Meet Me in Manhattan by Claudia Carroll

Today it is my stop on the Meet Me in Manhattan Blog tour I am joined by Claudia who is talking to us about which Literary worlds she would want to live in. Please stop by the other blogs on the tour to see what their thoughts on Meet Me in Manhaatan are.

If you could be taken into a book's world, which world would it be? 

I'm highly suggestible and so automatically find myself inside whatever world the author has created for us. Reading Persuasion and suddenly I'm strolling through the Crescent at Bath in a corset and bonnet on my way to 'take the waters' at the Pump Room. Ditto with anything by the Brontes; suddenly I'm back in the Yorkshire moors in the wild wind and rain running away from Hindley Earnshaw. As you do. 

 One of the most perfectly evoked worlds to me though, has to be Oxford during the early 1920's in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisted. I was a student in UCD at the time I first fell in love with the book and can still remember cursing the whole 'concrete jungle' feel of the Belfield campus and longing for the spires of Oxford with boys in straw boaters and jackets punting past on the river. Dream on, says you! 

 Nancy Mitford is another author who excels at creating her own perfect little Mitford-ian sphere too and her characters, all loosely based on her own large and eccentric family are so vividly realised, that you're right in there with them. And I'm also a big fan of Young Adult books too and the more dystopian the better. I'd challenge anyone to read Susan Collins' The Hunger Games series and not imagine that you're marooned on that awful district with a gang of other teens, all of whom are after your blood. And of course I'd have to give special mention to the Harry Potter books, which I adored too. I've got seven Godchildren and each and every one of them fell in love with reading thanks in no small part to the genius of J.K. Rowling. They all want to go to Hogwarts and be taught by the likes of Severus Snape and Professor Minerva McGonagall, presided over by a wise and benign Dumbledore. 

 Mind you, kids books in my day were very different. I grew up on Enid Blyton's Famous Five and all I wanted to do was have adventures and solve mysteries with my brothers. I was a great comic reader too as a kid, although I did keep a few of my old Bunty's and Judy's and can't get over just how many heroines there were who fought crime in what looked suspiciously like their underwear. The Adventures of Valda in Mandy comic, anyone?

My Review

I have such a longing to visit New York so I can not get enough of books that are set there so you can imagine how thrilled I was as I was working my way through the Christmas books on my TBR pile and found Meet Me in Manhattan by Claudia Carroll. 

Holly Johnson has turned to the world of internet dating to try and find romance and as she gets talking to pilot Andy McCoy she starts to believe she may have found someone. After their arranged meetings hot some problems she beginnings to suspect something isn’t quite right so she decides to surprise him by flying over to Manhattan but will she be welcomed with open arms or will they both receive a surprise of their lives?

I did actually find this book a little difficult to get in with and I have to say twice I started reading this book and put it aside thinking it just wasn’t for me but I think this is because I have never done or had any interest in the whole online dating thing. I am so glad that I picked this book up again as once the storyline progressed to Holly jetting off to Manhattan the book really picked up the pace and took me in hook line and sinker. 

The author takes us on a journey of New York but not just our typical iconic landmarks but some pretty impressive hidden gems too which really got me hankering after New York even more. The way she described each of the places made it feel so life like and magic just reading about it I felt like I was there. 

There was a journey of emotions in this book, I was in complete shock with what Holly discovered on arriving in Manhattan I couldn’t have predicted what was revealed. As we get to know Holly a little more we begin to see her background story and this pulled at the heart strings and explained the reason why Christmas is not an exciting time of year for her and also shows the reason why she has built up so many barriers. There were exciting and humorous parts in the book alongside showing the dangers and repercussions of internet dating and identity fraud.

There was a lovely amount of festivity in this book with the book being set completely over the Festive period so it was a perfect read for this time of year. I am so pleased I gave this book another chance as I thoroughly enjoyed it after the slow start. 

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