Today is the day when the third and final part of The Starfish Café series – Summer Nights at The Starfish Café – goes out into the world. It’s available on all formats – eBook on all platforms, paperback, hardback, large print, physical audio, audio download and audio streaming.

Book 2 – Spring Tides at The Starfish Café – celebrated its first book birthday yesterday so it’s almost exactly a year since readers visited this gorgeous café on a clifftop outside Whitsborough Bay above a seal haven, spending time with Hollie, Jake, Pickle the dog and the lovely café regulars. I certainly enjoyed writing about them again and hope readers love being back with them.

Running alongside Hollie and Jake’s story is that of Kerry, a single mum of four primary school aged children, who works in the café. She did appear in book 2 but her part was deliberately brief, ready for her big storyline in book 3. Kerry’s is a story of a difficult summer when a letter arrives from someone she never expected to see again, throwing her plans for the summer into disarray. Hollie and Jake’s story is an emotional one so do have those tissues ready as their summer is going to be bumpy.

It’s always interesting seeing comments from early reviewers who haven’t read the first two books and, while some will say that they managed to follow the story, several comment that they didn’t feel they knew the characters that well or that they feel they’d have enjoyed it more if they’d read the previous books. We know! This is why we did specifically put guidance with the blurb for early reviewers not to read the book if they hadn’t read the others but I guess not everyone reads this important information which is put there to help them with their reading decisions.

Anyway, I personally do not recommend this book be read as a standalone. Why would anyone want to dive in at book three of three? It’s a much richer reading experience to have been there at the start with book 1- Snowflakes Over The Starfish Café – when Hollie and Jake (and Pickle) first meet and to go with them on their journey than to join them at the conclusion. If you haven’t already read this first book and are put off thinking that it’s April and you don’t fancy reading a Christmas book, please don’t be. Although Christmas features in the story, it is not a Christmas book which is why the word ‘Christmas’ deliberately doesn’t appear in the title. It’s a book set in winter i.e. a seasonal book and can be enjoyed at any time of the year.

Spring Tides is on a 99p eBook offer so do take advantage of that. You can get all three for less than £7 which is sooooo cheap for hours and hours and hours of entertainment.

Summer Nights at The Starfish Café is embarking on a blog tour as usual and I’m excited about reading all the reviews across a whopping 16 days with 48 stops. An enormous thank you to Rachel Gilbey from Rachel’s Random Resources for setting it up and to all the amazing bloggers/reviewers who give their time so generously in sharing their thoughts.

If you go over onto Book and Tonic’s Facebook page, there’s lots of special content today. You can enter a competition for a signed paperback copy here. You can also listen to an exclusive audio extract here, see a very short video of me introducing the book here and see my short bloopers reel here.

I also have some amazing news. My fantastic publisher, Boldwood Books, have made the RNLI their charity of the year and will be pledging a donation to help them with their amazing work in saving lives at sea. We can only use specific wording for this which you’ll find in the blurb on Amazon (and at the end of this post) but if I was to say that anyone who has bought or does buy this book in the next calendar year will help influence the size of that donation, you can probably read between the lines as to how this works! So thank you xxx

I’m not in Whitsborough Bay for publication day. I’m actually spending it in the Lake District where my next book – book 20 – is set. We exclusively revealed the name of the first book and the series name to my newsletter subscribers this morning and I’m excited to share that information here today. The first book is called The Start of Something Wonderful and the series is called ‘Escape to the Lakes’.

Format-wise, it’s going to be a little different to my Hedgehog Hollow series and The Starfish Café series, both of which had one consistent protagonist telling her story across all the books, alongside a guest narrator. The Escape to the Lakes series will have a different protagonist each time. There were be lots of connections, for example the best friend of the main character in book 1 will step forward in book 2 to tell her story, but not having a consistent protagonist means it will be easier for readers to dip in as the series develops rather and they will not lose out on any of the story like they would if they dipped in later in the Hedgehog Hollow and The Starfish Café series.

There’s no blurb or cover yet but it’s up for pre-order on Kindle here. It’ll go up on the other platforms nearer the release date of 17th July.

I’m not going to say exactly where I’ve spent today just yet as it’s very relevant to The Start of Something Wonderful so I’ll bring you that detail in later blog posts.

For now, a thank you to everyone for the well wishes and for pre-ordering/buying/downloading/borrowing Summer Nights at The Starfish Café and for helping to make publication day another really special one. Thank you also to the amazing bloggers on the tour.

Big starfish-shaped hugs
Jessica xx

Welcome back to The Starfish Café for a glorious summer, but with a few dark clouds on the horizon…

A new beginning…

As her summer wedding to Jake approaches, Hollie is excited for their new beginning as a family. But when some unexpected news threatens the future she and Jake had hoped for, Hollie will need to find the strength to overcome heartache once more.

A fragile heart….

Single mum, Kerry, loves her job at The Starfish Café, but behind the brave smiles and laughter with customers there is a sadness deep within. So when someone from her past re-appears in her life, Kerry can either hide away or face her demons and try to finally move on from her heartbreak.

A summer to remember…

For Hollie and Kerry it promises to be an emotional rollercoaster of a summer, but the community at The Starfish Café will always be there to help them through – after all, with courage nothing is impossible…

Join top 10 bestseller Jessica Redland for a wonderful summer at the seaside, full of love, friendship and community spirit.

Boldwood Books are proud to support the RNLI. Boldwood Books have pledged a donation to the RNLI in 2023 as part of our support for the work they do saving lives at sea.