Freya North Wins Romantic Novel Of The Year Award with festy romp

Freya North's Pillow Talk (HarperCollins) has won the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008. The award was given by the Romantic Novelists' Association at a lunch today (Monday) in London.
Pillow Talk was chosen from a shortlist of six books as the winner of the 2008 award by a judging panel which comprised comedienne Helen Lederer, Good Housekeeping books editor Kerry Fowler, and Chris Rushby, buying director of Bertrams.

The book is about sleepwalking jeweller Petra Flint, and insomniac musician Arlo Savidge, whose teenage love affair is reawakened by a chance encounter. Lederer said: "These two people really are destined to meet again, and I know that they will spend the rest of their lives together, truly happily. I felt I had been allowed to get to know and care about this couple, with all their vulnerabilities, which made the ending so much more heartening and satisfying."

North's first novel Sally was published in 1996. She has since written seven subsequent novels: Chloe, Polly, Cat, Fen, Pip, Love Rules and Home Truths.

And here is The Guardian's take on the winner.