Book Review: One Small Act of Kindness by Lucy Dillon

One Small Act of Kindness by Lucy Dillon
Release Date: 23rd April 2015
Publisher: Hodder
Buy: Paperback  Kindle
Rating:

What can you do to make the world a better place?

Libby helps a stranger, and transforms her life in the process.

Libby and her husband Jason have moved back to his hometown to turn the family B&B into a boutique hotel. They have left London behind and all the memories – good and bad – that went with it.

The injured woman Libby finds lying in the remote country road has lost her memory. She doesn’t know why she came to be there, and no one seems to be looking for her.

When Libby offers to take her in, this one small act of kindness sets in motion a chain of events that will change many people’s lives . . . 

Libby Corcoran and her husband Jason have left behind their old lives in London to renovate the family B&B, the Swan Hotel in Longhampton after the death of Jason’s father. Things are not running smoothly and then life is thrown into further disarray when there’s a car accident right outside the hotel.
A young woman has been hit by a car and badly injured. Through a haze of shock Libby does all she can to help the mysterious woman, who appears to have no ID, no phone and no belongings.
As she regains consciousness it soon becomes apparent that the woman has completely lost her memory and with nothing to identify her she has no idea who she is, where she’s from or what she was doing heading towards the Swan Hotel when she was hit.
Through one small act of kindness, Libby does all she can to help the woman (who decides to go by the name of Pippa for the time being) and offers her a place to stay whilst she recovers.
However, in her act of kindness Libby has set off a chain of events that looks set to change both their lives as Pippa tries to discover her real identity and Libby is forced to come to terms with her own…

The more books I read by Lucy Dillon the more I fall in love with her writing and One Small Act of Kindness is definitely my all time favourite. It had all of the vital ingredients of a cracking read; it was uplifting, thought-provoking and is guaranteed to sweep you away as you become engrossed in the story.
I was intrigued to see how things would play out from the synopsis and the mysterious plotline turned One Small Act of Kindness into a real page-turner for me.
It’s not all that often that you have two lead heroines who are both likeable and easy to relate to in different ways – however that is exactly the situation with Libby and Pippa. (I’m going to keep referring to Pippa as Pippa so as not to reveal anything…) Libby is a lovely character. Kind, caring and selfless, I loved her outlook on life and how she was willing to do anything for the people that she cared about (and, as it turns out, total strangers as well.) Then you have Pippa and her highly intriguing situation. You can’t help but stop and think about what’s happened to her. Imagine if something caused you to lose your memory and you had no way whatsoever of finding out who you are, where you live, what you do, the things you like, the people you are friends with. It really does make your mind boggle and is quite scary. It also made me realise how flimsy our lives and the relationships we form can be. My heart broke for Pippa as she struggled to find out who she was and you will feel her frustration at her memory loss. At the same time I was so desperate to find out what was going to happen and why exactly she’d been on the way to The Swan hotel and appeared to have no belongings with her. Curiouser and curiouser…
Whilst you have Pippa struggling to discover her real identity you also have the side of the storyline with Libby and her husband trying to scrape together enough money to renovate the B&B and make a go of the business, which also makes for a fascinating read. The secondary characters that we meet along the way are also rather brilliant, especially the legendary Lord Bob (a crisp-loving basset hound…)
One of the other things I liked about this novel (and believe me there were many…) was how it also made me realise the importance of kindness and how the smallest of actions can have the biggest of impacts. It’s made me want to be a kinder person and it’s done that without being preachy or bossy – just through the simple actions of a few characters in one heck of a good story.
Lucy Dillon’s style of writing will enchant you right from the word go. She has created a bunch of wonderful characters who are realistic and easy to relate to and you’ll definitely enjoy watching them grow and develop throughout the story. Her writing will hold your attention and you’ll become engrossed in the clever and inspiring plot.
Whilst I have loved all of Lucy’s previous novels, as I mentioned earlier this is definitely a stand out favourite for me. It will evoke so many emotions and is a real page turner.
Charming,  truthful and unputdownable, One Small Act of Kindness is definitely one to add to your To-Be-Read pile… ♥

Lucy Dillon grew up in Cumbria and read English at Cambridge, then read a lot of magazines as a press assistant in London, then read other people’s manuscripts as a junior fiction editor. She now lives in a village outside Hereford with two basset hounds, an old red Range Rover, and too many books.

ONE SMALL ACT OF KINDNESS is Lucy’s sixth novel. The people are made up, but the basset hound, unfortunately, isn’t.

Lucy won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Contemporary Romantic Novel prize in 2015 for A HUNDRED PIECES OF ME, and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2010 for LOST DOGS AND LONELY HEARTS.

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