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I really really wanted to love this book as I am a big fan of Helen's husband James. Also as a farmer's daughter who grew up to be stay at home mum with 4 kids (just like Helen), I expected to really relate to Helen and her life. In truth I found I didn't really like Helen much 🙈 There's a lot of moaning and complaining and everything always seems to be someone else's fault. The writing was disjointed and jumped around too much with huge chunks of her life skipped over so that at times I wasn't really sure where they were living or what was going on. And the recipes were really irritating, slotted in in the middle of the text so that I had to skip several pages of recipe to read the end of the anecdote. Some were also unnecessary - the "recipes" for Birds Custard and porridge for example are literally the instructions off the packet.

I loved the concept of this book, but it is so poorly executed - that is more the publisher's fault than Helen's I would imagine. The drawings are wonderful though and it is a pretty book so I will probably keep it on my bookshelf alongside my much read copies of The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral.