Thank you, thank you, thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources for having me on this blog tour! Click on the banner for the rest of the tour schedule and for more information.

Deirdre Cossette is the self appointed carer for the elderly on The Avenue and all of her friends have stories to tell.

Margery, whose comfortable life was destroyed by a knock on the door.

Stan, who made a mistake as a young footballer. It cost him his friends and his self-respect.

Marina, whose slim and stylish figure hides a terrible secret from the summer of Live Aid.

And, Oliver and Archie, who have survived everything from post war homophobia to a family tragedy – and they have done it together.

Deirdre believes that everyone should have a choice. If they want to live on a diet of cakes, drink the alcoholic equivalent of a small hydrotherapy pool, or take on a toy boy lover in spite of a dodgy heart, Deirdre believes it is their right to do so. If they remember her in their wills afterwards, that’s not her fault, is it?

However, not everyone agrees with her. When disgruntled relatives from the present meet up with disgruntled ghosts from her past, Deirdre discovers the cost of being kind.

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Andy Paulcroft grew up in Weston-super-Mare, and his love of books started when he borrowed his sister’s copy of Five Run Away Together and exaggerated a minor illness in order to finish reading it. He has since worked as a chef in France, Switzerland, Corsica and the North Highlands of Scotland before settling as a catering manager at a boarding school in Dorset. After many years of writing two to three chapters of a book before discarding it, he finally published his first novel Postcards From Another Life – in December 2017. The wonderful feeling of completing a novel was only surpassed by receiving a positive reaction from people who had read it. He retired from catering and recently published his second novel Killing Them With Kindness. He is now working on his third book.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources, and Andy Paulcroft for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

I felt like this book got pretty sad at some parts, because of how some of the family members of the elderly people that Deidre was helping to take care of reacted to her. I mean, I also don’t know if Deidre was really helping them out of the goodness of her heart in the beginning you know? Just reading that synopsis, to me it doesn’t feel like being kind was her true bottom line intention, because if it was, there wouldn’t be any discussion about her being left in any sort of will for any of them. If you’re really wanting to care for someone that’s on the last leg of their life without anything in return, you’re not even going to be thinking about whether they are going to name you in their will because then you’re just doing it for the monetary value at the end. And to me, that’s not right.

So I guess I could see why some of those family members were getting a little salty because of it, but then were they even wanting to help their family members like Deidre was? Where were they when they needed the help and wanted to tell their stories to someone one last time?

So yeah, none of these people are truly in the right, but it sure made for some interesting story telling. I also have to say with all of these books that I’ve been reading where either the author or the characters live in the UK or somewhere in Europe, I’m seeing that some of the humor is definitely different from what I see in the US, which for me is way cooler in some aspects. I also like reading some of the different slang and lingo that I wouldn’t hear around here. Definitely makes me like the characters a little bit more and I don’t even know how to explain it.