18/2020. Another Elizabeth Cadell novel set in Portugal, with English migrants behaving as badly as usual. The story features typical variant characters from this author's cast list: the romantic hero/heroine who only wants a quiet life (+ their extended family), the comic working class man made good, the rich selfish old lady, the fixer, and the local people getting on with their own lives. Similar to The Friendly Air but different enough for them to be readable back-to-back. This is mostly a 3 star read for me but the driving incident is a whole half star's worth of laughter (our hero thinks he can drive a woman's car better than she can but soon discovers he's wrong and gives her back the driving seat).

Our hero on a posh party: "He felt that the well-worn comparison to tropical fish might be used again to describe this gathering - colourful, darting, purposeless - but the fish didn't make this deafening noise."

Our heroine's aunt to her do-gooding niece: "What sort of man will wish to marry you? He will also have to marry fourteen children and one hundred and eight cats." ( )