It Started With A Tweet by Anna Bell

It Started With A Tweet by Anna Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Daisy Hobson lives her whole life online. A marketing manager by day, she tweets her friends, instagrams every meal and arranges (frankly, appalling) dates on Tinder. But when her social media obsession causes her to make a catastrophic mistake at work, Daisy finds her life going into free-fall . . .

Her sister Rosie thinks she has the answer to all of Daisy's problems - a digital detox in a remote cottage in Cumbria, that she just happens to need help doing up. Soon, too, Daisy finds herself with two welcome distractions: sexy French exchange-help Jean-Marie, and Jack, the brusque and rugged man-next-door, who keeps accidentally rescuing her.

But can Daisy, a London girl, ever really settle into life in a tiny, isolated village? And, more importantly, can she survive without her phone?


I enjoyed this funny realistic look at someone so reliant on technology who reluctantly agrees to do a detox and spend some time with her sister in a dilapidated run down Cottage for a couple of weeks. Daisy has disastrously pretty much ruined her career when she accidentally posts a tweet on her company’s account instead of her own and is fired. Her career in meltdown she is looking to escape so when her sister suggests this detox she thinks ‘why not how bad could it be’ but almost bails out when her sister drops both their mobiles down a well promising they will easily get them out at the end of the detox.

The Cottage is in the middle of nowhere and the only thing keeping her from going completely mad is the hunky brooding neighbour and the sexy Frenchman Alexis who has obvious designs on her.

The appeal of this book is really that we can all relate to Daisy and her dependency on technology and how she has to relearn how to exist without it - and for her, the traumas and benefits this eventually brings her.

Good laugh out loud moments, well written but pretty predictable as most of these chic lits tend to be but nevertheless a good entertaining read and worth four stars.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.

It started with a tweet by Anna Bell guest post

It started with a tweet.

Daisy Hobson lives her whole life online. A marketing manager by day, she tweets her friends, instagrams every meal and arranges (frankly, appalling) dates on Tinder. But when her social media obsession causes her to make a catastrophic mistake at work, Daisy finds her life going into free-fall . . .

Her sister Rosie thinks she has the answer to all of Daisy's problems - a digital detox in a remote cottage in Cumbria, that she just happens to need help doing up. Soon, too, Daisy finds herself with two welcome distractions: sexy French exchange-help Alexis, and Jack, the brusque and rugged man-next-door, who keeps accidentally rescuing her.

But can Daisy, a London girl, ever really settle into life in a tiny, isolated village? And, more importantly, can she survive without her phone?

Guest post:

The Book on a Shelf Moment



I got my first taste of releasing a book baby into the world when I self-published my first novel, Millie and the American Wedding. I became slightly obsessed with checking it’s chart rankings and how many copies I’d shifted in a day. It was great seeing it on the screen and on my Kindle but there always something missing. I longed to hold my book baby in my hands, to see it on a shelf of a bookshop so I could visit it and stroke it and smell it and all the other things I imagined people did when visiting their own books.

Luckily for me, my third self-published novel, Don’t Tell the Groom, was picked up by a traditional publisher and they wanted to release it in paperback. I was absolutely over the moon. Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of holding my very own paperback in my hands. It looked great, it felt great and it smelt great. Only the timing for me couldn’t have been worse. I had a baby four weeks beforehand and I live in rural France, which meant that I was in a sleep deprived/constant feeding haze and I was unable to travel with the baby as he had no passport. So I totally missed out on that book on a shelf moment. It was still really exciting, but at first I had to make do with living vicariously through friends and family. I remember my mum going into her local Asda and buying four copies and her proudly telling the man on the till that it was her daughter’s book. My sister bought a copy of Closer magazine and sent me photos of the reviews of my book.

I then had to wait for another two months until I physically saw my book in the wild and then I found it really weird. I shuffled nervously past my book in a supermarket, not wanting to stand next to it. I was too embarrassed to be caught next to it in case people realised that it was my book and thought I was a total weirdo for lingering next to it.

I was pretty much like that with the next couple of books too and it wasn’t until I got to my fourth book The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart that something seemed to snap in me and I got super proud of seeing my book in shops. I started to buy a copy every time I saw it and I’d often say to the cashier - that’s my book - and instead of it being really cringy they were always really excited for me. I suddenly realised how special it was and how lucky I was to see my dreams realised.

My books have now been translated into nine languages and that’s another surreal thing - seeing a book with your name and looking at words you can’t read but knowing that they must be yours. I’m yet to see one of my foreign editions in a shop, but my husband was excited to see the german version of The Bucket List in a department store in Berlin.

As the publication day for my new novel It Started With a Tweet approaches, I’ve got the inevitable pre-publication nerves, but I know they’ll start to fade as soon as I see the physical copy on the shelves. And this time, I’ll be the one standing proudly next to her book baby snapping selfies with it and stroking it. Gone is my awkward embarrassment; I wrote the book and I’m bloomin’ proud about it and I want as many people to know as possible

Thanks so much Anna Bell for stopping by today to share this on The Book Corner, I cannot wait to get started on my copy of the book. It will be perfect reading over Christmas! 

The Good Girlfriend's Guide to Getting Even by Anna Bell

The Good Girlfriend's Guide to Getting Even by Anna Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Lexi's sport-mad boyfriend Will skips her friend's wedding to watch football - after pretending to have food poisoning - it might just be the final whistle for their relationship.

But fed up of just getting mad, Lexi decides to even the score. And, when a couple of lost tickets and an 'accidentally' broken television lead to them spending extra time together, she's delighted to realise that revenge might be the best thing that's happened to their relationship.

And if her clever acts of sabotage prove to be a popular subject for her blog, what harm can that do? It's not as if he'll ever find out . . .

Chiclits are not my usual read although I must confess to being a Sophie Kinsella and Jane Costello fan so when I saw this was recommended for these authors fans I had to read it. I really enjoyed the humour and some laugh out loud moments that this entertaining book had.

Lexi's sporting mad boyfriend Will skips her best friends' wedding to go and watch his favourite team play football and is captured on camera which is then sent to Lexi while she is at the wedding. Believing her boyfriend to be at home with a stomach bug she is incensed and hell bent on revenge. What follows are some hilarious escapades while she tries to prevent him from enjoying his various sporting pursuits.

In addition to sabotaging all sporting events Lexi is also writing a blog about it to which she gets hundreds of reviews. The more she posts the more reviews she gets, she believes Will won't ever read it so where's the harm. She is conscious that she is painting a very one sided picture of Will and is slightly guilty of this yet she carries on, you can see how this is going to spiral out of control.

Good characters who all seem to gel with each other, great hilarity and good observational techniques.

Things come to a head but you'll have to read it yourself to find out whether it is a happy ending or not.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.