Please welcome Milly Johnson to Writer's Corner. Today I am featuring her latest novel The MAGNIFICENT MRS. MAYHEW. It should also be considered for your next summer read. I have an excerpt below of this novel. Here are what others have said about her work.
"Milly Johnson, the Queen of Feel-Good Fiction and The Sunday
Times bestselling author, is back with a "glorious, heartfelt
novel" (Rowan Coleman, New York Times bestselling author)
about a woman trying to find her own place in the world, who through love,
loss, and the kindness of strangers, discovers everything she needs in a
village by the sea. "
Purchase a copy of The MAGNIFICENT MRS. MAYHEW here.
Chapter 1
DOORSTEPGATE, 11 A.M.
As Sophie stood in the
middle of them all, the moment strangely crystalized for her, as if time had
frozen solid and she was able to study everything at leisure, appreciate how
odd it was to be surrounded by familiar people in the house she had lived in
for eight years and yet still feel as if she had been dropped from a great
height into a roomful of strangers.
She saw her mother seated, holding a cup of tea in one
hand and the accompanying china saucer in the other, talking to her father, who
was standing, one hand slotted stiffly in his jacket pocket; his default pose,
as if he were a catalogue model. Mother was talking to him and Father had a
polite smile of concentration on his face. Standing next to him, her
parents-in-law, Clive and Celeste, looking serious and focused as if they were
building up to jumping out of a plane. Sophie’s husband, John, deep in conversation
with the top pick of his aides: Parliamentary Assistant (London) Rupert Bartley-Green;
Senior Communications Director and Press Officer Len Spinks; Chief of Staff
Edward Mayhew, who also happened to be John’s eldest brother; and Executive
Office Manager (Cherlgrove) Findlay Norris. Between his two governmental bases
and the office that looked after his investment and property portfolio, John
had more staff than the POTUS, although there was an opening for a girl Friday
(London) now, since his last one was currently enjoying her fifteen minutes of
fame. The “people” of breakfast and daytime TV, and every program that
attracted those the media chose to concentrate its temporary but brightest
lights on, were no doubt already negotiating appearance fees with her “people.”
Why is it always someone in that junior assistant/intern/researcher role who
topples the boss? thought Sophie. Weren’t there enough cautionary tales of
littered corpses to warn any man in a high-profile position—who really should know
better—what dark and treacherous waters he elected to dip into when he chose a
pretty, young, ambitious swimming companion? A pond with a hundred signs around
it, all lit up with massive red neon lettering and strings of exclamation marks:
warning. danger. come any closer and you’re a bloody idiot!!!!!
It would have been easy for the other woman to fall in
love with her husband, though; if that were what it was. John could sell ice to
the Eskimos, coal to Newcastle, toys to Santa, and all the other clichés. Charm
personified, absurdly handsome, moneyed, intelligent, refined—oh yes, John F.
Mayhew was the full package. Sophie could guess how quickly Rebecca Robinson
would have become ensnared in his net, even thrown herself into it willingly,
because she had done the same thing fourteen years ago, when she was eighteen.
She’d met him at the Christmas Ball when she was in her
first year at Cambridge University, studying French, and he was in his last
year studying business and politics. He’d been absolutely wrecked on champagne
and told her he was going to marry her, before his friends dragged him off for
yet more alcohol. She didn’t think much about it until Valentine’s Day, when
their paths collided again at a private party. She spotted him long before he
noticed her, which gave her the luxury of studying him unseen. He wasn’t her
dream type at all, but he was extremely magnetic, and from the way he held
himself, it was more than obvious he knew what his best qualities were. He was
long limbed and lean, and she imagined him as a human equivalent of a well-bred
racehorse, something pampered and valued. Greek-statue profile, midbrown hair
that flopped into his eyes— and what eyes they were: puppy-brown, intense,
seductive. Eventually, as if detecting the heat in her gaze, his eyes swept around
to hers, locked, and she felt powerless, as if she were a hen and he a fox. He
sliced through the banks of students that stood between them, mouth stretching
into a killer smile, and when he reached her, said:
“Well, if it isn’t you again. Where have you been hiding yourself?”
And from that moment they were a couple. Sophie forgot
all about swooning over the rugby player who was in her class, which was a
shame because he would end up captaining England and was a thoroughly nice
chap, but John F. Mayhew engulfed her brain and was all she could think about.
John F. was going to be richer than Croesus and prime minister
one day, he said, and she didn’t doubt that he would be. She could easily
forecast his future: top of the tree in his chosen profession, women would
adore him, men would want to be him, magazine reporters would queue up outside
his door to take photos of the beautiful home he lived in. His children would
be perfect and well behaved. Maybe they’d be her children, too. Maybe
this was the man her old headmistress Miss Palmer-Price told her would be the
one to carry her along in the grip of his force field.
The “F” stood for Fitzroy, he told her postcoitus in bed
on the night he took her virginity. His great-great-great-grandfather— Donal F.
Mayhew—and his best friend, Patrick, had decided to escape the great Irish
famine by emigrating to America in the late 1840s. But an Irish heiress fell
hook, line, and sinker for the strong and handsome—if impoverished—gypsy Donal
and he changed his mind about going. Donal and his wife eventually moved to
London, where his determination both to shake off the label of male “gold
digger” and to better himself drove him to build up a fortune in his own right
selling property, metal, alcohol, ship parts; anything legal or illegal to
trade in order to make a profit. Across the pond, Patrick’s family’s fortunes improved
with every generation, too. His great-grandson John F. Kennedy became president
of the United States of America. The Kennedys, John said, had stolen the idea
of using the “F” from the Mayhews, and in doing so had cursed themselves. As if
he couldn’t get any more fascinating, traveler magic was thrown into the mix.
By April Sophie could not imagine living without John F. Mayhew;
then in May she found that she’d have to, because he dumped her for the
fabulously rich wild child Lady Cresta Thorpe. Sophie was heartbroken. John
graduated with honors and spent a year touring the world with Cresta, who had dropped
out of university, far preferring to indulge her habits of clubbing, cocktails,
and cocaine. His life, so she gleaned from gossip, was shining and golden as
hers slipped further into the dark and depressing. Her coursework suffered and
she started self-medicating with alcohol to blot out the pain. She also realized
that the girls she’d thought of as friends weren’t that hot in a crisis. She
had never been good at gathering friends. The beautiful, insubstantial people
were attracted to her, but the really nice people found her own good looks
intimidating.
It took Sophie a long time to get over losing John F.
Mayhew, partly because she didn’t have a group of hard-core pals to help chase
him out of her heart. She buried her true feelings deep as she had been taught
to at school, threw herself into her studies, never let anyone see how wounded
she was. Her heart had just about healed by the time she graduated, give or
take the scar he had left.
Months later, Sophie had been working as a temp at the London
headquarters of the glossy magazine Mint when she heard that they were
to run a feature on a young, successful investment banker, a high-risk taker
and up-and-coming politician, at home in his recently acquired, stupidly
expensive bachelor penthouse. His name was John F. Mayhew. Sophie’s heart
started to race. She wangled it so she accompanied the reporter and the
photographer, desperate to show herself off at her best to him: content, happy,
preened, and perfect— unattainable and indifferent. Or so she thought.
He was overjoyed to see her, ridiculously so, and she was
gracious enough not to dampen his delight with a long-overdue rebuke for
dumping her so callously. He asked her out to dinner and she accepted, merely
for old times’ sake, sure that if he asked to see her again, she would politely
refuse, walk away, having shut the door firmly in his face this time.
He had never forgiven himself for the caddish way he had behaved,
he said in Le Gavroche. He’d been glamoured by Cresta’s glitzy veneer, but it
was mere infatuation. He hadn’t realized how much he felt for Sophie until he
lost her. Sophie was in love with him all over again before the dessert menus
had been delivered to them.
Six months after the photos of his bachelor pad had been published,
John F. Mayhew had moved out and into Park Court, a beautiful, if run-down, country
residence—a wedding present from his parents for himself and his new
bride-to-be, the sublime Miss Sophie Calladine. She ignored that little voice inside
her that warned her about the speed of all this, the worm burying into her
happiness. Is this the real deal, Sophie, or are you just grateful to be
loved?
To a woman
starved for affection, the full spotlight of his attention was blinding,
disorientating—of course she knew this. She had gulped it like air seeping
through a hole in a vacuum. For that reason, it would be too easy to let that
worm convince her that genuine love was not her primary reason for accepting John’s
marriage proposal: but it was, it really was. It had to be said, though, that
her heart was whooping considerably that she had also earned parental approval
for her choice of husband, and she could even hear the echoes of applause from
her old headmistress, nodding consent from the afterlife: I knew you’d be a
credit to St. Bathsheba’s in the end, Sophie, like your sisters and your mother
before you. But she did love him very much. Enough to have
sacrificed her own wants and needs on his altar for the past eight and a half
years. Enough to be standing here with her heart ripped open in this roomful of
people who were looking at her to mend her marriage. Because by doing that, Sophie
Mayhew would mend everything.
About the author:
Milly
Johnson is The Sunday Times bestselling
author of numerous novels about the universal issues of friendship, family,
love, betrayal, good food, and the little bit of that magic in life that
sometimes visits the unsuspecting. Milly is a columnist for her local newspaper
and is also an experienced broadcaster on radio and TV. She can be booked via
the Women Speakers Agency for motivational speaking events. Milly is
patron of several charities, including Yorkshire Cat Rescue and The Well at the
Core. Her publishers call her The Queen of Feel-Good Fiction, and together they
are aiming to spread as much joy as possible with every book published. Find
out more at her website or follow her on Twitter.
I was sent a
copy of The World Breaks Everyone by Create
Space Press. I was given this book in
exchange for an honest review. 
