Excess all Areas by Mandy Baggot

When the going gets tough Freya Johnson gets going! Humiliated by her boyfriend the day she turns 30, Freya boards a last minute flight to Corfu to visit her best friend Emma. Little does she know that this holiday will change her life forever. Enter Hollywood film star Nicholas Kaden whose entourage is stirring up the village of Kassiopi while filming his new movie.

Caught up in a media frenzy, feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable in Nicholas' movie world, Freya battles with the ghosts of her past and the uncertainty of her future. Can she help Emma? Can she keep her own big secret? And can she find out what Nicholas is hiding before she feels the urge to run away again?

A great book to add to a beach bag or to pick up to read stretched out in the garden on a sunny Sunday afternoon or curl up with on a cold winter’s day.

A strong female led cast, with Freya, a girl who after hearing her then boyfriend describing her to a waiter in a restaurant as a large and ordinary looking girl, hot footed it to the airport and flew to Greece with only her passport, which she kept in her handbag at all times. Meeting up with her friend there, who works and lives on the island, she decides to stay there for a while. The next morning, after a strange meeting in the bakery where an American tries to buy Freya’s four rolls for ridiculous amounts of money, she finds out a film is being filmed there and a chance meeting at her favourite restaurant, where her favourite table has been taken by the film crew and cast even though Freya and her friend have booked it, Freya meets Nicholas, the lead male, and what follows is a love story, but not ordinary  love story.

However, this is no traditional love story. Both Freya and Nicholas have secrets in their past – Freya’s bigger than most. I will not spoil it here but will say that it was not what I expected and what followed was a great story.

Mandy Baggot is a self published author and I really enjoyed her writing. I was drawn into the book straight away, wanting to know why Freya ran to Corfu and from then I was hooked.  I really enjoyed the descriptive qualities of the narrative, enabling me to build up a picture of the scenery in my mind while reading the book. There are many witty parts to the book and there were many characters in the book that I could identify with and they were also likeable, giving us an insight into the life of film stars and their colleagues.

I would recommend this book to lovers of chick lit or women's fiction as the perfect accompaniement to a lazy afternoon or long flight.

Thank you to the author for sending me this book to review.