Hand Me Down by Michelle Holman

April Ritchie has a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Take the night she was born ...

Our bestselling female fiction novelist is back! Michelle Holman brings us her brilliant new novel Hand Me Down.

Praised by the critics for her refreshingly down-to-earth Kiwi humour with vivid local settings and gutsy female characters, Hand Me Down is no exception. When bad girl, April Ritchie, returns home after a nine-year absence, not too many of the townsfolk are glad to see her back.

April’s spoilt-brat behaviour had never won her many friends, and her fast exit from town the night of her seventeenth birthday left more questions than answers.

So it isn’t too surprising that people get a kick out of seeing Daddy’s little princess reduced to earning her keep as a kiss-o-gram girl in a red rubber dress.

It seems everyone has a bone to pick with April, especially Tarn Elliott, whose reputation she unfairly ruined.

Tarn has a score to settle and April has secrets she doesn’t want to share — so will the locals and Tarn see beyond the petite wee blonde’s tough exterior to the real April underneath?

About writing Hand Me Down
For a long time Michelle Holman wanted to set a book in the South Island, which is why Hand Me Down is set on a cherry orchard in the fictitious town of Pisa in Central Otago. To research the book, Michelle spent time on a cherry orchard in Cromwell, which was invaluable. She also received wonderful help from a retired member and a serving member of the NZ Army to help her develop the character of Tarn Elliott.

Michelle says, ‘I loved writing Hand Me Down, and I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out. It’s the kind of book I want to read — a romance between two flawed people that’s funny, sometimes sad, and set in a beautiful part of our country.’

Michelle always has a song or songs that she listens to when she’s writing each book. She is a big fan of Matchbox Twenty, and kept playing their song ‘Hand Me Down’ when she was writing this book. She says, ‘It is such a romantic, poignant, sexy ballad. The lyrics are fabulous — they’re exactly what Tarn would say to April.’

Hand Me Down is Michelle’s Holman’s fifth novel. Her debut novel, Bonkers, went straight to the bestsellers list, and her latest novel Barefoot — praised as stylish and funny, with distinctive quirky humour — followed suit and spent 20 weeks on the bestseller list.

Release Date:  NOVEMBER 2010 | RRP: $24.99 | HARPERCOLLINS Publishers