ISBN: 9781742757377‘We can’t choose who we fall in love with. It could be our best friend or … our worst enemy.’
Emily Woods counts cracks for a living. Concrete cracks. So when her long-term boyfriend dumps her, she decides it’s time for a change of scenery. Her best friend, Will, suggests joining his construction team in Queensland. Working next door to the Great Barrier Reef seems like just the sort of adventure she needs to reboot her life… until she realises that Will is not the person she thought he was.
Charlotte Templeton is frustrated with the lack of respect FIFO workers have for her seaside resort. But picking a fight with their tyrannical project manager, Mark Crawford, seems to lead to more complications than resolutions. The man is too pompous, too rude, and too damned good looking.
As both women strive to protect their dreams and achieve their goals, they discover that secrets will come out, loyalty often hurts and sometimes the perfect man is the wrong one.
My review:
There are so many things to like about The Girl in the Yellow Vest. The characters are original and there is an interesting blend of personalities to really balance the story out. Emily and Will’s transition from friends to lovers is both sweet and funny; complimented cleverly by Charlotte and Mark’s story of attraction when they haven’t quite figured out if they like each other. I so enjoyed that the characters are human and multifaceted—even unlikeable (that would be Mark!) Yet you end up genuinely liking and respecting them despite their faults.
The other aspect of this novel I really enjoyed is that it is unashamedly Australian. That might sound patriotic of me, however it was so refreshing to read a book with Aussie characters, language and–you guessed it–Aussie humour. The humour Hill infuses into her stories is clever and entertaining. Particularly when you consider the serious nature of some of the plot lines: family members suffering from Alzheimer’s, bereavement and a custody battle.
Even the setting is interesting and unique: a construction site off the picturesque Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, where a motley crew of FIFO workers inhabit a seaside resort.
Everything about The Girl in the Yellow Vest hooked me, and Hill delivers that rare combination: memorable characters, and a story with real depth that has the power to make you both laugh and cry. Fantastic summer reading and I’m definitely going to be picking up some more of Loretta Hill’s books to add to my reading pile.
About Loretta Hill
For her bestselling novels The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots and The Girl in the Hard Hat Loretta Hill drew upon her own outback engineering experiences of larrikins, red dust and steel-capped boots. Her new novel, The Girl in the Yellow Vest, will publish in January 2014. She is also the author of the ebook novella One Little White Lie, which was a no.1 bestseller on iTunes.
Loretta always wanted to be a writer. As a kid she filled pages of exercise books with stories to amuse her friends. Her father, who never wasted his time on fiction, didn’t see much worth in this pass time and pushed her to pursue a ‘sensible’ career. Fortunately, she had inherited some of his talent for numbers and decided to give it a go. She graduated from the University of Western Australia as structural engineer and took her first job with a major West Australian engineering company.
A few years later she met a lawyer at a Black Friday party hosted by a friend. She was dressed as the devil and he just came as himself. They are now happily married and living in Perth with their two young sons and infant daughter.
Despite her career in engineering, her interest in law and her journey into motherhood, Loretta continued to write. Not because she had a lot of time but because it was and always had been an addiction she couldn’t ignore.
Belinda Williams 