Kate Frost Archives - Proud Book Reviews

February 6, 2023February 6, 2023

An Island in the Sun – Kate Frost

This book contains:

Discussion of miscarriage and the lasting emotional impacts
References to drug use and addiction
Depiction of and discussion around absentee parents, being a mother and having a career and the impacts this has on individuals’ mental health and their relationships with others
Lost pet.

Tabitha is a songwriter who also pet sits around the world constantly travelling from place to place to take on pet sits. Since leaving a difficult relationship after suffering a miscarriage, she’s moved from place to place hoping to heal.

Raff is the son of a wealthy couple and up until recently, lived in London. Thanks to a difficult relationship with his parents, he comes to Madeira while his parents are meant to be travelling hoping to get a couple of weeks respite before needing to figure out his next move in life.

Tabitha arrives in Madeira to begin her latest pet sit for a wealthy couple heading off on holidays for a couple of weeks. On her first night after they’ve left, she’s woken up to the sound of someone in the house. Unsure of what she might find the last thing she expects is Raff claiming to be the son of the homeowners. The son they never so much as mentioned once in the time Tabitha spent with them.

Tabitha has only a couple of weeks to sort out what to do with Raff, what to tell the homeowners, and whether she’s going to try and reconnect with an old friend while she’s on the island.

While I didn’t enjoy every moment of this books, I believe that was done purposely as you’re not meant to like Raff all that much when he first arrives. He’s impulsive, drinks and appears to be a bad influence on others to the detriment of everyone around him and them. Those moments that I didn’t like were the exact moments that were created to portray him in that manner and it’s expertly executed.

Once you piece together all the little pieces however, there’s moments of profound sadness, happiness, hurt and longing. All emotions that I’m sure all of us can relate to. The way each and every character is relatable either to ourselves or someone we know is amazing and a skill not many writers have.

Continue to find out more about the author.

Author Bio

Kate Frost is the author of several bestselling romantic escape novels including The Greek Heart, and The Love Island Bookshop. She lives in Bristol and is the Director of Storytale Festival, a book festival for children and teens she co-founded in 2019.

November 15, 2021November 15, 2021

The Amsterdam Affair – Kate Frost

This book contains:

references to a cheating spouse
behaviour that borderlines on emotional abuse/family violence
references to legal drug use.

Iris works as an Executive Assistant in York, although she wishes she had more time for her art. She studied art at university but never gave herself the chance. Instead, she settled for a 9-5 job that pays the bills including her mortgage.

Will, her boyfriend of 6 or 7 years, has just gotten a promotion that takes him to Amsterdam for a year. So of course, he accepts it and doesn’t tell Iris until they’re just a few weeks away from moving.

Iris is surprised when Will tells her they’re moving to Amsterdam, especially since she was expecting a marriage proposal. But she accepts it and moves with him deciding to use this surprising new year to figure out what she wants to do with her life.

Once there, Iris meets several new people, including Bram, and is reintroduced to her passion for art. When Will’s job takes a surprising turn, Iris is forced to make some tough choices, and all in the space of a few months, that will impact her life forever.

I always enjoy a story that involves the woman taking control of her life with the things that really matter to her. Especially at Christmas time.

The thing that I enjoyed the most, was the fact that all of Iris’s decisions were based on what would make her happy and feel satisfaction in what she was doing. Not love. While I of course love romances, I love it even more when the romance is an added bonus to making yourself happy.

At the end of the day, this is the best message I think we can pass on to anyone and everyone to help them have the best life possible no matter what else happens in their lives.

Continue to read further down to find out about the author and any extra giveaways available.

Author Bio

Kate Frost is the author of best-selling romantic escape novels (The Baobab Beach Retreat, A Starlit Summer, The Greek Heart, The Love Island Bookshop and The Amsterdam Affair), character-driven women’s fiction (The Butterfly Storm series and Beneath the Apple Blossom), and Time Shifters, a time travel adventure trilogy for children. She has a MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, where she also taught lifewriting to creative writing undergraduates.

Kate lives in Bristol with her husband, young son, and their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Frodo. As well as writing novels, she’s also the Director of Storytale Festival, a new city-wide children’s book festival that she co-founded in Bristol in 2019 with the ethos of making books accessible to all and encouraging children and teens to read, write and be creative. Kate feels incredibly lucky to spend her days writing and being immersed in books. Her first book with Boldwood will be published in March 2022.

Giveaway – Win a paperback copy of The Amsterdam Affair along with a bag of mini Stroopwafels (UK only)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

June 14, 2021June 12, 2021

The Love Island Bookshop – Kate Frost

This book contains:

mentions of suicide
mentions of a car accident death
discusses the effect of death of a loved one on us.

Freya works in a publishing house in London but needs a change after some difficulties she’s experienced in the past few years. She’s emotionally lost and distressed but isn’t sure how to help herself. Even when she moves to the Maldives she struggles to come to grips with everything that’s happened in the past few years.

Aaron is a dive instructor at the resort Freya moves to. He’s handsome, charming, friendly and is there for Freya in ways people haven’t been recently.

Zander is the mysterious playboy who owns the resort and finds it exceptionally difficult to let anyone in, or release control of the bookshop he’s hired Freya to run.

After a difficult few years, Freya applies to be the love island barefoot bookseller on an exclusive Maldives resort island. She lands the job and moves across the globe from London to the Maldives where she instantly makes friends with a roommate, Drew, and handsome Aaron.

As her relationship with Aaron grows deeper, she finds herself learning more and more about the playboy millionaire Zander, and it’s nothing like she expected. He’s kind, considerate and slowly letting her be more involved in decisions about the bookshop, letting her live her dream of running a cosy bookshop in a dream location.

While I hate on the fact that I had to read about Freya travelling to the Maldives and how amazing it is (all because we had to postpone our own Maldives trip from last yr and we still can’t even visit another STATE!), I couldn’t help but fall in love with the descriptions of the islands. I can’t say how authentic they are, but I could picture them so clearly from Kate’s descriptions!

I forgot to read the blurb before going into this book so I felt for a while there that this couldn’t possibly be a romance. That was of course after the initial bit, but then there was so long where it felt like it wasn’t going to be that I was impressed, but also a little confused.

If I’d read the blurb I might not have had that confusion, but I don’t always make my reading experience easy!

The way Freya stood up for herself and didn’t jump to any conclusions along the way was admirable. Her integrity throughout the book was amazing and at a level I think a lot of people lack but should probably aim towards. In the end she gets an amazing happy ending that she definitely deserves!

Continue to read further down to find out about the author.

Author Bio

Kate Frost is the author of best-selling romantic escape novels (The Baobab Beach Retreat, A Starlit Summer, The Greek Heart and The Amsterdam Affair), character-driven women’s fiction (The Butterfly Storm series and Beneath the Apple Blossom), and Time Shifters, a time travel adventure trilogy for children. She has a MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, where she also taught lifewriting to creative writing undergraduates.

June 10, 2019February 3, 2021

The Baobab Beach Retreat – Kate Frost

Welcome back everyone, after a romance set in England we’re now moving to where I wish I could be. A beautiful beachscape on the coast of Tanzania.

I really enjoyed reading this novel as it had a great mix of beachy-ness, emotional recovery, discovery of a new romance and heartbreak. These don’t necessarily happen in that order, or just once. But it felt like a really good balance.

There were parts of this story I was a little surprised with and didn’t really think it fit what I knew of the characters personality or how you’d react to what she’s been through. But I guess that’s something I can’t control, and those choices I didn’t like were a very minor blip in the story, so I quickly got over it.

Having worked in hotels when I was younger and having friends who have lived and worked in resorts, I wasn’t surprised by some of the stuff Kate described as going on. In fact, I was surprised it wasn’t worse based off what my friends told me!

I think the main thing that confused me about this story was that Baobab Beach Resort doesn’t really play much into the story until right near the end. So much so that it took me a few minutes of reading when it was first encountered because I realised that was the books namesake.

And the worst part of the book? Reading about a beautiful beach, snorkelling and the chill lifestyle while winter sets in and I have to go to work every day. How is that fair?

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this review, on Friday I will be reviewing The Bastard by Lisa Renee Jones. Continue to read further down to find out about the author and any extra giveaways available.

Author Bio

Kate Frost writes character-driven women’s fiction and romances, alongside Time Shifters, an award-winning time travel adventure trilogy for 9-12 year olds. She has a MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University where she’s also taught lifewriting to creative writing undergraduates. She has eight books published, including her Greek and north Norfolk set series, The Butterfly Storm. The Baobab Beach Retreat is the first in what will be a series of foreign-set romances. Kate lives in Bristol with her husband, their five-year-old son (who still loves waking up before 5am), and their cute and chilled out Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.