Kelly Harte, Spitting Feathers

Spitting Feathers

Kelly Harte

Red Dress, Mar 2004, $12.95, 304 pp.

ISBN: 0373250517

Once she completed photography class, Tao Tandy headed to London expecting to take the big city by storm. A few months later, she remains unemployed crashing at the flat of her friend Sophie. However, things begin to look up when Sophie gets Tao a job bird sitting a Congo African Sir Galahad whose septuagenarian owner Adrienne Audesley is going to Portugal for two months. Tao will live in exclusive Hampstead.

Her luck grows when she also scores a photography job involving American TV chef Taylor Wiseman, whom she begins seeing. However, she finds herself attracted to Adrienne's gardener, Chris who one moment is her best pal and the next her most odious enemy even as she bonds with Sirg.

SPITTING FEATHERS is an enjoyable London chic lit tale that is fun to follow due to the interactions between Tao and the support cast including Sirg, who at times seems like the heroine's significant other (birds of a feather?). Tao's relationships with her mother is filled with frustration, with her friend's two roommates irritation, with Taylor romantic boredom, with Sirg's loving and finally with Chris spitting feathers as she wants him but he disturbs her. This is a fine tale that readers will enjoy.

Harriet Klausner