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? 

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

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Ever since her twin sister returned to the family home, Bianca has felt more lost than ever. For the first time in her life, she’s not the only one taking care of her family. But her newfound freedom makes it impossible to stop thinking about Lorenzo. She has loved him since they met beneath a tree between their houses as children, but a long-seated family feud means they can never be together...

Determined to distract herself from her heartache, Bianca is delighted when she runs into a childhood friend, Brando, who secures her a job at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. And the more time she spends with him in the archives, cataloguing the museum’s precious library, the more she becomes captivated by his warm brown eyes. Maybe his gentle smile will heal her heart?

But when Bianca discovers a long-lost diary in the archives, written by a young woman who once lived in her family’s villa, she is gripped by the story of forbidden love that mirrors her own. As she reads, Bianca wonders whether she should take courage from this stranger’s story. But is Bianca’s chance for happiness already lost forever? Or is it not too late for her to heal the wounds of the past, and fight for the man she loves?

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Emma's Review: The Tuscan Sister by Daniela Sacerdoti

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Walking across the warm terracotta tiles of her family house, the scent of roses and fresh rosemary in the air, Lucrezia feels at peace for the first time in years. But she knows that to truly feel at home again, she must tell her sisters the devastating truth about why she left…

Before she can, she discovers her father left debts that threaten to cost them the house. With nowhere for her sisters to go, Lucrezia becomes determined to save their home. And when her childhood love Vanni unexpectedly arrives soon after, she finds herself gazing into his deep brown eyes, having imagined this moment for years. Can they save her family home together?

But then one day Lucrezia glimpses a familiar figure in the rose garden, and her heart stops. Maybe she didn’t imagine what her father told her she did, all those years ago… Suddenly, there is more than one secret to uncover before she can truly return home. Is everything Lucrezia thought about her family a lie? And if it is, is she too late to heal the wounds of the past?

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Emma's Review: The Bookseller's Daughter by Daniela Sacerdoti

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

As golden sunlight shimmers across the crystal-clear water, Francesca arrives on the tranquil Italian island of Santa Caterina in search of precious rare books. She quickly discovers she was invited by the island’s mysterious owner, alongside handsome local book collector Thiago, to unlock a secret spanning generations. Together, they learn the books were hidden during the Second World War by Helèna, the daughter of a bookseller, who sacrificed everything to save the island’s treasures from the Nazis.

With only Helèna’s diary to guide them, Francesca finds herself growing closer to Thiago, with his deep blue eyes and sun-kissed curls. As they curl up under the stars, piecing together clues in the gentle, rose-scented breeze and retracing Helèna’s steps on the quaint cobbled streets, Francesca begins to wonder if she can finally open her heart to a new beginning...

But when an unbelievable act of courage and a heart-breaking secret in the final pages of the diary shatters everything she and Thiago thought they knew about Helèna, Francesca realises the remarkable wartime story of love and sacrifice has the power to change both of their lives forever.

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Emma's Review: The Italian Island by Daniela Sacerdoti

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

As the hazy sun sets on golden sand, twenty-year-old Annie arrives on the stunning Sicilian island of Galatea, her father’s final wish playing heavy on her heart: she must solve the mystery of her grandmother who disappeared during World War Two. Her only clues are the delicate gold band around her wrist and directions to Villa Onda - House of the Waves - where her grandmother once lived.

As she climbs the winding road up to the cliffside villa, Annie’s path collides with handsome local fisherman, Salvo. His sea-blue eyes sparkle with recognition at her bracelet, and Annie can’t tell if it’s his warm touch or the sun-kissed villa’s vine-covered splendour that takes her breath away. Swept into the warm arms of Salvo’s family, it’s not long before she finds herself dancing the night away in the cobbled piazza and finally beginning to heal.

But one afternoon she finds an antique gramophone hidden beneath a dusty sheet in her grandmother’s bedroom. Setting the needle, she unlocks a long-buried secret… And, through Salvo’s mother, starts to unravel the truth about the bracelet and her grandmother’s heart-shattering wartime sacrifice.

With Salvo’s first kiss lingering on her lips, Annie knows she must dig deeper into the scars that haunt this beautiful island. But can her fragile new-found love with Salvo survive uncovering the truth? Will she ever be able to move on with her life until she does?

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Emma's Review: The Lost Village of Daniela Sacerdoti

 Reviewed by Emma Crowley

1945, Italy. Two sisters give birth to two little girls on the same night, huddled under blankets, deep in the black woods that surround the village of Bosconero. They hold their babies close as footsteps approach. If they make even the slightest sound, the German soldiers will find them…

1996. Luce Nardini searches the cobbled streets of a remote Italian village for a house with a faded blue door. Since her only child left home, and with her estranged husband more distant than ever, she’s been completely untethered. Discovering why her mother cut all contact with her family and the village she loved feels like Luce’s last hope at understanding who she is.

Inside the house, she’s relieved to find the grandmother she never knew living out her final days. With a longing look at an ornate wooden box on her nightstand, her grandmother is just beginning to tell the heart-wrenching story of a little village ravaged by war, and why Luce’s mother swore never to return, when then the unthinkable happens: an earth-shattering disaster that shakes the little village of Bosconero to its core.

Feeling more lost than ever before, Luce fears that the secrets of her past have been buried forever. Her only hope is to win back the trust of the small community and find her grandmother’s little wooden box amongst the rubble of the village.

But will the surprise arrival of the husband she thought she’d lost help sew Luce’s family back together, or tear it apart for good? And will anything have prepared her for the devastating betrayal she finds hidden inside the box…?

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Emma's Review: The Italian Villa by Daniela Sacerdoti

Reviewed by Emma Crowley 

Callie, a lonely small-town waitress, is still reeling from the discovery that she’s adopted when she arrives in Montevino, Italy in search of answers – the keys to the stunning hillside villa she has just inherited clutched tightly in her hand. Inside the rusted gates, and through a large wooden front door dripping with sun-kissed flowers, Callie can’t decide if she’s more astonished by her new home or her first encounter with the mysterious young groundskeeper, Tommaso.

Wandering the villa barefoot at night, Callie finds a diary belonging to a woman named Elisa, wrapped in faded blue ribbon and hidden in her birthmother’s antique wardrobe. Page by page, Callie is swept away by its story of love, passion, heartbreak and betrayal as she reads how Elisa married her childhood sweetheart in secret before fleeing to the woods to join the resistance. They vowed to find each other again when the war was over, but history had other plans.

Callie is certain that her and Elisa’s lives are somehow connected, and that the truth about her family is hidden somewhere within the diary’s crinkled yellow pages. It gives her the courage to start asking questions around the close-knit village until, at long last, she feels her closed-off heart begin to open. Perhaps even enough to let someone in…

But when a devastating betrayal in the final pages of the diary unlocks a heart-breaking secret about who Callie’s mother really is, the chance for a new life shatters in front of her. Can she persuade the locals to forgive her past and accept the truth about her identity?

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Cover Reveal: I Will Find You by Daniela Sacerdoti

This lunchtime I'm delighted to be taking part in the cover reveal for Daniela Sacerdoti's latest book I Will Find You which is due to be published on 17th May so without further ado here it is... What do you think?

When her mother dies, heartbroken Cora seeks solace on a remote Scottish island. Alone in a crumbling cottage inaccessible at high tide, she discovers the stones have their secrets. 

Emma's Review: Don't Be Afraid by Daniela Sacerdoti

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

When you've forgotten how to live, help can arrive in mysterious ways...

Successful artist Isabel Ramsay has never come to terms with the tragic death of her mother. Haunted by what happened, Isabel finds her own life spiralling out of control until, one winter s day, she gives up, unable to bear the pain of living any longer. Yet somehow she wakes up, remembering a vision of a mysterious woman who has saved her. But alone in a locked house, surely that's impossible?

With her family and friends worried out of their minds, her husband Angus finds a companion to watch over Isabel while he's away from home. Warm, wise Clara can connect with Isabel in a way no one else can, helping her face up to her painful past, rediscover her passion for art and become brave enough to live her life again. But there s a mystery surrounding Clara: who is she, and why does Isabel feel she's known her all her life?

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