A perfect beach book

Deliciously wickedly and infectiously naughty - those are the only words to describe Wendy Holden's fifth novel, Azur Like It, successor to her No 1 bestseller Fame Fatale.

It's the perfect book to take to the beach, a mixture of telling insight, barbed wit, and great soap opera - with a dash of Footballers' Wives for good measure.

This is a coming of age story about Kate, a journalist on the Slackmucklethwaite Mercury whose life appears to be going nowhere until her paper is taken over by tycoon Peter Hardstone, who proceeds to tear it to shreds in his desire for profit.

But there is a sliver of a silver lining for the heroine, in the shape of Hardstone's son Nat, who takes a fancy to Kate, as she does to him. At Nat's suggestion, she pays for a trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where he turns out to be a snake in the grass, but all is not lost for her as she falls under the spell of the eccentric inhabitants of the fictional Provencal town of Ste Jeanne, and discovers exactly what she wants from life. I defy anyone to read it without a smile on their lips.