Jenny Bayliss

Bayliss writes English small-town romance with an unusual amount of ordinary damage in it. The Twelve Dates of Christmas puts a village costume designer through a dating agency and twelve set-ups between the start of December and the day itself. A Season for Second Chances sends a woman out of a long marriage to caretake a shuttered guesthouse on the coast for a winter, which is less a holiday story than a book about starting again at the wrong age. The comedy is in the neighbours, and the neighbours are never quite charming.