An intoxicating blend of romance, Portuguese history, and winemaking lore.
A British merchant succumbs to the charms of Portugal—and one captivating Portuguese woman—in this debut historical romance.
It’s 1870 at the beginning of Siniscalchi’s novel, and Griffin Maxwell has spent 12 years in Oporto transforming his uncle’s small trading firm into “the fastest growing port company in the city.” He only needs to secure a partnership with another company to restore his family’s status to what it had been in London before his father’s death. When John Croft, the successful merchant he has been courting for months, finally agrees to partner with Griffin, he is ecstatic. But Croft has a few conditions. First, he asks Griffin to expand his planned trip up the Douro River to include a meeting with the widow who inherited Quinta do Vesuvio, the best wine- producing estate in the region. And the merchant tells Griffin that the partnership will only be his if he marries Croft’s 18-year-old daughter. Griffin accepts both conditions and sets off on his journey. He is wary about spending several weeks upriver; not only is the Douro region “a wild, unruly corner of the world,” Griffin also has never mixed with the Portuguese. In Griffin’s mind, “they make great wine, they have a bloody complicated language, they love weird food and romantic nonsense, and they like to respond to reasonable questions with monosyllabic nonsensical answers.” He also assumes that the widow at the helm of Quinta do Vesuvio will be a boring, old crone. To his surprise, he discovers that Julia Costa is a beautiful, brilliant winemaker. Griffin even falls in love with her 7-year-old son. But Julia is headstrong, with unorthodox plans to modernize her vineyard—and another suitor. A crusade to save the Douro’s grapevines against phylloxera brings Griffin and Julia close, but will it be enough to bridge the differences between a staid British merchant and a passionate Portuguese winemaker? Siniscalchi’s command of Portuguese history and winemaking is impressive, and her vivid descriptions of the Douro region will make readers yearn to travel there. Does Griffin and Julia’s first kiss occur too early in the story, eliminating opportunities for the author to build suspense? Yes. Are there too many references to Griffin ogling Julia’s legs when she chooses breeches over skirts? Yes. But the author’s compelling characters and propulsive plot smooth over these minor hiccups, creating a warm romance that goes down easily and does not hesitate to explore the difficulties of a cross-cultural relationship.
An intoxicating blend of romance, Portuguese history, and winemaking lore.Pub Date: April 25, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.
A second-chance romance from the author of Slow Dance (2024) and the Simon Snow Trilogy.
Cherry is fat. There are other things to know about Cherry, but this fact is essential to how she sees herself and—she knows—essential to how other people see her. And now that her husband’s hugely popular webcomic is a movie, she not only has to endure people confusing her with the character that’s based on her, but also the knowledge that the actor playing this character is wearing a fat suit. This pain is exacerbated by the fact that her marriage is over. It’s at this rock-bottom moment that her college crush reenters her life…This is a book about being fat, and Rowell does a great job of depicting what internalized fatphobia looks like. “Cherry was so used to thinking about being fat, she hardly even noticed that she was doing it. She was so used to thinking about being fat, she never thought about it.” Observations like this will resonate with a lot of readers, as will Cherry’s complicated feelings about weight-loss drugs. This is also a romance and, as a romance, it’s kind of all over the place. It’s totally realistic for Cherry to wonder if Russ—the guy from college—never pursued her because of her weight. This is a conflict that feels true. What’s less believable is the way he reacts when he sees a trailer for Cherry’s husband’s movie. It’s clear that he didn’t get that this movie was going to be a blockbuster. In short, Russ freaks out, and it’s not at all clear why. As for Cherry’s husband, the way she feels about him at the beginning of the book is totally disconnected from the way she feels about him in the novel’s latter half. It’s normal to have complicated feelings about the end of a marriage, of course, but there’s no emotional throughline to help the reader understand why Cherry’s feelings change so dramatically.
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780063380264
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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