I love the books of Miss Read and James Herriot and I thought that the Bilbury books would be equally charming; I was wrong. The characters are two-dimensional and many of the incidents in the story are unpleasant, distasteful. This book has no charm at all. I stuck with it until one of the characters said something blasphemous and then I gave up on it. I will not read/listen to any more books by this author.