Always By Your Side

Julie Haworth

FALL in love with one of this summer’s most romantic and uplifting reads... a simply adorable debut novel, set in the most idyllic, quintessentially English village, and brought to us by an exciting new voice in women’s fiction.

Julie Haworth (pictured below), who worked as an English teacher for a number of years, wrote Always By Your Side whilst recovering from Covid in 2020, and this perfectly imagined  celebration of rural life, love and friendship went on to win the Romantic Novelists’ Association Katie Fforde Debut Novel of the Year 2023.

And romance fans – and dog lovers – will be in reading heaven when they get their paws on Haworth’s warm, life-affirming and sun-soaked story starring a London teacher who goes back to her roots in the East Sussex countryside to take care of an elderly aunt and finds herself at a crucial crossroads in her life.

When teacher Rose Hargreaves loses her dream job at a London primary school after an unpleasant and insulting interview with the bullying new head teacher, her self-confidence takes a serious knock. Worse still, her stockbroker fiancé, Ollie, who has always regarded teaching as not a ‘proper’ job, sees it as the perfect opportunity for her to join his firm of investment bankers, a move which only adds to Rose’s sense that their five-year relationship might be coming to an end.

But then Rose receives an unexpected phone call telling her that her elderly and much-loved Great Aunt Jean has fallen and broken her hip and she immediately drops everything – including Ollie - and returns to Blossom Heath, the Sussex village where Rose grew up and where she spent many happy times.

Despite Ollie’s protests, and with no job to rush home to, Rose decides to stay on for the whole summer at Jasmine Cottage, her aunt’s home in Blossom Heath, and soon discovers how happy and liberated she feels, trading busy London for rural peace, and rediscovering that long-lost youthful optimism that ‘anything is possible.’ And as Rose reconnects to the village life of her childhood, she finds herself taking in Scout, an adorable Border collie rescue puppy, and falling head-over-heels for handsome local farmer, Jake Harper, and his own collies Finn and Tagg. So when her London life comes calling again, Rose is faced with an impossible choice… to return to the high-pressure life of her past, or embrace the joy of a new life in the country.

Set amidst the rolling hills of Sussex, and the warm and welcoming residents of Blossom Heath, lead players Rose and Jake are undoubtedly the stars of this romantic odyssey as their faltering love blossoms and grows despite the dilemmas, dramas and conflicts which inevitably litter their path. Add on enchanting pup Scout – and her farmyard friends – in best supporting roles (and most definitely stealing the show on more than one occasion), and only the hardest of hearts could not melt at this feast of captivating characters, feel-good delights and summer vibes.

And with friendship, family, community spirit, the importance of not giving up on your dreams, and, most importantly, true love taking centre stage, Always By Your Side is a winning opener to what looks to be just the start of Haworth’s successful fiction writing career.
(Simon & Schuster, paperback, £8.99)