What I enjoyed was the style of writing and the discoveries she made while she was living this more rural, isolated life. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. It is divided into the seasons; spring, when she and her husband moved to West Wales, summer, autumn and winter.

Beautiful descriptions of the wildlife and nature and the feelings that the author associated with her journey getting to know her new surroundings. I fell in love with the Wales countryside, mountains and valleys as I related to the human and emotional stories of the protagonist experiencing new perspectives in family and surroundings. Kiran Sidhu never thought she could leave London, but when her mother passes away, she knows she has to walk out of her old life and leave her toxic family behind. They speak in cliche philosophical soundbites, and feel to me as though they are lifted from various Enid Blyton farm stories rather than real life.But she quickly discovers a sense of belonging in the small, close-knit community she finds there; her neighbour Sarah, who teaches her how to sledge when the winter snow arrives; Jane, a 70-year-old woman who lives at the top of a mountain with three dogs and four alpacas with an inspiring attitude for life; and Wilf, the farmer who eats the same supper every day, and taught Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July. I often forget to read the NetGalley books I have downloaded if I have a lot of library books out but I did fill out a recent survey and it asked a lot of questions about its Shelf app.

Yes woe is you, you lost your mum and lost contact with your blood relatives, but you know you have a loving husband, a (what sounds like a very expensive) house in a sought after part of the Welsh countryside, a second holiday home abroad, time and means to travel extensively abroad (mentions trips to New York) and a book deal for this book presumably, so things aint that bad are they Kiran? I am so happy to know Kiran received such a wonderful welcome and found a sense of peace in the Welsh Valleys, the home of my own forebears.About the Author: Kiran Sidhu is a freelance journalist and has written features, lifestyle and opinion pieces for The Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, The i Paper, The Independent, Metro, Woman magazine, Woman's Own and Breathe magazine. Sidhu has the blessing and the talent to reveal others to themselves, all while exploring her personal evolution.

This is a memoir of the move Sidhu and her husband Simon made to a small village in Wales a couple of years after the death of her mother (Sidhu was 40, her mother 62) and subsequent family fall-out. I gradually learned how to read it - this wasn’t my usual fare of “space opera” where one explosion leads the protagonist to deliver a stunning treatise on AI and humanity. There was an interesting bit about how her dual heritage made her more flexible and able to accept multiple perspectives. You can also only bookmark a page (in this case, sometimes it came out as a double page) rather than highlighting text, making it difficult to remember what exact bits you want to mention in your review. Her article about her farmer friend Wilf was the 13th most read article in The Guardian in 2021, and was made into a short film Heart Valley, directed by Christian Cargill and produced by Pulse Films.Biography: Kiran Sidhu is a freelance journalist and has written features, lifestyle and opinion pieces for The Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, The i Paper, The Independent, Metro, Woman magazine, Woman's Own and Breathe magazine.

Well, I see this will be available in paperback in September this year, so I’m encouraged – though it may already be in our library. The pain of her mother's death is terrible and she can't stop ruminating on her mother's illness, death and her family's treatment of her after her mum's death. Kiran lived in London and she recounts the horrific experience of losing her Mum to whom she was very close.The power of centering ourselves in the world is not to be understated and Kiran Sidhu conveys this wonderfully. After her mother’s loss, she cannot handle the psychological and mental agony, so she makes the drastic choice of leaving the luxurious city life and settling in the Welsh valley in The Long Barn cottage, her new home, surrounded by mountains, lakes, and a plethora of flora and fauna with extreme Welsh (winter) weather when it arrives. When I started reading it, I found it quite hard - not because the writing was bad, but because the words were trying to tap into something in me that I had suppressed - a connection to a palate of emotions that, largely because of my focus on work, that I had learned to ignore. This is a woman who was struggling to cope with her mother's death and the family fallout so upped sticks from London to rural North Wales. Kiran Sidhu is a freelance journalist and has written features, lifestyle and opinion pieces for The Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, The i Paper, The Independent, Metro, Woman magazine, Woman's Own and Breathe magazine.