I chose The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake because it promised an immersive Italian summer – and I’m pleased to report that it delivers on that promise. However, author Rachel Linden focuses more on the connection between family and food than she does on the romance between Jules and Nicolo, hence my overall disappointment with…
Amy Lea’s Something Like Fate considers the role of fate in our lives – do we choose our destiny, or is it pre-decided? Lo Zhao-Jensen is part of an extended Chinese-American family where she is strongly influenced by her mother’s sisters and all the family lore. All the women have a gift of psychic ability…
Sally Brady was only eleven when her parents put her on a train headed to the west coast – back when her name wasn’t Sally Brady. She’s under strict orders to send money home to Iowa, to help support her sick mother, the dying farm, and her four siblings. It would be an enormous burden…
The Villa is an inky-dark look at two sets of best friends coping with some jaw-dropping betrayals. It unfortunately sports some predictable twists, and then takes far too many distracting excursions along its primrose pathway, all of which keeps it from pulling a higher grade. Motivational author Chess Chandler (WIP: Swipe Right on Life!) and…
Lily Morton’s The Cuckoo’s Call is a charming and heartfelt age-gap, opposites-attract romance that looks at what happens to a holiday romance after the holiday is over. You generally know what you’re getting with a Morton book – steamy sexytimes, witty banter, engaging characters and a good helping of feels – which is exactly what’s…
Lizzie & Dante has all the elements of a great romance – a woman on vacation in Italy, a hot Italian chef with great moves in and out of the kitchen, days on the beach, and nights under the stars. But it also has one element of a great tragedy – Lizzie is sick with…
Friends. Lovers. Rivals. Enemies. The ties that bind all four are strong but malleable, especially in wartime. This fact is at the heart of Eternal, a story of three young people who find themselves in three very different positions as the Nazis and Fascism storm across Europe. Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro are known as the…
There are many, many books and blogs dedicated to helping you create a “killer” wedding. For the bride and groom of Her Dark Lies that doesn’t just mean designing a dress to die for and booking a location you’d commit murder for – it means an actual body count. At the beginning of the tale,…
This historical romance début from Emily Sullivan shows promise, but despite its good points (likeable characters with great chemistry and well-written love scenes) the book is ultimately derailed by a lack of focus and clear direction, uneven pacing, nonsensical plot points and some poor editing. That the author’s ability to actually write shines through is…
Our Darkest Night – a tale of how one young Jewish woman survived and thrived in WWII Italy – had me riveted from the first page to the last. Antonia Mazin’s father had been a famous doctor but by Autumn of 1943 the racial laws had stripped him of that title. Now the two of…
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