Emma's Review: The Tuscan Sister's Promise by Daniela Sacerdoti

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Throughout her childhood, Mia has watched her beloved sisters leave their Tuscan villa and start their own families. Now it’s her turn and, having promised them that she will follow her heart, she hopes she will finally be brave enough fall in love herself…

Not long after she arrives in London, Mia meets Ben, a bookseller with warm hazel eyes and thick brown hair. As they spend more time together, Mia finds herself enchanted by his gentle smile. But just as she feels her affection for him growing, Ben tells her he can never leave London. Falling in love and building a life with him would mean saying goodbye to her home in the Tuscan hills forever.

As she thinks about her future, Mia finds a locket hidden in the house where she is staying, along with a long-forgotten love story that mirrors her own. As she uncovers diary entries from the eve of the First World War, she learns of a forbidden romance, and a woman who also once shared Mia’s desire to find her place in the world.

But will the story Mia unravels inspire her to keep her promise to embrace the future, and let Ben into her heart at last? Or will she return to Italy, leaving behind the only man she has ever truly loved? 

Book Links: Kindle or Paperback

Emma's Review: Once We Were Sisters by Ann Bennett

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Paris, 1940. Shops are being boarded up, Jewish children are loaded onto buses and eighteen-year-old Elise’s heart beats hard as she runs down the cobbled streets under the shadow of swastikas. She hates her father with all her heart: he is working with the Nazis and has forbidden her to be friends with Myriam and Salomé, the Goldman sisters who are closer to her than her own family.

Elise will do anything to help the girls she loves as sisters, including sharing her father’s secret business. Every day she creeps out to their apartment, avoiding the cold-eyed soldiers who stalk the streets. But in trying to save them, will she bring terrible danger to their door?

Years later, newly pregnant Jeanne stares at the photograph of three young girls on the beach. She recognises her mother Elise in the centre of the picture, but who does her mother have her arms around?

Jeanne feels such love for the tiny new life inside her and feels desperate to connect with the mother who has always shut her out. Could finding these lost sisters, laughing and vibrant in the crumpled black and white photo, help Jeanne understand her mother and lay the ghosts of the past to rest? 

Book Links: Kindle or Paperback

Emma's Review: The Vicar's Daughter at the Lodging House by Natalie Meg Evans

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

When Jess discovers the letter from her older sister Charlotte tucked into an old typewriter, her world is shaken. It’s dated two days after their father, the vicar, said she died. How could he lie about that? Desperate to uncover the truth, Jess must find her sister. The London location in her sister’s letter is her only clue…

Leaving her quiet life in the country as a vicar’s daughter behind, now Jess is in the city in wartime, her gas mask slung around her shoulder. Her one refuge is her room at a Mayfair lodging house with two other girls. Wealthy Betony is all style and charm, but she’s trying to shake her aristocratic airs and graces. Irish nurse Grace with her easy smile is much more down to earth, but Jess is certain she’s keeping a secret…

With war throwing the three girls together, can Jess’s new friends help find her missing sister, despite the secrets between them? Or will they be torn apart for good?

Book Links: Kindle or Paperback

Emma's Review: The Hidden Letter at Bluebell Farm by Rebecca Alexander

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Arriving at Bluebell Farm in the English countryside, historian Tasha has never felt more alone. Her twins have left for university, her marriage is over, and she’s said goodbye to the place she thought would always be her home. Exploring the tumbledown farm and striking up a friendship with elderly Maud, whose prickly exterior masks a warm heart, offers the distraction Tasha desperately needs.

Together with Ryan, a silver-haired, motorbike-riding archaeologist, Tasha digs into the farm’s history. Soon she finds faded photographs and a sealed, yellowing letter that calls to her. But Maud’s eyes fill with tears as she insists the long-lost letter must never be opened. Could it be from Maud’s father, who went missing after the Second World War?

Intrigued by the stories hidden behind Maud’s sharp blue eyes, Tasha and Ryan unearth a heart-wrenching secret. Maud’s father’s disappearance is not the only mystery hidden on this farm. If Maud reads the letter after all these years, will it reveal all?

And with Maud’s encouragement, can Tasha have a second chance at love with kind-hearted Ryan? Or will the heartache in their own pasts keep them apart? 

Book Link: Kindle 

Emma's Review: Just One Look at You by Jill Mansell

Reviewed by Emma Crowley 

Fen can't believe her luck. A luxury holiday with her beloved grandmother Disa - what could be more delightful? It doesn't cross her mind that she might fall in love. Or that love can bring complications . . .

Jamie can't help it that women always fall for him, rather than for his kind-hearted friend Leon. Nor that only one of them got the looks (that would be Jamie). But how will he feel if the girl he's drawn to only has eyes for Leon?

Disa has a secret. A few weeks ago, an old letter in a file revealed a shocking truth about her late husband. She's come to Venice to find out more.

There's news on the way that will reverberate through all their lives, as Jill Mansell's joyful, heartbreaking new novel takes readers on a roller coaster ride of emotion - and makes us believe in love again.

Book Links: Kindle or Hardcover