Campari for Breakfast Audiobook By Sara Crowe cover art

Campari for Breakfast

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Campari for Breakfast

By: Sara Crowe
Narrated by: Sara Crowe
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'Reads like a cross between I Capture the Castle and Love, Nina' Cathy Rentzenbrink, Bookseller

Life is full of terrible things. Ghosts of dead relatives, heartbreak . . . burnt toast.

In 1987, Sue Bowl's world changes for ever. Her mother dies, leaving her feeling like she’s lost a vital part of herself. And then her father shacks up with an awful golddigger called Ivana.

But Sue’s mother always told her to make the most of what she’s got – and what she’s got is a love of writing and some interesting relatives. So Sue moves to her Aunt Coral’s crumbling ancestral home, Green Place, along with a growing bunch of oddballs and eccentrics. Not to mention the odd badger or two . . .

There she fully intends to write a book, fall in love, and learn to live decadently.

Campari for Breakfast is a heart-warming, eccentric novel that joins the ranks of great British coming-of-age novels such as Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.

 Coming of Age Women's Fiction Heartfelt Feel-Good Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Comedy Romance Romantic Comedy

Critic reviews

I was really cross when I reached the final few words, because I didn't want it to end. It is brilliant. Heart-rending sorrow, unremitting hopefulness and joy, held together by the delicious comic malapropisms of a startlingly original teenage heroine. An utter delight (Tamsin Greig)
We defy you not to love Sue, the quirky heroine of Sara Crowe's charming CAMPARI FOR BREAKFAST
A sort of upmarket Adrian Mole . . . full of poignancy, humour and shafts of startling perception
Campari for Breakfast is truly, charmingly, battily splendid… Utterly divine!
This charming debut about family secrets reads like a cross between I Capture the Castle and Love, Nina (Cathy Rentzenbrink)
A quirky debut novel as touching as it is funny.
Deeply eccentric and very, very funny, Campari for Breakfast is as charming and humane as its multi-talented author. It's also unexpectedly touching. A delight
Absolutely delightful and charming. I loved it
A quirky unexpected delight (Sam Baker)
Quirky and rewarding - a delight
All stars
Most relevant
I hadn't realized this was such a YA book. Sue, the 17 year old protagonist, came off as closer to 14 to me, very immature.

As a bit if plot re-hashing, which I normally avoid, her mother's just committed suicide, and she hates her dad's fiancée, so she's off to her Aunt Coral at her mother's family estate, or at least manse. At that point, some of the story is told in flashback form over Coral's lifetime from her journals; I liked that as an alternative to Sue mooning over a boy she can't have in the present. Coral's the best part of the story, although she's rather immature herself, at her best when leading the weekly writing seminars. Naturally, there's a villain as well, who becomes the girlfriend of the object of Sue's obsession. Never fear, by the end she's contrite, Sue learns that the truth about her parents wasn't what she'd assumed, her life is on track, and Coral is left with a rehabilitated manse, formerly a money pit, to run as a sort of guest house. Sorry for the spoilers, but most readers would see all that coming in a book where everything's tied up very neatly.

One of the few audiobooks where the author's own narration is probably better than a professional would have done.

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