The Tale of Hill Top Farm: 1 (Cottage Tales of Beatrix P)

Not a book found readily in the UK. This copy had to come from the USA. It's pure fiction but written in a delightful and gentle way which conjures up the world of Beatrix Potter. If you're fed up of books which dwell on the darker side of life, these tales are a good antidote.

Good.

easy read.

This book has received a Discovering Diamonds Review:Helen Hollickfounder #DDRevs"This is an utterly charming cosy mystery!"

I have read the entire series of "Victorian Mysteries" written by Mrs. Albert and her husband under the name of Robin Paige and have found most of the books in that series to be quite good. I was particularly impressed with the entry in that series that featured Beatrix Potter and so I was sure that I would really like this new series that would revolve entirely around the famous author of children's books.This series is based on Potter's real life purchase of Hill Top Farm in England's Lake District and features not only a captivating set of villagers but also an eclectic group of mystery solving animals. Both the people and the animals of the village are a gossipy bunch and both tend to make mountains out of molehills and spread inaccurate speculation. In the case of this book however these things may be a virtue for although there are several little mysteries running along as secondary plot lines all of the mysteries are quite shallow and could use any weight that the village grapevine might add to them.It seems to be the style of this author to use the first book in a series as an introductory volume that introduces her readers to both the characters and setting of the series. That is certainly what she has done here for if the depth of the mystery content of this book were a creek one could wade across it without getting the top of ones feet wet. One of the main mysteries in this book for example is that an entire two pounds has gone missing and its disappearance has the ever-domineering Miss Myrtle Crabbe on the warpath. I'm sorry but this is just not the kind of despicable crime that would get the attention of Sherlock Holmes, or even Agatha Raisin for that matter. Now that the setting and characters have been introduced I have high hopes for the next entry and am expecting to find a little bit more meat in that book's mystery stew.As usual however, Mrs. Albert has a delightful writing style and her ability to create characters that are fanciful but still realistic never ceases to amaze. Her animal characterizations are so good that they rival those of Beatrix Potter herself and include an owl with a recipe book for cooking rat and a cat that is afraid of heights. Add to that a couple of art thieves, a missing Parish register and a mouse that drinks champagne and what you get is a delightfully fun warm fuzzy mystery of the cozy variety. With just a spoonful or two more of actual mystery I think that this author will again have found the recipe for success.

Just could not get in to this

Part one in what I believe is a series of 8 books, whilst I felt that The Tale Of Hill Top Farm had many things to recommend it there were some things that troubled me.Not normally one to quibble about the use of American spellings - why should I be when so many of the books I read are by American authors - it did however seem incongruous to me that a book featuring the quintessentially British novelist, Beatrix Potter, should be riddled with such spellings (Color, Organize, Neighbor ...... I could go on but won't).Not my main gripe though. Not something I will go into at any great length about here BUT given my views on keeping hedgehogs as 'pets' suffice to say the very mention did considerably mar my enjoyment of the book.Anyway, pet hedgehogs aside. I loved the fact that the animals were given a voice (not that they were understood by humans you understand, only by each other), that their conversations were written in italics so that it was easy to identify that it was Crumpet the cat or Rascal the dog or one of the other animals who was speaking rather than any of the myriad of human characters who by the way almost without exception had such wonderfully quaint names.A gentle, one could even say, genteel read set in the English Lake District (not 80 miles from where I live). Apart from the cosy mystery at the heart of the story I loved the biographical glimpses into Beatrix's life, of how the author managed to convey that here was a woman yearning for love and independence and yet, at the same time, in many ways a woman of her time, a woman who felt somewhat duty bound to obey her parents wishes.Copyright: Petty Witter @ Pen and Paper. The Tale of Hill Top Farm (Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter Mysteries)

Beatrix Potter, successful author, has bought a farm in the Lake District of England. She loves the area and is hoping to use it to set up an independent life from her parents.She expects peace and quite in the village of Near Sawrey. But on her first visit, she realizes that's not to be.Miss Tolliver passed away rather unexpectedly on her birthday. Her death was a shock to all, and the village is buzzing. Additionally, things seem to be disappearing around the village, and Miss Potter gets caught up in the middle.All this is on top of the personal problems Miss Potter faces. She's still reeling from the death of her fiance just a few months before. And, while she may own Hill Top Farm, she must figure out a way to live there while keeping the current farmers there to run it for her.I went back and forth on whether I enjoyed the book or not. The pacing is slow, and at times I was ready for things to speed up. Yet at other times I got caught up in events and couldn't put the book down.The characters were interesting. I especially like the portrayal of Beatrix. I completely believed her temperament from the little I know about this period of her life.Since the book is about Beatrix Potter, there are lots of animals in the story. While they can't communicate with humans, they can talk to each other and actually play an important part in the story. It's handled in a believable way but might bother those who don't like that kind of thing.There were parts that were enjoyable, but on the whole it was an average read.

I freely confess to having always had a weakness for books with talking animals, beginning with my childhood reading of Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows. Both are still favorites, along with many others, and still read frequently. So I was predisposed to like this series and, thankfully, it did not disappoint. The author is familiar with the time period and the life of Beatrix Potter, and both are treated with respect and a welcome absence of anachronisms. The animals are charming and gracefully woven into these simple stories, while having a critical part to play. If I have a criticism, and it's a minor one, the narrative tone is a bit arch and sometimes has the effect of assuming the reader's agreement where that assumption might be a bit presumptuous. This minor point aside, I've read the entire series with pleasure more than once, and that, in my case, is high praise.

Lovely story

Wenn ich nicht die anderen beiden Serien der Autorin gekannt hätte, hätte ich wohl nach dem ersten Kapitel aufgegeben, aber da sie eigentlich ganz tolle Krimis schreibt, habe ich mich weitergekämpft. Es hat sich gelohnt. Sicher etwas anders als man sonst von ihr gewohnt ist, doch gut ausgeführt, die Charaktere mit einer angenehmen Tiefe versehen, ist diese Geschichte vielversprechend für die weiteren Bände der Reihe. Der Anfang war schwer, deshalb einen Stern Abzug, doch der Rest las sich gut.

The Tale of Hill Top Farm is a wonderful book. I've read it twice and will reread it because it is like a delicious casserole on a wintery day __ real comfort food for the mind. I think that Susan Wittig Albert's books should appear on audio tape, or better still, video tape for children because she writes so grammatically and with a wonderful sense of style and vocabulary. Her work would be a great teacher of language skills. She uses her animals for life lessons, especially when she attaches the lessons to those of the inhabitants of the Sawreys. The description of the villages and of the architecture and the foods make me long for life in the early 1900s. In addition to all of the above good things, Albert does a splendid job of blending the facts with fiction of Beatrix Potter's life. Because of this book, I've bought all the rest in the series plus a good number of others about Beatrix Potter and the Lake District.

The blurb on the back cover of this novel has this information, "But when a villager dies unexpectedly, with allegations of foul play, Sawrey turns out to be anything but quiet....." I read this and expected to get a novel where Beatrix Potter would play a Miss Marple type character in a cozy English village setting with murders left and right. That book description sentence was constructed in such a way as to allow me to get the wrong impression. Thankfully the novel was a very good reading experience for me, but not until I had completely readjusted my expectations and accepted what was actually written.This is a very charming, warm, sensitive story of Beatrix Potter arriving in Sawrey village in the Lake District and her efforts to finalize the purchase of Hill Top Farm. There are many decisions which need to be made about the farm, especially since there is a farmer and his family in residence there and provisions must be thought out for how to handle the problem of everyone fitting into a too-small accommodation. There is not just one mystery in this story, there are many and Miss Potter is not the only person responsible for solving them. Instead of thinking about this novel as a murder mystery, think about it more as a very small community of people who are so closely connected in their lives by proximity to each other that they cannot help but all get involved in each other's business.I found this book very relaxing and soothing once I stopped expecting to be reading a conventional murder mystery. There are animals in the story which talk - but only to other animals, they cannot be heard by the humans. In actuality, the animals play a large part in helping relate information to the reader about any situation in progress because the animals tell each other what they have just seen or heard. In order to appreciate this style of storytelling a reader has to completely trust the author to make them feel comfortable and accepting of all the elements of the storytelling. Perhaps a reader of this series should be someone who so enjoys the stories of Beatrix Potter that they have no problems allowing mice, rabbits, hedgehogs, and cats and dogs to be vital characters in the book. I enjoyed it immensely because it was so different and it takes the English cozy style of novel to a level I had never experienced. It's almost a shame to classify it as a mystery, because of the expectation that category engenders with readers. Instead, read it for the lovely descriptions of the location, the perceptive insights into life in a tiny community, and the facts regarding the life of Beatrix Potter.