Book description
A Proper Family Holiday was the last thing Lucy was expecting to
have. But as a penniless and partnerless house-painter with an expired
lease on her flat and a twelve-year-old daughter, she could hardly
turn down her parents' offer to take them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip
to the Caribbean. She'd just have to put up with her sister Theresa
(making no secret of preferring Tuscany as a holiday destination) and
brother Simon (worrying that there might be some sinister agenda
behind their parents' wish to take them all away) with their various
spouses, teenagers, young children and au pair.
In a luxury hotel, with bright sunshine, swimming, diving, glorious
food and friendly locals, any family tensions should have melted away
in the fabulous heat. The children should have been angelic, the
teenagers cheerful, the adults relaxed and happy. But...some problems
just refuse to be left at home.
Judy Astley was frequently told off for day-dreaming at her drearily
traditional school but has found it to be the ideal training for
becoming a writer. There were several false-starts to her career:
secretary at an all-male Oxford college (sacked for undisclosable
reasons), at an airline (decided, after a crash and a hijacking, that
she was safer elsewhere) and as a dress designer (quit before anyone
noticed she was adapting Vogue patterns). She spent some years as a
parent and as a painter before sensing that the day was approaching when
she'd have to go out and get a Proper Job. With a nagging certainty that
she was temperamentally unemployable, and desperate to avoid office
coffee, having to wear tights every day and missing out on sunny days on
Cornish beaches with her daughters, she wrote her first novel, Just for
the Summer. She has now had eleven novels published by Black Swan.
