23 | June | 2020 | Brainfluff

I’ve been uploading photos of my garden on my Sunday Posts, which have been getting a lot of positive comments. However, I’m also aware that the small scale of the pics hasn’t really done justice to them. So I’ve decided to choose a selection for every Tuesday and feature them full size.

Lockdown has been a uniquely peculiar time – one which has brought great uncertainty and fear, but also forced us to look at what is directly around us and value its worth so much more. I’ve felt like that about my garden this year – helped by the wonderful weather in Spring, and wanted to share some of the beauty and pleasure with you, too.

**Raindrops on the fennel look like diamonds…**

**I love the colours of this pretty yarrow – and how it attracts the butterflies…**

**I have never known my black-leaved sambucca to be covered with so many flowers**

**The dark leaves of this heuchera glow in the June sunshine…**

**I wish you could smell this rose – rich and wine-scented**

**The echiums attract the bees and butterflies like nothing else in the garden…**

**And the sky above us is the deepest blue – without any com-trails slicing across it**

I read and thoroughly enjoyed the first book – see my review of First Flyght. So I took the opportunity to dive into the second book to find out what happens next to Vivian.

BLURB: With her ship secure and her old boyfriend back in good graces, Vivian Kawabata only needs one thing to move forward: money. Money, though, is hard to come by when you’re an infamous disgraced heiress. Vivian’s only move is to enlist the help of her matchmaker, Marcelo, and find another wealthy man to add to her relationship network. He not only has to be a master in the bedroom, but he must be a pro with ships, too. Her ship needs a mechanic before they start taking on real clients for Flyght, the lucrative ship-sharing startup…

REVIEW: There is more blurb, but it gets a bit chatty. This book picks up where the first book left off, so if you haven’t yet read First Flyght then go and track it down, because especially at the start of this story, you’ll not necessarily appreciate how high the stakes are if you don’t. I very much like Vivian, who is fundamentally a good person with a keen sense of responsibility. There is plenty going on in this next slice of the adventure, as Vivian struggles to get back the family farm, go after her brother and accrue a relationship network of wealthy men – all at the same time. No wonder she is struggling to sleep…

Pajonas has a smooth writing style and in the middle of all the mayhem, there is a thread of wry humour that manages to keep the story enjoyably entertaining as well as nicely escapist – just what we all need in these increasingly grim times… I like the worldbuilding, which is vivid and well described as Vivian bounces through it – a disaster magnet, as sheer bad luck and circumstance conspire to multiply the ongoing problems she’s been dealing with. I’m hoping, however, that the next book in the series, High Flyght, will bring some sort of resolution to at least one of the issues Vivian is confronting – I am uncomfortable with the idea that she becomes a permanent fall guy throughout this series, as I like her too much.

Overall, though, this was an entertaining, thoroughly enjoyable space opera adventure. While it is marketed as a reverse harem romance – something that made me initially hesitate to read it – I would just add that the romance so far has been of the slow burn variety and not the plot thread powering the narrative. I don’t have a problem with that, but do bear it in mind.
8/10