Europe, so I am sure the publishing date is not later than this. I bought the book around 1992, so it could certainly have been published a couple of years before this. I am also sure it was not a murder mystery, so probably not Dorothy Cannell. I drank Early Grey tea this morning, still thinking about that book every day.
@Elizabeth, you said “The suggestions are great, but many of these books are published after 1995” and I wondered, books do get re-printed and the copyright date changes, are you certain these suggestions were originally published after 1995? Just a thought that passed through what I like to call my mind.