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The Summer It Rained Champions

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About this listen

A scorching summer, a chaotic family, and an English village teeming with outrageous characters.

Eight-year-old Sharon Rowling has a lot to contend with. Her stunning mum, Maria, literally stops traffic with her beauty, much to the dismay of her dodgy dad, Ricky, who is under height and underemployed. Then there's her three excruciating siblings plus her unhinged Shetland pony, all of whom remain stubbornly oblivious to the fact that Sharon's deepest fear might soon become a reality.

Sharon's uproarious tale begins during the blazing British summer of 1976, when even a handsome world boxing champ finds himself on the wrong end of her clueless dad's fists. However, it soon becomes clear that Sharon's embarrassing family are not the only bizarre inhabitants of the English village of Widdleton, and the stifling weather is getting the better of all of them...

Filled with humour and seventies nostalgia, this book is perfect for those who enjoy amusing, heartfelt tales about family, community, and identity. The village of Widdleton warmly invites you to join Sharon and her eccentric neighbours as they navigate their sweltering summer of self-acceptance.

©2023 Sarah Cordwell (P)2025 Sarah Cordwell Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Village
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What a refreshingly different listen this is. It is well written and the characters are well developed and loveable. Written from 6 year old Sharon's perspective it relives that long hot summer of 1976. Quirky characters abound and the story to me was a laugh a minute mostly. Maria Johnson's narration was spot on and made a very good book brilliant.
I was kindly given a copy of the book and leave this honest review.

Bally Brilliant.

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Cordwell Scott deserves acclaim for encapsulating ordinary life of Britain in the sweltering summer of 1976, seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old youngest member of a family of six. With great humour, the author accurately describes a bygone era where diminutive dads get involved in scraps while children, before the gaming age, get up to their own innocent mischief, proudly protected by their glamorous but insecure mother. Cordwell Scott also addresses a period of social change in the country. While new towns were settling in elsewhere, the expanding Reading in her area saw urban meet rural Berkshire particularly through shared equine interests here and the aspiring social climbing estate agent unsuccessfully impresses her new peers. But we also see the multicultural integration where narrator Sharon befriends an Asian family and her mother Maria comments that they "do things like us". The Summer It Rained Champions is a pleasant and amusing read that cuts below the surface of the UK society 50 years ago and, yes, that summer was very hot. Well done, Cordwell Scott, and her book would translate very well to the silver screen.

Sensational Seventies' story

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