An absorbing plot conveyed in woefully clichéd language: Montefiore’s hearts are always swelling, filling or leaping.
An Englishwoman with a mysterious past struggles to hold on to a country hotel.
In 1966, Floriana, a girl from a tiny Tuscan village, discovers a walled garden and an attached villa belonging to a wealthy industrialist, Beppe, who allegedly has Mafia connections. Scaling the wall, Floriana is soon befriended by Beppe’s son, Dante, and the family dog, Good-Night. Cut to 2009: Marina, who with her husband Grey and a few loyal retainers transformed a Devonshire mansion into the charmingly rustic Hotel Polzanze, fears that mounting debt may force them to sell the place. Grey’s adult children, Jake and Clementine, have never warmed to Marina since she broke up their father’s first marriage when they were youngsters. Clementine in particular has been in a sulk since family finances forced her to return from travels in India to take a dull office job. Egged on by her officemate Sylvia, she dates a lager lout she doesn’t really care for. But when handsome Rafa, an Italian-Argentinean painter, arrives at Polzanze to give art lessons to elderly guests, Clementine is utterly entranced. By 1971, Floriana has grown into a beautiful young woman, and when Dante returns from his college studies he vows eternal love. However, Beppe will never approve of his heir-apparent’s marriage to a lower-class girl whose father is the town drunk; instead he pressures Dante to court Costanza, daughter of an impoverished count. But when Dante and Floriana have an ill-advised tryst, her resulting pregnancy will create an embarrassment that Beppe must eliminate in the traditional Mafia way. The British and Tuscan narratives alternate, leaving readers to wonder how, exactly, they intersect. Aside from the obvious clues—Marina is so secretive her stepchildren call her "Submarine," and Rafa did not come to Polzanze by chance, but by design—it is to the author’s credit that she manages to prolong the puzzle until the not-so-bitter end.
An absorbing plot conveyed in woefully clichéd language: Montefiore’s hearts are always swelling, filling or leaping.Pub Date: May 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2430-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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