Book Club Meets: Holiday romance and friendship in your 40s, with Chloe Ashby

0:00Fearne Cotton: Hello. Will sounds strange. Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fearne Cotton. Maggie can see why. The girl before them has long, slender limbs, shiny... Today, Family Friends by Chloe Ashby. A bikini top with spaghetti straps, two flimsy triangles of crimson fabric covering her upper half. A pair of boxer shorts, blue and white stripes. The waistband rolled over to reveal another flash of red. She's comfortably slouched, one arm lazily held up above her head, the other down by her side. She doesn't move, but she does say hi back, which means she must be able to hear them over whatever music is playing through the plastic buds plugged into her ears.

0:46Fearne Cotton: Round gold-framed sunglasses shade her eyes. There's something unnerving about her mouth, which doesn't smile, but is marginally open, as if she's about to say something else, meaning everyone has to keep quiet and wait. She's too young to be a friend of Roland and Lydia, and too old to be a friend of Bea. Briefly, Maggie wonders whether she could be an au pair, and if so, how on earth Roland convinced Lydia to give her a go. The thought almost makes her laugh out loud. Or could it be? Surely not. Maggie is trying to remember how long it's been since she saw Roland's daughter from his first marriage, when her friend appears by her side.

1:29Fearne Cotton: Thank God Lydia has never been a hugger So when she reaches out and wraps her arms around her Maggie isn't prepared and staggers backwards She's wearing something stringy too By the look of the little navy blue bow tied up at the nape of her neck A stiff white shirt on top She's rolled up the sleeves And Maggie breathes in the familiar herby scent Spritzed onto the undersides of her wrists When she doesn't let go, Maggie glances sideways at Will, hoping to catch his eye, but he's staring down at the ground, evidently still in shock.

2:11Fearne Cotton: This month we've been reading Family Friends by Chloe Ashby. I took this book on holiday with me and it is perfect, perfect for sitting around a pool, perfect for sitting on a beach. I cannot tell you, it's the dream holiday book. So for 20 years, Maggie and Will have spent idyllic summers in the south of France with their friends Lydia and Roland. This year, though, tension is brewing and loyalties are being tested. Now, A, I love books set abroad. There's something about it, especially when you're not on holiday, like reading a book that transports you to somewhere glamorous and amazing. And this, the house they stay in, is so glamorous.

2:53Fearne Cotton: I love a bit of glamour in a book, too. That's actually the B. B, glamour, tick, love. C, I love books that really focus on dynamics between whether it's friendships or couples, just like really intricate dynamics between humans I find fascinating. And you get a hell of a lot of that in there. There's also, without spoiling anything at all, moments of romance and also young love. And there's something about young love on holiday, a holiday romance that just gets me every time. I used to be a holiday romance-aholic, if that's a thing, when I was a young person. So when I was a young person. So that part of the book for me, loved.

3:34Fearne Cotton: I just love all of it. Hey guys, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. Okay, can we all agree that hosting is so much fun? And I really do love it. Every weekend, it's come over for snacks, let's make dinner together. and somehow the second you put out a fruit platter, it seems that bugs show up before your friends do. This is why I have to have my Zeevo flying insect trap. You plug it in and you let it do all the work. It's specially designed blue and UV light attracts the bugs you didn't know you had. And wow, did we have a lot. Like house flies, fruit flies, gnats. And then with Zeevo, bam. Next thing you know, the pests are caught in the sticky cartridge and away from your yummy treats without any mess or strong odors.

4:17The best part is the design is actually sleek and curved, so it hides the bugs it catches, keeping them out of sight, and when the cartridge is full, you just grab the no mess tab, throw it in the trash, pop in a new cartridge, and then you're done. No mess, no stress. So whether you're hosting a dinner party or spending an afternoon baking treats with all your friends, and you want to focus on hosting and not constantly swatting at bugs, Zeevo has you covered with 24-7 bug protection. Plug in a Zivo Flying Insect Trap so you can work smarter, not harder, and actually enjoy your time at home.

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5:55Fearne Cotton: Right, let's do it. This is the show.

6:19Fearne Cotton: Hello Chloe. Hi Fern. Look at this book. Look at it. Like one sexy cover. Thank you. I mean I can't actually thank you because I didn't design it. It was a brilliant penguin who designed it. Oh my god it just as soon as I got the cover I was like I know what I know the feeling of this book I get it yeah I get the feeling of this book yeah and it was interesting actually because early on my editor and I we were sort of chatting about the cover and we assumed it would be a group of people because you know the book is about two couples and then it became clear that actually it's kind of more mysterious and more intriguing to wonder who this is yes who this character is who is that do you know I mean could it be anyone to me it's Izzy okay I don't know I'd be interested to hear what you think that it could be Maggie in my head it could be Maggie it could be my it could be it could be anyone it could be anyone but I love I just think everything about that cover it just it totally expresses the book and I love it so let's talk about family friends this is so brilliant obviously not your first rodeo you've written how many books a couple of art histories couple of novels yes exactly that yeah yeah but this book which is specifically set in the south of France, as you said, two couples who go on holiday together every year.

7:36Fearne Cotton: The drama ensues. It's brilliant. What came first, characters or location? Characters. Very much characters. So when I was thinking about this book, I was, so I started writing it when I was trying to get pregnant and then when I was pregnant. And so I was thinking a lot about family family life including my own and when I was a child we used to go on these big chaotic group holidays with my parents friends and their kids and I mean they were really chaotic I think I would hate this kind of holiday now um and the parents had sort of grown up together and in some cases shared tangled paths and as kids we were you know expected it was expected that we'd just rub along yeah um which we mostly did and we were left to our own devices in the way that children often are on a holiday and we would end up sort of seeing hearing doing things we shouldn't and so that's what I was thinking about that kind of situation um and the rest came from there I love that it's set abroad and I love reading fiction that's set in other countries and I guess the interesting thing about holidays is that anything can happen like you've just said there your own childhood experience is knowing that as a kid you've just got to crack on with entertaining yourselves you can sneak about because your parents are probably drinking a bottle of wine over here but it's not the usual it's not the usual routine and rhythm of life at home and also I think as an adult even now when I go with my kids you become a slightly different version of yourself you're like holiday you yeah so it's really was it did it feel interesting to put your characters in that situation yeah it did I think exactly like you say it can it can be I think both liberating and maybe you do and you drink and you wear things that you wouldn't normally but also in this particular case I mean they're in an incredibly beautiful place they're in the south of France in this crumbly chateau it's basically a chateau but because of the the heat there's a heat wave I feel the heat wave here has been brilliant accidental marketing for me I wish it hadn't continued so long but it has been vaguely helpful because of that they are kind of pressed into this house and so they're on holiday but at the same time they're kind of trapped which means that any issues insecurities jealousies whatever it is that kind of bubble up between them that they're inescapable yes and I think that is also the case is that you can be really good friends with someone but until you go away with them you don't know that person kind of like living living with someone yes regularly I mean even some of your closest friends some of my closest friends I'm not sure we could live together no no and you go on holiday you're like oh that's how you do your morning routine you like to eat that like all the little things that you miss when you go for dinner or you have someone to your house and you have a cup of tea or whatever you don't get to see all those tiny little micro moments that make up their routine and you have to be yourself much more flexible but also you learn so much about other people obviously these four characters they go away together every year but this year I don't know I never know with these episodes how much to give away because there will be people listening to this who are halfway through who just started the book so I don't want to go too deep into plot but obviously stuff comes up from the past and there are certain situations they're dealing with on the hoof and like you say they're trapped so it is like this sort of boiling pot what did you want to get across with the the two different couples and the dynamics that we experience as the reader well I think with these two couples they so they met at university they're now in and around 40 they're kind of at the stage of life where maybe we would expect them to like have everything figured out and for life to be sort of set but what's interesting to me or was interesting to me in the writing process thinking about them was that they have kids that are no longer tiny kids anymore and so for the first time in a while they've got breathing room to sort of think about or reassess who they are what they want where they want the rest of their lives to go so that in itself was kind of exciting for me and then I think just as I began to to write these characters and to spend time with them various sort of similarities and differences began to crop up between them so the kind of financial difference for example one family is hosting the other and so from the start there's a slight power imbalance which just kind of adds to the tension I think.

12:23Fearne Cotton: So interesting because I think when I was in my 20s I looked at people in their 40s and I thought they know how the world works they understand life they know themselves they've lived a life beforehand you get to your mid-40s I think you go you don't know anything you almost do start again maybe some of it is if you've had kids that like you say you perhaps my kids are now 11 and 13 so I am not only on holiday but in life starting to go oh right okay I've got a little bit more headspace and they're a bit more independent and you do start to question after like that I'm out of motherhood what do I like Like, what do I want to do?

12:59Fearne Cotton: What makes me happy? And you can really see that with these characters. Again, holiday. I think there should be a new term, a new phrase for a holiday with kids. Because for most of their childhood, it is not a holiday for the adults. No. So I saw something about this recently. So brilliant Alice Vincent. Do you know Alice Vincent? Writer. She did a post about this recently and she said how it shouldn't be called a holiday. It should be called a trip. A trip. Then you don't go into it thinking, I'm going to come back relaxed. And actually, I just went on a trip. And thinking of it as a trip really helped me.

13:36Fearne Cotton: Yeah, because I think you're lulled into a full sense of like, oh, I'm going to relax, read some books. No, no. You do not. No. You do not. It's a holiday with kids. It's very much a trip. But I think that was a really interesting part of it. explored like seeing them with these slightly older children who are going off with varying degrees of success to try and live a sort of little teen life or a mini adult life and they're figuring things out I also love with the younger characters the romance because I was a holiday romance a holic as a teenager my main incentive was find a boy to snog and then can they be my pen pal because we're talking like 90s here and there is something really exciting about like you're in another country the weather's different there are no rules you're staying up late you're meeting people from different backgrounds but I loved that story oh I'm so glad because I really love that story too and it was kind of a controversial one even in the editing process just in terms of how people felt about it but I was kind of determined that it was gonna stay as it is um yeah I mean maybe we should say for anyone who hasn't read but as you say it's very hard to do without spoilers but um there's this romance that kind of comes about through uh between Izzy who is this like really beautiful intelligent quite rebellious teenage daughter of Roland um from his previous marriage and she's on the holiday for the first time uh and she's kind kind of an exciting character or she was for me because she's this stranger figure in the book so she's seeing she's slightly rebellious she is rebellious yeah and but I think she also has sort of a sweet vulnerable side to her that kind of in a way Sammy this teenage boy the son of Maggie and Will brings out um but they kind of help each other I suppose their story is a bit of a coming of age story within the book.

15:37Yeah, I love it.

15:38Fearne Cotton: I love it. And it feels like at times this lovely little moment of relief because the tension between the adults, the parents, is really mounting as the book continues. And you have these flashbacks to university days to look at the untangling of previous events. What did you want to get from those flashbacks? Part of me wondered if it was we look back in our 40s and we think, have I really changed that much? Have my ideas about the world and relationships and love really changed? Because that seems to be something that a couple of the characters are really having to consider on this holiday. Yeah, yeah, I think so.

16:19I mean, even on the first or second page, I think Will thinks to himself, is this really the 20th year we've done this? That's mad. And I felt, yeah, with the flashbacks, they felt really important to me because I don't know I guess in general it makes sense that you can better understand someone if you've seen glimpses of who they were before and I think in many ways we stay the same but I think we also I mean if I think back 10 years 15 years I've just changed so much but I I quite liked showing these snippets of them also maybe because each of the adults as we meet them you know they're all kind of going through something yeah they're all bringing to the holiday a bit of baggage something is going on behind the scenes generally something they're not being overly open about and so we're maybe not meeting them in the best possible light so I think also for the reader to have empathy there needed to be these moments of kind of warmth and like naturalness that we saw between them also to understand why these you know the respective couples are together yes and why they're all friends yeah because I think otherwise you might read the book if those flashbacks weren't there and the memories weren't there and think I don't get it to leave the guy yeah but

17:41Fearne Cotton: the flashbacks like you say are so important because not only do their friendships form but also two of the characters well one of them was a professor at university who is now married to one of his past students so there's an interesting dynamic at play even there why did you want to of put those characters together? I think when I was when I was thinking about the group, like I said earlier, the book really started with the characters. And I didn't want it to be that there were to be so straightforward that both couples, you know, that they were all students. I wanted, I suppose, in the same way that I ended up having one couple host another, I liked the idea of there being a bit of a power imbalance going on within the group.

18:24also because of the different perspective that Roland brings. You know, he's 15 years older than the others. And when we meet him, I don't think it's a spoiler to say, he is grieving his ex-wife who has just died. You know, the fact that she's died is the reason Izzy, his daughter, is on this trip. And he, to a degree, kind of retains a bit of a separate professor-like role within the group. for most of the holiday he's sort of up in this like garret writing trying to write this eulogy but yeah it just I think the more variety I could get into it the better yeah and also I think having

19:04Fearne Cotton: a step kid on holiday for Lydia you know I have been a step parent and had my stepchildren on many many holidays and and the dynamic is different to your own children whether you've all brought them up together or not there is a slightly different dynamic at play and I think you know there's it's so prevalent blended families these days but often you know more often than not we don't sort of see the intricacies of that playing out in a holiday setting or in an everyday setting like how that feels for everybody including the step-parent who's trying to work out what the boundary is am I your friend am I your mom yeah you're grieving your mom who's just passed away how close can I get to you it's a really interesting thing for her to try and figure out Yeah, yeah, I felt the same way.

19:48I mean, I'm glad it kind of came across that way as a reader, because I, yeah, again, from sort of from the start, it felt, it just felt right. You know, I didn't want any of these families to be too neat, because that's not really what families are. I mean, there are so few families that are, if any, that are neat and tidy and perfect. And we're all kind of muddling through. We are. And also, you know, having Izzy there, there is just something really great and juicy, I think, about having a stranger figure in a book, introducing a character who sees things through fresh eyes and can disrupt sort of long held habits and traditions.

20:35So she was, yeah, she was great. Have you got a favorite character? She was definitely the most fun. And she kind of reminded me, my first novel is a very close first person and follows a 26-year-old girl figuring out what she wants to be. And spending time with Izzy reminded me of spending time with Eve, that character, in a really happy way. So yeah, I would probably say her. But I also empathise possibly the most with Maggie. Maggie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

21:07Fearne Cotton: I think most people will read it feeling like she's a bit of a victim to stuff going on around her. She's a good person. She's a good person. Yeah. I mean, you don't end up leaving the book disliking any of them. You can see like all humans. We're all flawed and trying to figure things out and making mistakes and trying to write them. I don't think you leave going, they shouldn't have done this. You understand all of them and the psychology behind it. But Maggie seems like the one who is kind of like, I don't know, maybe receiving the brunt of all of these decisions that people around her are making.

21:41Yeah, yeah, I think she is. And I think she's so, you know, she so wants everything to be good and everything to be well and happy. And I didn't want her to come across as kind of too soft or too much of a pushover. and I think there are moments where she will surprise people you know where she kind of stands up and speaks her mind but yeah basically she is good and kind and still makes mistakes but is possibly slightly less flawed than some of the other characters.

22:14Fearne Cotton: I mean when you're writing a story like this and you've got all of these backstories and complex dynamics that you need to keep an eye on throughout the storyline is there like an underlying message that you want the reader to leave with like and the lesson learned here is this or do you just are you like it's it's up to the the reader to decide what they take from from the how these stories unravel yeah it's such a good question and it's a hard question I I mean ultimately it's up to the reader and regardless of what I am about to say everyone will come away from the book thinking different things feeling different things and that's the great thing about books like films or whatever but I was definitely thinking a lot while I was writing about people making mistakes and about the point at which doing a bad thing makes you a bad person and also I was thinking about what happens next like what happens when someone has made a mistake whether you know whether your family or friends do you just carry on because that's how life is or do you sort of reassess and walk away because you know there I think Izzy says it at one point in the book like do you do they all like going away together or is this just like a bad habit they can't break yeah that's something I was thinking about throughout and I suppose that would be something I'd like people to be kind of pondering Yeah, but I think you've left that hanging in the air for people to decide.

23:44Fearne Cotton: You don't get to the end of the book and think, and this is the bad person. You're like, I get it. There's these feelings from the past and, you know, shit's going on and they're trying to figure it out on the earth and life's really hectic and you're trying to be a parent and you're trying to figure out financial situations back home. And, like, adult life is a lot and I think it's never flawless. there's always mistakes to be made and like you say it's so interesting looking at you know how we I think culturally probably see certain actions to find someone as bad that is a bad person but actually when you really get to know characters in a book or people in real life it's so much more complicated than that.

24:25Yeah yeah and if it wasn't then we would just all be so hard on ourselves the whole time because we are all making mistakes all the time I think we are hard on ourselves

24:36Fearne Cotton: Because we've got this black and white view of that makes you a bad person rather than getting curious about I wonder why that person acted out in that way or that person made that decision. Like, what does that mean? I think it's such an interesting topic. Hey, guys, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. OK, can we all agree that hosting is so much fun? And I really do love it. every weekend it's come over for snacks let's make dinner together and somehow the second you put out a fruit platter it seems that bugs show up before your friends do this is why i have to have my zivo flying insect trap you plug it in and you let it do all the work it's specially designed blue and uv light attracts the bugs you didn't know you had and wow did we have a lot like house flies fruit flies gnats and then with zivo bam next thing you know the pests are caught in the sticky cartridge and away from your yummy treats without any mess or strong odors.

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27:08Fearne Cotton: So let's talk about the actual writing process, because I'm always deeply fascinated and want to know for my own kind of writing, how you write, where you write, what you need in place for you to write well. Well, I would say that I probably used to be very prescriptive about how I wrote. I mean, I used to be so protective of those early hours first thing. And I think I almost had this feeling that if I didn't just like sit up in bed and start writing without seeing or hearing or thinking about anything else, somehow the writing would be diluted. Wow. So something about that liminal space between sleep and awakeness where that's your most imaginative hour?

27:52Well, yes, it was. It was. And that time before other people start working, you start to have the ding of emails coming in. But then I had a child. And that went out the window. And I was like, oh, great. but I do think probably I mean what do you think I think parenthood probably has made me well definitely has made me less precious and maybe has made me more efficient you have to be yeah exactly because if they're at nursery you're like well we're paying for nursery and I feel a bit bad that they're at nursery so you have to work yeah yeah you use the small bits of time really really I think it forces you to actually push yourself into places that you would never

28:36Fearne Cotton: normally go like I was the same as you not necessarily with writing but any work like I had a real routine before I had kids where I'd get up I'd have a coffee I used to smoke a cigarette back in the day too it's like back back in the day and I would get all my work emails done it'd be the first thing I did and I'd feel all organized and I'm done and then I had a baby and I was like what I I don't get to like have my coffee and do I have what and I and now obviously I'm so deep into parenting I just work around their routines and how and you manage it and you you make things happen but you have to become so efficient with the little bits of time that you have yeah yeah and I think um again I don't know how you feel about this but I think the way that you write like I've written all three of my novels quite differently because the first one I wrote when I was still in a full-time job so it was really in scraps of time here and there and the writing is quite scrappy in a way that really suited the story and then the second one I wrote during COVID when I didn't have much work on and it's sort of a slower more thoughtful book which again kind of worked out well for what was going on and this one this one I don't know kind of was a bit in between I'm I'm an art critic as well as a novelist so I'm freelance and I'm sometimes writing you know really quick fire pieces and sometimes I'm working at a slower paced on a book but this one felt like kind of a happy medium um and a bit more I guess a way of working that is a bit longer lasting yeah maybe now because I also am in this phase and like this is this phase is what it's going to be for a while 18 years yeah exactly for a while I mean obviously not 18 maybe like 13 he'll be self-sufficient within a few won't he They're four.

30:28They better be.

30:29Fearne Cotton: You'll be fine. Yeah, but it's so interesting how then that can start to inform how you write and you learn new things about yourself through that process. It's so interesting. Yeah, I think it can be really, yeah, just like a happy coincidence, I think, the way that it works out. Yeah. One thing I really am left with after reading this book is this feeling of a world that you've created that's still sort of existing somewhere. I don't always get that with novels. Sometimes I'm just like, oh, that was good and I leave it. And I can remember fragments of characters or storylines. But I can so picture the chateau.

31:05Fearne Cotton: I can so picture or like feel the heat of it. I can just imagine that whole world existing somewhere. I very much had this when I read Candice Carty-Williams' book more recently too, that these people, I might sort of like bump into them in the street. I can really imagine them. and I wonder if you were cognizant of that whilst you were writing it and if you know what that little magic ingredient is that creates that because it's not every novel that you you're left feeling like that's a world that exists somewhere yeah I mean I guess when it comes to both the characters and the setting what I sort of love when I'm writing and also when I'm reading is just really digging, like burrowing into all the details, every detail, you know, sights, sounds, smells.

31:55I often, I don't know whether it's because I write about art, but I often find my writing ends up being quite visual. So I guess that helps when it comes to setting. But yeah, really thinking about how the characters feel as well. I mean, now I'll tell you, the place is real. Oh, wow. so or at least it's heavily inspired by a real yeah well that helps because you know the smell

32:22Fearne Cotton: of it the feel of it the sounds when you walk through a corridor like you know it exactly yeah so that that can only help I mean there is that old-fashioned phrase write what you know and I think there is something for it whether it's an experience or a place that you can really bring it to life because you know every little detail like you it's part of you every little detail of that place and that does help build that whole picture yeah and I think also with the characters like whether or not you're conscious of it whether or not I'm conscious of it when I'm writing I think it and you know they end up being kind of it's like that surrealist game the exquisite corpse where you sort of like do a head and then you turn it over and you do and you end up kind of like picking and choosing little bits from whether it's people you know or people you've kind of interacted with at some point I mean there are definitely things that crop up in the book like the um Roland obsessively opening closing the windows that my stepdad was like all right so that's me is it that's so funny and I was like well okay I guess it kind of is that's so funny but of course your brain just stores it all in things yeah because you think that's such a great tick yeah yeah yeah such a and you know something that marks you out and says a lot about you as a person.

33:38Fearne Cotton: Did you find that you had a pretty steady flow when you were writing or were there bits, I don't know, moments of distraction or moments where you're like, oh, I just, I can't get over this road bump. I, when I was writing, it really did flow. I, with this book, had trouble starting in the first place. So I didn't experience the dreaded second book syndrome. yeah um I think because I wrote my second novel before my first one was out so I was kind of still in that like blissful you know ignorance is bliss not thinking about readers reviewers what people want just thinking about what I wanted to say um and with this one I was kind of like it's my third novel if I'm gonna write a third novel it needs to be really good it needs to be really original it needs to be this this and this um and I was paralyzed for a while before I started writing and I kind of ended up doing things that aren't don't come naturally to me as a writer like I started really trying to plot it all out and I think I work better when I kind of I have a vague sense of what's what's going on what's going to happen but I basically follow the characters um And it was only when I just sat down.

34:56I think I got to a point where I thought, okay, I just need to spend time with them on the page and see if this is going to work or not because the planning and the plotting was making me lose my confidence. And then when I started writing, then I was happy.

35:09Fearne Cotton: Sometimes it is just you just have to open the laptop and just start.

35:15Fearne Cotton: I'm so with you on this because I'm usually pretty fluid. I've only written one novel, but my nonfiction, I'm normally like I know exactly how this is going to go and I'm so excited that all I want to do is that and it flows and I'm so excited about it I'm in this weird pickle at the moment where I started writing a fiction and then life happened and some big life stuff happened and then I didn't write for ages and then I was like I can't go back to it I don't I don't remember it and I it scared me so I started another book that was another good idea that I thought I'm committed to this then I started to lose confidence not in the book but in like how I would talk about it because it It was quite a dark subject matter.

35:52Fearne Cotton: So now I've gone back to the first one. Well, maybe they will end up evolving in tandem. Maybe, maybe. And feeding off one another. I've never done that. I'm usually quite like Virgo, organized. And this feels like chaos. Yeah. But I was so scared to even go back to either of them at one point. Literally last week, I just watched, have you seen the film The Invite? No, but I'm desperate to see it. You're going to love it. It sounds so good. It's very four characters in a dynamic. It's brilliant. It's two couples. It's genius. Okay. And I felt so inspired afterwards. I started rewriting the start of this book at like 10 o 'clock at night, which is the most I go to bed at like half nine.

36:32Fearne Cotton: Okay, good. I was like, who am I? I've never written a word after like 11 a.m. Like, who am I? But I felt so inspired by it. So now all I need to do is just open my laptop and just start again. So I'm back, hopefully, in a flow of doing it. But I've never had that. Like it was a sort of a paralyzed feeling of I can't, I can't do it. I can't go near either of them, but I'm over it now and I'm back to it. Thank God. Well, I'm excited for you that you are back in it. Me too. It's so hard, isn't it? Because on the one hand, I think sitting with an idea is such a valuable thing to do. Yeah. But there also is such a thing as overthinking.

37:11Yes. And over planning. Yeah. And you do ultimately, even if it's bad. like if you've got something on the page you have something to work with whereas when you've got a blank page that is terrifying it's the worst feeling ever yeah it's the pits yeah well look

37:26Fearne Cotton: we have all loved reading this book the whole team have read it and we've just all been chatting about it and loving that level of escapism to this chateau in the south of france with these brilliant characters so thank you so much for writing such an enjoyable book what I'll end on is asking you where is your happy place oh I don't know if this is just going to sound really cheesy but it's the first thing that's popped into my head that's the answer it would be with my husband and our son wherever that may be at home as long as it's not in that awful hour after nursery before bed when it's like hell any hour but that hour any hour but that hour I hear you, I get that well look thank you so much Chloe and congratulations on your brilliant book thank you so much for having me oh Chloe thank you so much for your time it was so great because I love that book so much just getting to chat about it felt like a real treat I'm almost tempted to read it again so it was good just to be able to sort of flesh it out and talk about the locations the characters the love stories all of it okay we're heading into a new month which of course means a new book for us all to read in the Happy Place Book Club in September we're reading new novel Death Writ Large by Susie Dent.

38:43Fearne Cotton: Susie's actually going to be joining me on stage at the Happy Place Festival in Tatton Park next weekend which I can't wait for. I'm going to get super nerdy about all the language that she uses in the book, the new words that I learned. It's a brilliant book. You'll be able to hear that conversation on the podcast next month if you're not coming to the festival. In the meantime, Death Writ Large is the book that you want to be reading in September. And then we can all chat about it on Instagram. So head over and join our book club. It's at happyplacebookclub on Instagram. Okay, until next time, a massive thanks again to Chloe and to you, you lovely little bookworms.

39:41Fearne Cotton: Happy Place is researched by me, Fern Cotton. The producer is Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios with studio engineering by Basil Oxtoby. Hey guys, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. Okay, can we all agree that hosting is so much fun? And I really do love it. Every weekend it's come over for snacks, let's make dinner together, and somehow the second you put out a fruit platter, it seems that bugs show up before your friends do. This is why I have to have my Zeevo flying insect trap. You plug it in and you let it do all the work. It's specially designed blue and UV light attracts the bugs you didn't know you had.

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