The Wedding Dress Repair Shop

Trisha Ashley

DESPITE her late mother’s early years in the countryside near Ormskirk in West Lancashire, Garland Fairford has spent the thirty-four years of her life in and around London.

But when she is hit by two cruelly unexpected events in one week, Garland’s world is turned upside down and she must decide whether her future could yet lie amongst the green and pleasant hills of Lancashire rather than the bustle of the big city.

Much-loved rom-com author Trisha Ashley (pictured below) may now be living in North Wales but her wonderfully entertaining and uplifting books would seem to confirm suspicions that her heart still lies in the countryside of her native Lancashire.

The Wedding Dress Repair Shop – her wise, whimsical and wonderful new novel – has been lovingly curated and fashioned amidst the rural uplands of the corner of the county where Ashley was born, an area which has become the inspiration for many of her gorgeous, feelgood stories. A beguiling blend of dark Lancashire humour, heart-melting romance, and characters so lovable (well, most of them!), so quirky and so alluringly real that you want to live next door to them are just some of the many reasons why Ashley’s clever comedies always fly off the shelves.

And this delightful new confection, which neatly stitches together parallel love affairs, hidden secrets, a family mystery, gorgeous wedding gowns and a grumpy cat called Golightly, is brimming with Ashley’s signature warmth, empathy and wry observations on humankind’s many frailties.

Garland loves her dream job as a seamstress with Beng & Briggs, a high-class London theatrical and historical costumier, and recently she has been transfixed by a V&A Museum display of a costume worn by her famous ancestor, the 19^th century actress Rosa-May Garland, when she played Titania in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

After an illustrious stage career, Rosa-May married dashing army officer, Captain Guy Fairford, who left his new bride with his brother and wife at their remote mansion on the Lancashire moors while he set off to fight at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Very little is known of what happened to Rosa-May after that but Garland is now making a copy of the Titania costume to wear as her wedding dress when she marries her own fiancé, the avant-garde playwright Marco Parys, who seems to be always too busy with his new production or too reluctant to nail down a date for the big day.

Fortunately, Garland has found a new source of happiness with the woman who owns the Titania costume... Honey Fairford, a well-known and wealthy author who is also a descendant of Rosa-May, and with whom Garland senses a ‘strange link’ and a shared passion for unearthing their

ancestor’s past. When she loses her fiancé and her job in the same week, Garland accepts a job at the Wedding Dress Museum that long lost cousin Honey is planning to open at the home she has inherited from a distant relative in Great Mumming, Lancashire, and which has family connections going back to Rosa-May.

What Garland doesn’t expect when she arrives in the North is to come face-to-face with a ghost from her past... her childhood friend, Thom Reid, who mysteriously disappeared from her life six years ago. But as she begins reading the stories behind each of the beautiful wedding dresses, and sets about repairing both them and her relationship with Thom, could this finally be the chance for her own happy-ever-after?

Ashley has success well and truly stitched up in this heart-tugging, time-slipping tale of a Regency actress whose voice echoes from the past, and a 21^st century seamstress with a broken heart and a fiery determination to mend her life, her career, and the true love that slipped through her fingers all those years ago. And The Wedding Dress Repair Shop is undoubtedly one of Ashley’s most enchanting rom-coms yet, a perfectly woven exploration of bittersweet secrets, the fall-out from betrayal in both the past and the present, and a celebration of the comfort and joys of family, friendship and the warmth that comes from a shared sense of community.

Along the way, we enjoy the wild wonders of the Lancashire countryside, meet a cast of colourful locals, enjoy the stories of an eclectic mix of jilted brides whose dresses have been donated to the museum, and wait with bated breath as the mystery of Rosa-May Garland is finally and shockingly resolved. Prepare to laugh, cry, smile... and start counting down impatiently to the next Ashley odyssey!
(Bantam, hardback, £14.99)