Capture Beautiful Day Developed By Kate Anthony PDF

really good book. Funny, emotional and addictive. Could have kept reading. Rachel's husband has just left her and we read about the trials and tribulations of balancing work life working in a care home and looking after children.
The cover art for Kate Anthony's Beautiful Day is absolutely gorgeous, add the enticing blurb on the back of the book and this has the potential to be the most wonderful of reads.


It is! That old wellworn cliche really does apply to Beautiful Day, I honestly did resent having to put it down for even a moment, and if it had been possible, and I had no work to do I would have sat and read the whole thing from cover to cover.


Rachel's life has gone completely and utterly belly up, Her husband and father of her three children has left, found himself a younger model, The children are not coping too well there's bedwetting and angry outbursts to cope with, The livein au pair is useless and Rebecca is about to start working for first time in ages,

The Clifton Avenue Care Home is a residential home for adults with special needs, and Rachel is quickly allocated as key worker to new resident Philip.
Philip has led a sad, lonely life with his elderly mother, He has no social skills, very little speech, smells a bit ripe and his toenails resemble cheese and onion crisps, Despite this, and despite Rachel's chaotic personal life, they form a bond, Rachel also forms a bond with deputymanager Rob, a guy who wears his trousers so short that it is almost ironically fashionable, but also wears his heart on his sleeve unlike some of the other staff in the home.


Rachel's home life spirals out of control a little bit more each day and it is only her loyal and dedicated motherinlaw, and her work at Clifton Avenue that keeps her sane.
. just. Battling with her feelings around her ex husband and his new woman, whilst trying to protect her children from further harm, her own welfare comes a long way down on her list of priorities.


Beautiful Day is an accomplished and quite elegant debut novel, written with authority and flair, it is clear that the author has a wealth of experience in social care.
The character of Philip is so perfectly created, his sadness and vulnerability scream out from the pages, yet he can still make the reader chuckle at times.
Some would say that Rachel is a bitter and angry woman, indeed the author comments on just that in her interview at the back of the book.
I like Rachel. I think she has every right to rant and to rage and to be angry at the world, OK, at times she can be a little harsh with her children, but I doubt that there are many of us who could keep it all together, at all times in similar circumstances.


Rachel's exhusband Dom is a fool, I hated him, he's superior and patronising and an idiot, His young lover Deborah was welcome to him in my eyes, Towards the end of the story, Rachel writes a letter to Deborah outlining her feelings, about Dom, about Deborah and about herself.
This letter is the real Rachel, the person underneath the harassed, miserable and quite vulnerable lady in the rest of the book.
The letter, and Rachel's wonderful relationship with resident Philip shows just how strong and kind and caring Rachel really is,

This is a novel that deals with many issues, but is never complicated, The break down of a marriage, and the effect on the children and wider family, The social services system and what can go wrong, but also how repairing it can be with the right staff who are there for the right reason.
It's also a journey for Rachel, a chance for her to discover who she really is, and to find that she's more than just a wife or a mother, and that she's a person of worth in her own right.


A warm and poignant story, well written with humour and with grace, A story that deals with difficult, often complex issues in a sensitive and realistic way, Penguin have done it again another debut novel in Beautiful Day by Kate Anthony, and another that I absolutely loved from the opening pages and Rachels first experience of Clifton Avenue Residential Care Home through to its quite perfect ending.


Rachel is really struggling with everything life has thrown at her her husband having left her for a younger woman, we watch her growing increasingly frustrated in her attempts to get her three children where they need to be on time, let down by her au pair and her kitchen equipment, and now she is returning to work as a care assistant.
While her private life has its own challenges, at Clifton Avenue she is allocated as the key worker to Philip, a man mountain unused to human interaction and without any understanding of how to look after himself, who has recently lost his mother and come into the home.
Add to that mix the horrendous Denise who manages the home, and her deputy Rob who is firmly in Rachels corner as she wrestles with her new responsibilities, and an excellent story unfolds.


All the characters are strongly drawn Rachels motherinlaw who supports the family, the dreadful au pair, her husbands new partner, the PTA rep who plagues her life.
The children are real with all their daytoday problems, but with the warmest of hearts, and some of the scenes in which they play a part will stick with me for a long time.
Philip is a real tourdeforce the authors experience of the world of social care is evident, and his frustration when coming to terms with new experiences absolutely breaks your heart.
And we see Rachel develop wholly believably from a woman angry with the world into one who realises what really matters.


The writing is wonderful, all the more so when you remember its a debut novel, moving with ease between humour, tenderness and sadness.
This book tackles so many issues, it might worry some that its going to be a bit “worthy”, but dismiss that thought immediately.
Written with the

wry sense of humour that you see in the best of chick lit, but dealing with difficult subjects along the way, this is a book for everyone to enjoy.
I certainly did Kate Anthony is an author to watch,

My thanks to netgalley and the publishers for my advance reading ecopy,
Beautiful Day by Kate Anthony

Kate Anthony's debut novel tells the story of Rachel Bidewell and successfully manages to provide a wry look at the challenges faced by a woman who for the first time in her midforties finds herself apart from the only man she has ever loved, coping with three children and a new job whilst also being unexpectedly insightful and moving.
Rachel is rife with bitterness and needs something or someone to help her keep her head above water, Financial constraints after the split force her to take on a role as a Residential Care Assistant working with adults with learning difficulties and she is assigned to the role of key worker for a new patient, Philip, himself floundering after his mothers death.
It is unclear how both of these can for any sort of meaningful relationship, let alone play a significant role in helping the other to survive and learn to grow as individuals.
Yet, totally unexpectedly, they manage to and this is the beauty of the novel,

This book was hugely enjoyable and very easy to read, The author manages to move between the home and workplace situations with a remarkable fluidity, whist describing both realistically and successfully managing to combine this aspect with fully developing the characters involved.
It was not too far into the story before I found myself willing Rachel on and caring how things were going to turn out! It was a real page turner of a book and the ups and downs of the characters were surprisingly involving! For a debut fiction author this is a remarkable achievement.
Having worked in a similar social services area I can testify to the difficulties faced by Rachel as she gets to grips with her new role and finds herself battling obstructive colleagues and agency staff with not such a self sacrificing motive for working in such an environment.


Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the book for me were the observations surrounding divorce, both practical and the emotional, the impact on the children who find themselves in the middle and what it forces a person to learn about themselves and the unexpected strength that can emerge.
Ultimately this is an uplifting tale which leaves you with a warm glow and keen to read more of Kate Anthony.


I read and reviewed this book on behalf of sitelinkwww, lovereading. co. uk. Whilst reading this book I kept asking myself: why is a book that spends so much time recounting daily domestic disasters so riveting After all, I am an old man and this is a book obviously intended for a readership of thirtysomething women.
The answer is in the sheer quality of the writing, And the fact that domestic crises, especially those that arise when a couple with a young family become estranged, are only a part of it.
There are also problems in the principle protagonist's work place,
All of these situations are described with sensitivity and humour, Ms Anthony worked in residential social care before commencing a long career in television production, working on drama series like 'Where The Heart Is' which featured people working out of a community health centre in a North of England town.
She haschildren of her own, All of which gives her the perfect background from which to produce a novel dealing with residential social care and marriage breakdown.

But relevant experience alone is never enough from which to shape a novel that grabs you in the gut and forces you to keep reading.
To succeed, a novel needs believable characters with real depth, And that is what makes this, in my humble opinion, a great novel, one to which many people of all ages and backgrounds will be able to relate.

Okay, so the setting is decidedly middleclass suburban London, Many people in Rachel's situation will not have the luxury of an au pair or an exhusband able to afford two mortgages at London prices, let alone both.
But the problem of forming relationships with fellow staff as a new employee, especially where a high proportion of the staff are agency workers who appear for a few shifts then disappear to be replaced but another stranger, will be real enough to many.
So will the manager who is much more concerned about appearing to have a well run operation than she is about the well being of her charges.

The feelings of betrayal and distrust that accompany the break up of a marriage that you had believed to be solid the disputes over who has access to the children and when, and the impact on those children of being shuttled back and forth when one of the parents overcompensates for his feelings of guilt by indulging their every whim and fancy these things are the same whatever the state of your finances.
And they are, too, the things that Ms Anthony has captured so well, Her portrayal of Rachel, and the problems she has to deal with, made me reexamine my own mother's behaviour when she embarked on life with a new man in her late thirties and, I now realise, discovered that it was not as easy a thing to do as she probably imagined.
.