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Sculpture, sexual attraction and severe indecision collide in this colourful and charming fifth novel from the bestselling author of Cat and Chloe. Fen McCabe, 28, has only ever loved one man - the 19th century sculptor Julius Fetherstone. Working as an archivist for Trust Art, she hopes to uncover a clue to the whereabouts of a vast marble Fetherstone sculpture which has been missing for decades. Matt Holden, thirty, editor of Trust Art's magazine, is intrigued by Fen. James Caulfield, fifty, a gardener in Derbyshire, is forever fending off his bank manager, so he decides to sell his two small Fetherstones. When Fen is sent to assess the works, James Caulfield assesses Fen. So begins Fen's romantic exploration of two very different men.
370 pages, Paperback
First published May 30, 2001
9 people are currently reading
492 people want to read
About the author
Freya North
42 books684 followersFreya North is the author of many bestselling novels which have been translated into numerous languages. She was born in London but lives in rural Hertfordshire, where she writes from a stable in her back garden. A passionate reader since childhood, Freya was originally inspired by Mary Wesley, Rose Tremain and Barbara Trapido: fiction with strong and original characters. To hear about events, competitions and what she’s writing, join her on Facebook, Twitter and her website.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
June 24, 2009
Like a cuppa with cinnamon and honey on a cold cold cold day.
July 31, 2016
“How much do you know about art history?” This was not the response I was expecting when I complained to my wife that Freya North’s novel “Cat”, set in the world of the Tour de France, was annoying me by mixing fact and fiction unreliably and spoiling the reading experience for me. Fortunately, it would soon become clear that my wife was neither trying to avoid talking about the book nor being oblique.
“Fen” is the name Fenella McCabe, the middle of the three McCabe sisters, usually goes by. In “Cat”, she is referred to as having to choose between two men and we get to find out a lot more about those men and Fen herself here. The link my wife was getting at is that Fen has just taken a job as an archivist for Trust Art, a trust that provides funds to help keep works of art from British artists in the UK when they might otherwise be sold to foreign buyers and investors and part of the country’s art history would be lost. This starts to make sense of my wife’s question – Fen has training as an art historian.
Until now, the only man in Fen’s life has been Julius Fetherstone, a sculptor who supposedly trained under Rodin and who sculpted a number of sexually charged works of art, both paintings and sculptures, but whose most famous work, the marble sculpture “Abandon” has been lost for many years and of which only bronze impressions remain. It is this man who links her to the others, as her new job helps her meet Matt, the young editor of the trust’s in-house magazine, who happens to be related to the trust’s founder, who himself was a big fan of Fetherstone’s work. Fen also meets James, a much older man living near her Uncle in Derbyshire, who desperately needs to sell a couple of Fetherstone works to fix a leaking roof. The two men are quite different, in age, location, wealth and lifestyle, but Fen falls for both and the story revolves around her relationship with both men as well as with the art.
Compared to “Cat”, I enjoyed “Fen” rather a lot more, as my lack of advance knowledge on the subject matter used as the basis of the story meant this wasn’t a hindrance, as my wife suspected, although that wasn’t the entire reason I preferred it. Strangely, considering the artistic nature of the subject matter, the language wasn’t nearly as overly flowery, possibly because the art itself was more sensual than visual and so was described more in terms of how it made Fen feel than how it looked.
The literary device of having Fen talk to herself as Cat did was again present, but equally didn’t seem to be over used to the point of becoming all pervasive as it did before. That said, there were a few moments where the voice of the narrator and/or author did quite forcefully break through the fourth wall and these moments provide to be highly distracting from the story itself and a massive interruption to the flow of the novel. As was the constant repetition of what happened to the McCabe sisters’ mother, which was also true in “Cat”. I assume it was quite important to the sisters that their mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, but as a reader, I don’t feel I’ve needed reminding of that fact more than twenty times over two novels whenever the subject of their mother came up.
For all the ways where “Fen” was better written than “Cat”, or at least less badly written, the ending really annoyed me. In “Cat”, there was a deadline and an obvious end point with the Tour de France only lasting three weeks, which gave that book some focus and a little urgency. This was lacking in “Fen”, as it had no obvious timescale of “Fen” and so it seemed as if the story was meandering along quite happily until North realised she was rapidly approaching either a submission deadline or a word count limit and then had to rush around trying to tie things together in a bit of a last minute rush. This meant the ending of the book had some very unbalanced pacing, as well as some highly tenuous links between people that had never even been hinted at previously and some very unsatisfying revelations and conclusions right at the end that there wasn’t time to have explained either before or afterwards.
This was a desperate shame and really took away from the book for me, because up until the later stages, “Fen” was a far better book than “Cat” in a number of ways. The smaller cast of characters and the less frenetic pace of events made the pace of the novel and the events described a lot more relaxed and provided a gentler reading experience, as well as providing more opportunity to get to know the main players in the story a lot better and the time to build stronger attachments to them than before. Even if this didn’t happen in the reader, Fen herself had a much greater emotional attachment to her men than her sister did, which made the sexual scenes slower and gentler and far less rushed and vulgar, in both language and style. Admittedly, the vocabulary used to describe the sex was still quite limited and occasionally repetitive, and there wasn’t an awful lot of variation between the scenes in the novel, but it wasn’t nearly as harsh and it was different compared to the other book of North’s I’ve read. Apparently, North had been told by her editors to tone down the sex scenes for this book and not only can you see an obvious difference, but I personally felt the book was better for it.
For all “Fen” is a better book than “Cat”, it is still lacking in a number of ways, most notably the over used literary devices, which make it seem as if North has found a new trick and is determined to show off how well she has learned it until everyone is bored of it. Perhaps the main question this book left me with is that North’s story-telling, if not all of her writing, showed a fair improvement from her previous book and it left me wondering whether there would be a similar improvement between this novel and the next, which could potentially mean the next novel was a halfway decent one if that was indeed the result.
“Fen” is the name Fenella McCabe, the middle of the three McCabe sisters, usually goes by. In “Cat”, she is referred to as having to choose between two men and we get to find out a lot more about those men and Fen herself here. The link my wife was getting at is that Fen has just taken a job as an archivist for Trust Art, a trust that provides funds to help keep works of art from British artists in the UK when they might otherwise be sold to foreign buyers and investors and part of the country’s art history would be lost. This starts to make sense of my wife’s question – Fen has training as an art historian.
Until now, the only man in Fen’s life has been Julius Fetherstone, a sculptor who supposedly trained under Rodin and who sculpted a number of sexually charged works of art, both paintings and sculptures, but whose most famous work, the marble sculpture “Abandon” has been lost for many years and of which only bronze impressions remain. It is this man who links her to the others, as her new job helps her meet Matt, the young editor of the trust’s in-house magazine, who happens to be related to the trust’s founder, who himself was a big fan of Fetherstone’s work. Fen also meets James, a much older man living near her Uncle in Derbyshire, who desperately needs to sell a couple of Fetherstone works to fix a leaking roof. The two men are quite different, in age, location, wealth and lifestyle, but Fen falls for both and the story revolves around her relationship with both men as well as with the art.
Compared to “Cat”, I enjoyed “Fen” rather a lot more, as my lack of advance knowledge on the subject matter used as the basis of the story meant this wasn’t a hindrance, as my wife suspected, although that wasn’t the entire reason I preferred it. Strangely, considering the artistic nature of the subject matter, the language wasn’t nearly as overly flowery, possibly because the art itself was more sensual than visual and so was described more in terms of how it made Fen feel than how it looked.
The literary device of having Fen talk to herself as Cat did was again present, but equally didn’t seem to be over used to the point of becoming all pervasive as it did before. That said, there were a few moments where the voice of the narrator and/or author did quite forcefully break through the fourth wall and these moments provide to be highly distracting from the story itself and a massive interruption to the flow of the novel. As was the constant repetition of what happened to the McCabe sisters’ mother, which was also true in “Cat”. I assume it was quite important to the sisters that their mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, but as a reader, I don’t feel I’ve needed reminding of that fact more than twenty times over two novels whenever the subject of their mother came up.
For all the ways where “Fen” was better written than “Cat”, or at least less badly written, the ending really annoyed me. In “Cat”, there was a deadline and an obvious end point with the Tour de France only lasting three weeks, which gave that book some focus and a little urgency. This was lacking in “Fen”, as it had no obvious timescale of “Fen” and so it seemed as if the story was meandering along quite happily until North realised she was rapidly approaching either a submission deadline or a word count limit and then had to rush around trying to tie things together in a bit of a last minute rush. This meant the ending of the book had some very unbalanced pacing, as well as some highly tenuous links between people that had never even been hinted at previously and some very unsatisfying revelations and conclusions right at the end that there wasn’t time to have explained either before or afterwards.
This was a desperate shame and really took away from the book for me, because up until the later stages, “Fen” was a far better book than “Cat” in a number of ways. The smaller cast of characters and the less frenetic pace of events made the pace of the novel and the events described a lot more relaxed and provided a gentler reading experience, as well as providing more opportunity to get to know the main players in the story a lot better and the time to build stronger attachments to them than before. Even if this didn’t happen in the reader, Fen herself had a much greater emotional attachment to her men than her sister did, which made the sexual scenes slower and gentler and far less rushed and vulgar, in both language and style. Admittedly, the vocabulary used to describe the sex was still quite limited and occasionally repetitive, and there wasn’t an awful lot of variation between the scenes in the novel, but it wasn’t nearly as harsh and it was different compared to the other book of North’s I’ve read. Apparently, North had been told by her editors to tone down the sex scenes for this book and not only can you see an obvious difference, but I personally felt the book was better for it.
For all “Fen” is a better book than “Cat”, it is still lacking in a number of ways, most notably the over used literary devices, which make it seem as if North has found a new trick and is determined to show off how well she has learned it until everyone is bored of it. Perhaps the main question this book left me with is that North’s story-telling, if not all of her writing, showed a fair improvement from her previous book and it left me wondering whether there would be a similar improvement between this novel and the next, which could potentially mean the next novel was a halfway decent one if that was indeed the result.
July 15, 2021
Sweet and funny with great characters but definitely one of those books that goes on for much longer than it needs to. Too much to-ing and fro-ing and I felt a bit bored by the time I was half way through.
June 6, 2024
Was quite good, not being a prude but too much description of all the characters sex lives over and over again. The book did lose its way half way through, but at least regained itself towards the end.
November 9, 2025
Heard about this one on Daisy Buchanan‘s You’re Booked podcast.
It’s an entertaining read with a bit of London, a bit of English countryside. It’s got that quintessential author studied at the Jilly Cooper school of writing feel to it of noughties British books. Raunchy and not precious or sentimental about sex and still tethered to reality. And it has an actual plot and setting featuring the Tate Modern and a young up & coming art historian working at an art trust. Satisfying & escapist.
It’s an entertaining read with a bit of London, a bit of English countryside. It’s got that quintessential author studied at the Jilly Cooper school of writing feel to it of noughties British books. Raunchy and not precious or sentimental about sex and still tethered to reality. And it has an actual plot and setting featuring the Tate Modern and a young up & coming art historian working at an art trust. Satisfying & escapist.
May 2, 2013
I really am not a fan of chick-lit, but when my sister wanted to get rid of a lot of books, I couldn't let them leave the house without being read! I was pleasently surprised by how much I liked it.
Fen McCabe is an art historian and has only ever loved one man in her life - a long dead sculpter. When she moves to London to help archive at the Tate, she hopes to find out more about him. Instead, she meets handsome, funny Matthew, just on the rebound from his latest girlfriend. And just when things start to get interesting, she meets James, older, just as funny and the owner of three magnificent Featherstione pieces. As she tries to decide who she likes the most, she suddenly realises that maybe it won't be up to her to make the decision.
My biggest criticism of chick-lit is that the female leads are just so wet! Fen was a bit, but the story was so well written and had a great subplot with the sculpture stuff, that I barely noticed. Amusing and a great read if you don't want to think too much about what is happening.
Fen McCabe is an art historian and has only ever loved one man in her life - a long dead sculpter. When she moves to London to help archive at the Tate, she hopes to find out more about him. Instead, she meets handsome, funny Matthew, just on the rebound from his latest girlfriend. And just when things start to get interesting, she meets James, older, just as funny and the owner of three magnificent Featherstione pieces. As she tries to decide who she likes the most, she suddenly realises that maybe it won't be up to her to make the decision.
My biggest criticism of chick-lit is that the female leads are just so wet! Fen was a bit, but the story was so well written and had a great subplot with the sculpture stuff, that I barely noticed. Amusing and a great read if you don't want to think too much about what is happening.
Read
December 7, 2010Entertainingly frivolous. Freya North's characters are interchangable up to a point. After that point they're good but the interchangable bit could use some added variety. Maybe it's just because these aren't my usual style of book.
Sometimes I read books and think: perhaps I won't admit to this one on my website. I wonder if I could just put my thoughts onto the books page and bypass the weblog page. But there's a dishonesty in that. It'd be like sneaking the News of the World inside the Times. Not that there is anything deeply intellectual about any of the books I read (or the Times) but sometimes pure fun is what you need. And this is fun.
November 21, 2013
Fen is het vervolg van Cat, het eerste deel uit de vierdelige serie over drie zussen. Cat vond ik wat minder, maar Fen is gelukkig een stuk leuker. In het begin moest ik er even inkomen, maar daarna is het een leuk en hartverwarmend boek. Het boek gaat over Fen die verliefd wordt op twee mannen. Ze heeft moeite om tussen hen te kiezen. Verder draait dit boek om het werk van een overleden kunstenaar, Julius Featherstone. In Cat werd er veel uitgeweid over de Tour de France, een favoriet onderwerp van Freya North. Gelukkig wordt er in Fen niet zoveel uitgeweid. Dat maakt dit boek een stuk leesbaarder. Ik ben blij dat ik toch doorgezet heb met deze serie en hoop dat deel drie (Pip) net zo leuk is. Hij ligt al klaar om gelezen te worden.
April 3, 2022
Re-reading this I didn't enjoy it a much as I remembered. Freya North is the only chick-lit author I'll go within a mile of - and I rate her all the more highly for that as I wish I *did* enjoy more light-hearted, lightweight romance stuff. Yet Fen was one of her least satisfying - mostly because the plot and characters feel unresolved, like she didn't work them through enough. The whole threesome subplot is also just creepy! Not just because I'm a boring old prude but because none of the characters were credible or developed enough to make it work. Still, she gets 3 stars for writing sweet stories with a heart and a brain - not nearly enough of those for my liking!
January 27, 2016
At the start of this book there was use of a word I hate & I thought that pretty much set my feelings towards the book, (please don't get me wrong I'm not a prude but I don't like those sort of words in books unless it's crime fiction) however explicit language aside, I did really enjoy this book, art is not something I am interested in but as a sub plot for this book it was really enjoyable, Fen makes some questionable decisions but this is what kept me hooked to this book, I just wanted to know what happened next. I really loved the family dynamic of Fens family & they were all likeable. I really enjoyed this book & want to pick up the others in the series. Chick Lit at its best.
May 30, 2015
het is het 3de boek dat ik van deze schrijfster lees, maar helaas ook het slechtste boek.
Ik heb met momenten mezelf moeten dwingen om verder te lezen. Ik heb dan ook heel lang gedacht dat ik dit boek maar 2 sterren zou geven. Maar dan kom je aan de laatste 50-70 blz en pas toen had het boek me beet en wou ik blijven doorlezen. Dat is dan ook de reden dat het toch nog 3 sterren krijgt.
verwarrend boek, tijdsindeling lijkt soms niet te kloppen, de mijmeringen van een personage,.. sorry is echt niet mijn ding
Ik heb met momenten mezelf moeten dwingen om verder te lezen. Ik heb dan ook heel lang gedacht dat ik dit boek maar 2 sterren zou geven. Maar dan kom je aan de laatste 50-70 blz en pas toen had het boek me beet en wou ik blijven doorlezen. Dat is dan ook de reden dat het toch nog 3 sterren krijgt.
verwarrend boek, tijdsindeling lijkt soms niet te kloppen, de mijmeringen van een personage,.. sorry is echt niet mijn ding
May 6, 2012
Very British chick lit/romance - I read a lot of British authors and this one (which I see was actually published in the UK, so not sold in the US - wonder how it came to the library book shop?) still had a ton of unfamiliar vocabulary. And a lot more casual sex not involving the central romance than is usual in the genre. I liked it a lot, but then got bored by the end because I just didn't care about the characters that much. Still, I'm interested in checking out other books by North.
January 6, 2008
I got this book free from a magazine when I was around 14 or 15 but only read it when I was 16. I really enjoyed this book, as it takes you on a journey with the main character and is really insightful in to a real relationships. After reading this one I found I wanted to get more books by the same author.
March 11, 2008
I did enjoy this book eventually - it took me a while to get into. I felt that the start of the book was too long winded - I like to be pulled into a book in the first chapter or so. Overall though the plot was good and the rest of the book was well written. Will probably check out the books about the other sisters.
July 29, 2011
I was pretty sure I'd read this before but thought there must be a reason why I'd kept it rather than consign to the charity shop. There wasn't. Unless, at the time, I had a predilection for non-stop gratuitous innuendo or cod art history. I must've got awfully old and boring in the interim......
August 5, 2011
I really liked Fen. North is a good writer and her characters come across as real people. I loved the three sisters, their uncle and their way of connecting and being. There's real affection in the writing for the characters and that comes across well. I loved Fen's inability to choose between her two lovers, the way she was dedicated to her calling and the final result with the stature.
June 11, 2015
It started off well and I found it really entertaining and easy to read, but I felt the book dragged on a bit longer than it ought to and the ending was just neither here nor there. I expected a lot more to happen and when it didn't happen and nothing else either - it kind of disappointed. However it was a fun read and wasn't a chore in any way!
July 23, 2011
All in all an okay read. Didn't expect that the book would be that sexual explicit at times. The downside for me was that I found the plot quite surreal. And it annoyed me that the narrator is adressing the reader sometimes, not neccessary!
January 12, 2013
I say that I 'read' this book but actually I got to the last chapter and just... couldn't... keep... reading. Why did I inflict this contrived drivel upon myself? Get thee behind me Satan! Will I never learn!?
November 15, 2008
I got this free with a magazine & was the first I had read by this author. I didn't know who Fen would end up with & was left guessing all the way through.
April 17, 2010
This was ok...I didn't like the language and it made it quite hard to get into this book, but the story was nice and it was a light read.
6/10
6/10
Read
July 27, 2011nice easy beach read
June 24, 2012
A good read generally. Some nice scenes in the countryside and art world and a rounded ending.
February 8, 2013
Love Fen & Matt!!!!!! Just adorable!
April 14, 2013
it was a good read..
May 12, 2013
A delightful story, light-hearted and most enjoyable. All characters are amusing in their own way.
Looking forward to my next Freya North book.
Looking forward to my next Freya North book.
June 1, 2013
Abysmal but I finished it so I could donate to the library tomorrow.
August 5, 2013
Another great summer read!!
August 7, 2013
Fen is my favourite of the three McCabe girls, and I especially liked the way this book dealt with the dilemma of loving two men at once ... shame the resolution ended up being so conventional.
April 23, 2014
My favourite Freya North book the first one I read!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews