For readers who enjoy Beth O’Leary...

REINVENTING EMILY BROWN is a delightful story exploring the theme of second chances in both life and love. Told with a seamless blend of humour and heart, readers are invited along with Emily, her teenage daughter Hayley, and her mum Mary, as they navigate the challenges and expectations faced by women in today’s society while uncovering their own personal values along the way.

When life knocks Emily Brown, it knocks her hard.

Broke, homeless, and teetering on the edge of divorce, Emily finds herself on the doorstep of her childhood home in the coastal hamlet of Curlew Bay, with her disgruntled fifteen-year-old daughter in tow.

Contemplating how her once successful life has unravelled so completely, Emily realises she can either wallow in despair or, as her mother would say, ‘take the bull by the horns’. Determined to prove she’s not a complete and utter failure, Emily hatches a daring, albeit feeble, plan: a reinvention of epic proportions.

Despite her concerted efforts at a fresh start, Emily’s plans are constantly thrown into disarray. Hayley is hell-bent on making each day a battleground, Emily’s usually reliable mum, Mary, is acting oddly out of character, and Emily’s ‘perfect’ sister, Lucy, is hiding something behind her flawless façade. Throw in a cantankerous basset hound and a disastrous foray into the beauty industry and Emily is left wondering if she’s made the biggest mistake of her life.

Little does she know, her greatest challenge lies in Simon, her childhood sweetheart. As their lives are once again entwined, the secret Emily has guarded fiercely for years is now poised to shatter everything she’s tried so desperately to build.

Will Emily choose the easy way out and flee to the city like she did all those years ago?

Or will she discover the courage to confront the ghosts of her past and learn to embrace the true Emily Brown?

Jodi Gibson