Please note that this title is currently out of stock but is available for pre-order. While we don’t have an exact publishing date yet, it is expected to be available within approximately 4 to 6 weeks.
£12.99
When Alex receives a phone call from England telling her that her mother has died, she makes a decision that will change everything. Leaving behind a controlling marriage in Australia, she flies home — not knowing that this journey will reshape the rest of her life.
In Nottinghamshire, grief opens the door to unexpected friendship. Edith, sharp-tongued and loyal. Ruth, a single mother doing her best to survive. And little Lorna, four years old and full of joy. Together, they become the “3.5 Musketeers” — a chosen family bound by kindness, humour, and the courage to begin again.
As the years unfold, Alex navigates independence, love, loss, dementia care, and second chances. What begins as escape becomes a deeply human story of resilience, friendship, and the quiet triumphs that define a life well lived.
Warm, wise, and rich with lived authenticity, The Extraordinary Diary of an Ordinary Woman is perfect for readers who love character-driven novels, book club fiction, and stories that celebrate the strength of ordinary women.
For fans of Joanna Trollope, Sarah Winman, Elizabeth Strout, and Anne Tyler.
Dianne Preston is an 80-year-old debut novelist from Nottinghamshire’s East Midlands.
After surviving a forty-year controlling marriage, Dianne rebuilt her life, reunited with her childhood sweetheart, and later nursed him through illness until his death in 2022. She began writing in 2023, finding solace and purpose through storytelling — often accompanied by her rescue puppy.
The Extraordinary Diary of an Ordinary Woman draws on a lifetime of lived experience and a deep connection to Nottinghamshire’s Robin Hood country. Her writing explores resilience, love, loss, and the quiet strength of ordinary women living extraordinary lives.
Alex Smith –
I absolutely loved this book. Alex felt like someone I could know and I found myself thinking about her even when I wasn’t reading. A lovely story about friendship, loss and finding the courage to begin again.
Jean Eschovez –
Being in my seventies myself, so much of this rang true. Life doesn’t always turn out as we imagine when we are young. Warm, sad in places, but ultimately very hopeful.
Pauline J –
The friendship between the women was my favourite part. I loved the 3.5 Musketeers! They made me laugh and reminded me how important good friends become as we get older.
Clare shaw –
Thanks to Foreshore Book Club for the copy. I read this in three evenings and really didn’t want it to end. Alex is a wonderful character. She has been through so much but the book never feels miserable.
Mavis Collins –
A very human story. There were moments that brought back memories of my own life, particularly around caring for people we love and dealing with loss. Beautifully observed. What I liked most was that this is about ordinary lives. No superheroes, no unbelievable twists, just people coping with what life throws at them. And somehow that makes it all the more moving.
Joan Harris –
A book about women supporting women without being sentimental about it. There is sadness here but also humour, friendship and a great deal of hope. Our book group had plenty to talk about afterwards.
Jenny G –
I’m 68 and I recognised so much in these women. Perhaps that is why the book affected me as much as it did. We all have chapters of our lives that other people know nothing about.
Donna H –
Dianne Preston understands that starting again isn’t something reserved for the young. I found that message enormously uplifting. A gentle, thoughtful and very enjoyable novel.
Kath DR –
Thanks to Foreshore for the book club copy: There is something rather special about a novel written by a woman with a lifetime behind her. It has a wisdom and honesty that can’t easily be invented. I finished it feeling very glad I had read it.
Dawn Richardson –
I read The Extraordinary Diary of an Ordinary Woman as part of my book club and we received review copies from Foreshore Publishing. This turned out to be one of those books that created a much longer discussion than we expected. There is nothing showy about Alex or her life, and I think that is precisely why so many of us connected with her. She is simply a woman who reaches a point where she has to decide whether she is going to continue living the life she has been given or find the courage to make another one.
What stayed with me most was the friendship between Alex, Edith and Ruth and the lovely little “3.5 Musketeers”. Their friendship feels real because it isn’t perfect or sentimental. They laugh, disagree, support one another and simply turn up when they are needed. Several women in our group said it reminded them of friendships they have relied upon at difficult times in their own lives.
There is sadness in the novel, particularly as life moves on and the characters face illness, caring and loss, but I never found it depressing. Quite the opposite. I finished it feeling unexpectedly hopeful. It is a warm, compassionate book about the extraordinary things that happen inside supposedly ordinary lives.
Jean J Collets –
Our book club received review copies of this novel from Foreshore Publishing, and I read it as our book club selection. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the title, but by the end I understood it completely. Alex is “ordinary” only in the sense that she isn’t famous, wealthy or heroic in the conventional meaning of the word. Yet the life she lives, the things she survives and the love and friendship she finds make her story anything but ordinary.
I particularly appreciated that this is a novel about a woman beginning again when she is no longer young. So many books seem to suggest that the important decisions in a woman’s life are made by thirty or forty. This book understands that people continue changing, losing things, finding things and discovering themselves throughout their lives.
We had a very interesting discussion about Alex’s marriage and whether we would have had the courage to make the choices she makes. Opinions differed, which is exactly what you want from a book club book. What we agreed on was that Dianne Preston writes about women with enormous affection and understanding. A moving, wise and ultimately life-affirming read.
Karen Crowley –
I read this book as part of my book club, which received review copies from Foreshore Publishing. I am giving it four stars rather than five simply because there were places where I thought the story moved quite gently and I normally read faster-paced novels. Interestingly, by the end I realised that the gentleness was also part of its charm.
Syrrina Jane Parfit –
We received review copies of The Extraordinary Diary of an Ordinary Woman from Foreshore Publishing and I read mine for our book club. I should probably admit that I expected something rather sentimental from the description. It isn’t. It is emotional, certainly, but there is an honesty about the way it deals with marriage, friendship, ageing, illness and bereavement that prevents it becoming sugary.
What affected me personally was the idea that we never really know the whole story of another woman’s life. We see neighbours, friends, mothers and grandmothers and think of them as ordinary people, without knowing what they have survived or sacrificed. Alex’s life gradually unfolds in that way, and by the end the title felt almost ironic.
Our discussion afterwards became surprisingly personal. We talked about relationships, caring for parents and partners, starting again after loss and the friendships that have carried us through different periods of our lives. Any novel that can open up that kind of conversation has done something worthwhile.
There are sad passages, but there is also a great deal of humour and warmth. I closed the book feeling that ordinary lives deserve to be celebrated more often. A beautiful and very humane novel.
Laura Draper –
I read this as part of my book club after our group received review copies from Foreshore Publishing. At first I thought Alex’s story might be rather far removed from my own, but that feeling disappeared very quickly. You don’t need to have experienced the same things she has to recognise the emotions behind them: fear of change, loneliness, friendship, grief and that strange mixture of excitement and terror that comes with starting again.
The “3.5 Musketeers” were wonderful. For me, the heart of the novel isn’t romantic love at all, although love certainly matters. It is female friendship and the families we sometimes create for ourselves. I loved the idea that people can arrive unexpectedly in our lives and become every bit as important as the people we were born to.
Our book club ranged quite widely in age, and that made the discussion particularly interesting because different women responded to different periods of Alex’s life. The older members recognised experiences that some of the younger members hadn’t yet encountered, while the younger readers saw Alex’s decision to reclaim her independence differently. That made it an excellent group read.
Warm, funny, sad and full of compassion. The heart of the novel isn’t romantic love at all, although love certainly matters. It is female friendship and the families we sometimes create for ourselves. I loved the idea that people can arrive unexpectedly in our lives and become every bit as important as the people we were born to. I would happily recommend it.
Marie Coachman –
There is a quiet wisdom running through this novel. It doesn’t pretend that starting again magically fixes everything. Alex escapes one life, but she still has to build another, and that new life contains happiness and friendship alongside disappointment, responsibility, ageing and loss. That felt much more truthful than the usual idea of reinvention where somebody simply walks away and lives happily ever after. Knowing that Dianne Preston came to novel writing later in life also gave the book an additional resonance for me. There is a sense of lived experience behind the observations about relationships, caring and loss. Whether every detail is invented or not doesn’t really matter; emotionally, it feels true.
A genuinely moving celebration of friendship, resilience and the fact that it is never necessarily too late for another chapter. Our book club received review copies from Foreshore Publishing.