After a Fashion by Jen Turano

        Miss Harriet Peabody dreams of the day she can open up a shop selling refashioned gowns to independent working women like herself. Unfortunately, when an errand for her millinery shop job goes sadly awry due to a difficult customer, she finds herself without an income.

        Mr. Oliver Addleshaw is on the verge of his biggest business deal yet when he learns his potential partner prefers to deal with men who are settled down and wed. When Oliver witnesses his ex not-quite-fiancée causing the hapless Harriet to lose her job, he tries to make it up to her by enlisting her help in making a good impression on his business partner.

        Harriet quickly finds her love of fashion can’t make her fashionable. She’ll never truly fit into Oliver’s world, with its fancy dinners and elegant balls, but just as she’s ready to call off the fake relationship a threat from her past forces both Oliver and Harriet to discover that love can come in the most surprising packages. 

        Harriet Peabody has always dreamed of putting her difficult past behind her and opening her very own store that sells refashioned gowns to independent women. Unfortunately her vivacious and somewhat unconventional personality plays a part in helping a simple errand become a spectacle that causes her to lose her position at a millinery shop. With nowhere else to turn, Harriet reluctantly accepts an offer she never ordinarily would, for a job that will change her life.

        Oliver Addleshaw is an upstanding businessman who is at a loss to how he got himself into such a big mess with the woman who claims to be his fiancée. When she causes Harriet to lose her job, he feels himself partially responsible, and so comes up with an outlandish scheme to help Harriet, as well as aid himself in making a good impression on his soon-to-be business partner. What he doesn’t expect is to find himself questioning all he thought he held dear.

        After a Fashion is the first book in Jen Turano’s A Class of Their Own series, and is a novel that I have been eagerly anticipating reading for quite some time. I have read most of the books in her other series, and loved them very much, so I knew this novel would be one I would enjoy. While Jen is very talented at creating the most endearing characters, it is her heroines that I love the most. They are always independent, headstrong women who know what they want from life, and aren’t afraid to go get it. As you can imagine, that makes for some very hilarious interactions!

        After a Fashion was extremely entertaining, and, thanks to a horrible migraine that had me in bed most of the day, I started—and finished—this book on Monday. I read it in only a few hours, but that was because I just couldn’t put it away, headache or no. With all of the funny moments and unexpected turns that filled this book, I couldn’t help loving it. Now, it is on my all-time favorites list, and it has received all five bookmarks from me. Clearly I would recommend this novel to absolutely anyone, and I am extremely excited for the second installment—In Good Company—which releases next month!

        Happy reading!

Interested in this book, or the next one in the series? Check them out here.

All credit for the italicized synopsis goes to Jen Turano and her publishers.