Anna Maynard‘s debut novel, Dancing with Bees, might just be the perfect read to get you through the colder months of the year. Promising to delight fans of Emily Henry and Marian Keyes, this brightly coloured novel is more than a rom com – it’s a delight.
Sunny Moritz is thirty-three and a little bit aimless. She has a number of unfulfilling jobs, secretly judges a lot of her friends (especially Mum of three, Millie, though to be fair, she did name her kids Blossom, Forest and Wattle) and she’s the kind of cynic who describes street libraries as ‘recycling bins with windows.’
When one of these little free libraries presents up a surprising offering, Sunny decides that what she needs is a hobby, and more specifically, that this hobby should be beekeeping. In a serendipitous turn of events, she also discovers that there is someone local who can help her make a start, a person whom she wrongly assumes is a little old man, not unlike some sort of life-sized garden gnome, named Al.
But when Al, real name Alfonzo, turns out to be a hunky climate scientist who sets up beehives in his spare time, Sunny finds herself at risk of being seriously attracted to her bee-man in more ways than one, which complicates things with her regular booty-call, Adam Harrison. She thought that she only needed a man in her life to tend to her physical needs, but what if Sunny was wrong?
It’s hard to condense all of the rich plot-lines in this charming book down to a few paragraphs, as for a shorter novel (298 pages) it manages to pack in a lot of the complexity of being a modern woman. What Marian Keyes tends to take 600 pages to do, Maynard does in less than half that, and throws in a subtle Tasmanian setting that is rich with Australian music, hippie-environmentalist culture and farmers markets.
Sunny is a loveable character, but not always a likeable one, who will make the reader who doesn’t want to be ashamed of their grumpier, more judgemental aspects whoop with joy. From her dislike of street libraries to her aversion to small children, Sunny’s personality seems anything but what her name would imply – and yet, at her core, she is someone who cares, and someone who has fallen into the belief that she’s not worthy of love. As she peels back the layers on her own life, searching for something to fill the void – whether that be sex, or bees, or nice underwear – and the reader gets to know the real Sunny, they are guaranteed to fall in love.
For all of the moments of dark humour, this novel also has a sad side too, and one that might sucker punch some readers, as Sunny reconnects with her austere German parents who have never really seemed to understand her life. As parents and daughter let some of their walls come down, and become more curious about each other, there is a heartwarming – and heartbreaking – lesson to be learned.
If you loved Rachael Johns’ The Other Bridget, then make sure to check out this Australian rom-com too. There were perhaps one too many Hilltop Hoods references (we get it, they’re a great band), and at times Sunny’s judgement of best friend Millie might feel a bit too mean if you’re more of a Millie yourself, but overall, this is a funny, sexy, moving and uplifting book about following your heart, allowing yourself to be loved and most of all, saving the bees.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Anna Maynard’s Dancing with Bees is available now through Echo Books. Grab yourself a copy from your local bookstore HERE.
Cover image from publisher’s website.
