I recently received a review copy of the soon to be released The Handbag and Wellies Yoga Club  by Lucy Edge, a follow up to Yoga School Dropout,  which I can attest is not a required reading to enjoy this book.

The book starts out slowly with an abundance of information and back story about characters I assume the reader would have already met in the previous book.  The first chapter is weighty because of this and can be a bit confusing for a reader trying to keep track of auxiliary characters whose back stories are fleshed out a great amount to only later fade completely into the background of the story.

Past the rough start the rest of the book flows better, and other supporting characters are introduced without as much detail, their characters slowly unfolding as the story progresses. Much of the book is full of colorful descriptions of the countryside and towns which helps to add a down to earth feel and provides a nice contrast and departure from the mentions of high end fashion and the celebrity name dropping.

This novel fills the need of the average mat toting, book lover for the summer – a beach novel.  Books on methodology, asana and philosophy can start to weigh on a reader and this book provides a nice departure from text book theory into real life practice.  The main character’s plight, in essence, embodies the individual’s struggle to find balance in life.

A bonus of this novel is its candid discussion of women’s fertility issues, the media’s portrayal of older mothers and the use of alternative therapies. The author has obvious knowledge of yoga and uses this to sprinkle Sanskrit terms throughout the story and in the cute chapter titles.

It is hard to believe that the story of this novel takes place in a year’s span. I felt during my reading that surely several years must have passed, but that may just be because of the fast paced nature of the characters. Even in a small country town the yoga characters are ambitious go getters who seem to live a fairy tale existence. All of the yoga characters “The Cappuccino Gurus” and “Bad Ladies”, whether in London or Beccles, are extremely colorful and larger than life. Most yoga practitioners do not have similar lifestyles to this cast of characters; however, that made this book even more interesting to me.  I loved seeing how others mold yoga to fit into their lives. This story brings the practice off of the mat, out of the studio and into the grit of the real world – even if it isn’t the average daily life.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys yoga, likes a fast read and wants a great pick up book that creates a new genre “Yoga Romance Novel”.

I have received a few tweets about where people can buy this novel state side with many people commenting it is only available in the UK.  Well it isn’t due out until August 9th, but you can win my copy if you are in the US.

Here’s how:

1. Follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/skyyogastudio

post a comment that you followed me, that is how I will announce the winner

2. Post a link on Twitter to this contest and mention the contest.

3. I will choose a winner at random on Sunday July 19th, winner must send me a US Postal Address and I will send you the copy – as easy as that!

July 12th, 2009 | Tags: books, Lucy Edge, Review | Category: Daily Post, Giveaway, Review, books | Subscribe to comments | Comments are currently closed | Trackback URL