Genre: Short rom-com (novella)
Page Count – 88
Publication Date: March 21, 2023
I am delighted share an extract with you today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
check out what my fellow bloggers thought of this one ⤵
Primrose Island Novellas (7 book series)
A Girl Called Brodie – Book 3, Primrose Island Novellas
Brodie McColl drives a vintage van all over the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, cutting old folks’ hair and spinning them tunes from her vinyl collection to remind them of the good old days, and their biggest, grandest, most swoon-worthy romances. The thing is, Brodie herself is already well into her thirties – and she’s beginning to wonder if any romance at all is going to be on the cards for her. Like, ever. And for the record? She’d be quite happy with a smallish, common-or-garden, every-day-beige kind of romance. Because she gets it. She’s not the kind of girl – okay, woman – for whom big romance… big love… and all that swoon-worthy stuff… is ever going to happen. Right?
Extract: Chapter One
Sandra, Doreen, Vincent, Leonard.
The Machair Lodge posse.
Brodie McColl had been touring her vintage campervan all over the Highlands and Islands of Scotland for years now, cutting old folks’ hair and spinning them tunes from her vinyl collection to remind them of the good old days.
There were lots of places she loved to stop. Lots of folk she loved to catch up with every six or seven weeks. But Machair Lodge Residential Care Home on Primrose Island was her favourite. All of its residents were her pals. And Sandra, Doreen, Vincent and Leonard were her really, really good pals.
They were her family, really.
Closest thing she’d ever had to one, anyway.
When Brodie filled up her campervan with stashes of scissors and curlers and bleaches and dyes and perming lotions before each trip, she also packed her record player – and all the crates of vinyl she could fit.
Because the Machair Lodge posse in particular loved Brodie’s angle.
Heyday Hair, she called it.
The hairstyles of their youth.
The hairstyles from their happiest, brightest days – to the soundtracks of their happiest, brightest days.
Doreen got the platinum blonde treatment and a swept, stylish up-do while listening to Doris Day.
Vincent got his hair re-dyed to blue-black and a gravity-defying Elvis quiff while listening to the King.
Leonard got re-streaked and re-mulleted while Rod Stewart belted out numbers from the late ’70s.
And Sandra got her bright-orange locks refreshed and re-styled in an out-there, early ’80s Cyndi Lauper number, while Cyndi sang her heart out about having fun and showing your true colours and driving all night.
Between the cutting and dyeing and blow-drying, the posse would put in their requests – and Brodie would spin the tunes that, she’d come to realise, were more often than not the tunes they associated with the great loves of their lives.
“Here, Brodie,” Doreen would say, as Doris Day crooned Move Over Darling in the background, “Have I told you how Stan and I met?”
Doreen had indeed told Brodie how she and her late husband had met. On many occasions.
But Brodie would always just smile and say, “Remind me, Doreen…”
And Doreen would be off, reliving all the details and re-telling all her stories while Brodie smoothed and swept and pinned her freshly platinumed hair into a Doris Day style up-do.
“Oh, it was my time, Brodie,” Doreen would say. “The happiest days of my life. Love. Romance. The big, orchestral, heart-swelling stuff, Brodie, let me tell you…”
This morning was no different.
Brodie and the posse were gathered in a corner of the Machair Lodge common room, and Doreen was reaching the end of her roster of stories, summing up with, “It was La Vie en Rose, Brodie. It really was La Vie en Rose …”
Edith Piaf. La Vie en Rose. Another of Doreen’s favourites. Actually, one of Brodie’s favourites, too.
“It certainly sounds that way, Doreen,” Brodie said, smiling again – at Doreen, and at the others. “It certainly sounds that way.”
Sandra, who was sitting nearby painting her nails, while also eyeing Brodie carefully, said, “And you, Brodie? What about you? What about your heyday?”
Brodie’s hands stilled for a moment. She looked out onto the lovely view of the machair-clad hills beyond the care home.
Her heyday? Her heyday?
“Oh, yes,” Doreen chimed in. “Tell us about your big loves and your big romances, Brodie.”
Brodie looked at them. From one to the other. “Well, folks, you see,” she began cagily, “I can’t exactly do that because, yeah, see, I haven’t exactly had a big love.”
There was an awkward moment – a very awkward moment, followed by an even more awkward silence during which Doreen looked at Vincent and Sandra looked at Doreen, and Leonard just… looked out the window.
It was Vincent who piped up in the end:
“What, no big love?”
Brodie shook her head.
“No big love affair? No half-decent romance?”
Again, Brodie shook her head.
Vincent shook his own head in turn – enough that his heavily lacquered Elvis quiff wobbled.
“Help me out here, Brodie,” he said, utterly baffled. “You’ve not had a love affair, a romance with anyone… ever?”
Book blurb:
“Far as I’m aware–” Joe said, dropping his head briefly, the better to compose his features, “–far as I’m aware, Miss, we’ve no rabies in the Hebrides at the moment.”
Rose Mackie has inherited a house on a far-flung Scottish island from her curmudgeon of a father who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with her.
So she lands on Primrose Island with the intention of packing up the old beach house, selling it to the first person who’ll make an offer, and moving firmly on. But Joe Fraser, her late father’s neighbour, has some inconvenient news for her on that front.
Rose prepares for battle – only to find that the longer she spends on Primrose Island, and the more time she spends around Joe in particular, the more she begins to question everything she thought she knew…
Purchase Link – https://mybook.to/ScottishIslandSurprise
Author Bio –
Holly lives in the wilds of Scotland with her family. When she’s not busy writing books she’s probably curled up with one in a cosy corner somewhere! Currently, Holly’s busy working on her Primrose Island novella series with lots of cosy, heartwarming stories to come in 2023!
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