Nights of Rain and Stars - Maeve Binchy

*****Midday at Midnight café.***** I haven't counted all my book reviews, but I expect they would amount to about a third of all my reviews. I know they are a mixture of the genres, maybe leaning mostly to the general fiction, but I do like to read some literature that I'd class as either romantic, or just pure escapism. I have a few favourite writers in that category and one of them is Maeve Binchy. Better known for her books set in her homeland of Ireland, she still manages to write some that aren't entirely type-set and this book falls into that category. If you haven't read a book by this author before, then you are either young or have ...

Despite her popularity I have never really been interested in reading a Maeve Binchy novel, mostly because the people that have recommended her novels to me are my Nana and other people around her age, so I though they just wouldn't appeal to me. After hunting around for something to read I read a few of the blurbs on Binchy's novels and thought I might bite the bullet and give one a go. I decided Nights Of Rain And Stars purely because it's set in a traditional Greek village and Greece (especially the small traditional places in Greece) is my favourite place in the whole world (well so far!) The Story The novel begins in the Greek village of Aghia Anna, ...

As a caveat, I should probably explain that I have never been a fan of Maeve Binchy. But I also never disliked her. I read a couple of her books before reading “Nights of rain and stars” and I liked them, but they did not overwhelm me at all. So what did I think of this little part of her wide collection? By complete coincidence, five tourists vacationing in the Greek village of Aghia Anna meet at a taverna. Two are from Ireland, one from the United States, one from Germany and one from England. All five of them left home in search of something different, leaving friends and family behind. Fiona and Shane are from Ireland. Fiona is a young girl ...