Changes

|date=March 2012

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075154454X</amazonuk>

|website=http://www.jennycolgan.com/books/

|video=

Rosie Hopkins is reluctant to leave her beloved London, Gerard, a live-in boyfriend of eight years and her work as auxiliary nurse. But when an elderly aunt who had spent her life running a traditional sweetshop in a small village in the North of England becomes just too elderly to cope, Rosie surprises everybody – even herself – by taking up the challenge. A 100% townie who can't ride a bike and doesn't seem to own a waterproof, a pair of wellies or even walking boots, Rosie soon discovers that the countryside has its charms, not least of which is the local supply of masculine eye candy. Soon she will find herself re-opening the shop (just to sell it as a running concern, you understand) as well as somewhat accidentally, saving and enriching lives all around, from a lady of the manor's Lab to her own dignified, but possessed of an acid tongue, great aunt Lillian.

This last Colgan offering is full of standard plot devices not to say clichés: a city girl coming to the countryside, a mummy's darling boyfriend who never pops the question, an intelligent child with a pushy mother (clearly a cousin of Bertie from [[44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall smith|44 Scotland Street]] but no less an attractive a character for that), an old spinster remembering a lost love, a woman getting her life out of a rut as a side effect of a total change of scene; and so on. By rights, it should be an annoying collection of clichés. And that sweetshop, such a perfect vehicle for for nostalgia that the books could have easily been sickly-sweet and mawkishly nauseous. But it's not. Nostalgia is there all right, but the sickly-sweetness is almost entirely avoided thanks to humour, alternately down-to-earth (in the main storyline) and ironically sharp (in the excerpts from Lillian's book: ''Sweets, The User Manual'' which start each chapter).